Announcing the 2025 PhotoFinish Winner & Finalists!

We are proud to announce the winner and finalists of our 2025 PhotoFinish competition. Iron Horse Literary Review's PhotoFinish issue annually invites and challenges writers to respond to a photo prompt with a story of fewer than 500 words or a poem of fewer than 15 lines that creatively interprets the photo prompt beyond a literal reading. At midnight on New Year's Eve each year, we publish an issue dedicated to the winner's and finalists' work. The issue is completely free for all to read on ISSUU.

Please join us in congratulating Travis Flatt on his 2025 IHLR PhotoFinish winning story, "A Dunk in the Bucket." Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear in Fractured Lit, Cleaver, Prime Number, 100 Word Story, The /t3mz/ Review, Variant Lit, and other places. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs, often with his wife and son.

Travis Flatt, Winner of the 2025 IHLR PhotoFinish Contest

The finalists, whose excellent stories and poems can be read in the upcoming IHLR PhotoFinish issue, are:

Terry Dalrymple, "Photograph" (fiction)

Chris Ellery, "Fish Fishes Fisher Fishing" (poetry)

Deirdre Johns, "A Feminine Touch Will Do the Trick" (poetry)

Barbara Lawhorn, "Seed Pearl" (fiction)

Rachel Lloyd, "Gone Fishing" (fiction)

Katy Luxem, "Two-Headed Woman" (poetry)

Laura Nagle, "A Person You May Know" (poetry)

Mary Quade, "Tale of the Girl and the Bucket" (poetry)

Congratulations to our winner and finalists!