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The Howe Writing Center is pleased to announce the winners of their Spring 2026 Creative Writing Contests. The first invited writers to write a flash fiction story exploring the role of chance in our lives, and the second asked for a poem in honor of spring and the renewal we see around us.

Every semester the Howe Writing Center holds a creative writing contest, with the mission to cultivate a culture of writing that honors a range of voices and perspectives at ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú. The contests are open to submissions from any ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú undergraduate or graduate student writer.

Congratulations to our winners and thank you to everyone who submitted work for the contests! 

Flash Fiction: Fate, Luck, and Serendipity

Our HWC Flash Fiction Writing Contest invited writers to create a flash fiction story about a character taking a chance and how fate, Lady Luck, or serendipity intervenes and shapes the outcome.

Here are this year’s winners:

• 1st prize: The Hours of the Snail, or Janthina janthina, Emma Rowan
• 2nd prize: I Sat With Fate Once in Vegas, Audrey Hughes
• 3rd prize: Sanctuary, Taryn Midtbo
• Staff Pick: Two for Luck, Zoe Fowler

Poetry: Cycles of Change

Our annual Spring Poetry Contest asked writers to write a poem exploring kinds of cycles (e.g. of nature, of science, of time, of self). The first and last lines of this poem are the same, but the final line reflects a shifted or altered meaning. 

Here are this year’s winners:

• 1st prize: Shapes by Brooke Westgate
• 2nd prize: Wintry Encore by Kavita Shrestha
• 3rd prize: Same Cycle Different Season by Olivia Cole
• Staff Pick: Shapes by Brooke Westgate

Flash Fiction: Fate, Luck, and Serendipity

The Hours of the Snail, or Janthina janthina, Emma Rowan

  Emma Rowan is a second year MFA student at ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú with a concentration in Creative Nonfiction. She's Ox Mag's CNF Editor and a prose reader for Beaver Mag. She has work published in Cleaver, Spellbinder, Bruiser, and other places. She thinks Pet Sounds is one of the best albums of all time and misses Brian Wilson very much.

The Hours of the Snail, or Janthina janthina

This is my favorite part. Where sky meets sea, where ripples shimmer and flicker liquid flames, where I reflect my light on the saltwater’s surface in splashes of bright white. Blacktops steam, skin burns, and tree leaves curl to crisps, but water reflects—the best place to see myself in glistening, fluid fragments. 

There are things that get in the way of course. Hulking cruiseliners, greasy oil rigs, cargo ships carrying both blatant and subtle weapons of mass destruction—wretched things. There are blue whales, manatees, dolphin’s dorsal fins—lovely, if feeble, things. There are even smaller, feebler things too. Kelp, driftwood, unlucky life jackets. None like Janthina janthina though. My Janthina janthina. My favorite. My best devotee. 

See how she clings to the water’s surface, to the underside of the sea like a remora to a sand shark. See how she longs to be as near to me as possible. How she peers up at me behind a raft of her own spit, mucus-membraned bubbles of air she’s crafted to skim the sky. Spending her life upside down in a violet, spiraled shell at the current’s whim. All so she can see me. So she can love me, worship me. So she can bask in my light. 

Oh, Janthina janthina. Almost an atom to me from up here. But through my rays of light I reach you like a swallowtail to a tulip. Nobody sees me like you do.

And now you’ve given me the greatest gift. More of you. You’re having offspring. Hundreds of eggs attached to your makeshift raft, shaded by spit-spheres. Your love for me in microscopic specks. How joyous! Is that a smile I see? 

 My Janthina, where are you going? You’re straying into shallow water, my dear. The tide’s bringing you in. You’re nearing them. Those loud, thrashing, bipedal tyrants. Please, my Janthina, swim! 

Oh no…you’re nearing waists, legs, palms. Swim, Janthina! One of them’s spotted you. Is scooping you up. Pinching you between its grotesque fingers, inspecting your insides, carrying you to shore. Your soft, fleshy foot winces—drying, pruning in the simmering air. 

Its hands scrape your mucus-wrapped raft from your sole, destroy your altar, your prayer rug, your means of devotion. Your eggs fall to the ground without a sound. Thousands of lives you’ve expended so much energy to bring into existence perish. Thousands of devotees. I watch. Are you looking up at me, my love? Are you pleading for some divine intervention? Please understand, Janthina, I’m as stuck as you. 

It seems to notice your insides for the first time. Flinching from your softness it flicks its wrist in disgust and flings you to the sand where scalding grains stick. You’re still. My caresses scorch. My Janthina janthina… 

I burn, singe shoulders and scalps. All I can do. Unfazed, they run across the beach, their laughter hitting summer light with the same sting as the plumes of sand they kick up in their wake.

I Sat With Fate Once In Vegas, Audrey Hughes

Audrey is a freshman Arts Management and Arts Entrepreneurship/Theatre double major with a fashion co-major. She has no previous publications and just writes for fun. She spends most of her time in Boyd working on fashion projects or in and around campus performing arts organizations.

I Sat With Fate Once In Vegas

I sat with Fate once in Vegas. Where else, but in Vegas? The gods adapt, you must know. They find their worshippers elsewhere, temples in modernity rather than antiquity. I watched her for a long time. Her eyes were cloudy, gaze unseeing. Her fingers were nimble and the dice rolled off them like a bead of rain racing down a window in a storm. 

I sat with Fate once in Vegas. I asked her how she moved the world, the puppeteer of our marionette strings. She took her eyes from the dice, looked at me, looked back at the dice, and let them fall from her hand again. I heard the soft thump as they fell, the quick pull of the slot machine, the roll of the craps table, and the flutter of a shuffled deck in the background. The sounds told me more than her words could. 

I sat with Fate once in Vegas. I looked around her casino. The bouncer was in black, a slender woman by his side. I could almost hear the click of the counter in his hand. I watched as patrons filtered in, their emotions clear on their faces. Saints, sinners, and everyone in between. Those dice don’t discriminate. Most made their way to the bar. Cheers, c’est la vie. 

I sat with Fate once in Vegas. I asked her how she judged them, the ones who walk through her doors. She turned and held my gaze. 

“I don’t” 

“Why?” 

“You must think I cause more than I do. You are the cause, I am the effect” “I don’t understand” 

“Does anyone? When perfectly normal people get sick and die, when boats sink and cars crash with nothing to point to. When the good and bad happen and no one says why, you choose to not know, rather than to find out. Fickle, they call me. Fickle is comfortable, fickle is an answer that answers nothing. No one knows who first said I was fickle but I applaud them, they’ve come the closest. They found the closest thing to an answer anyone has ever found.” 

I sat with Fate once in Vegas. I sat back and watched her roll her dice. I heard the shuffle of the cards, the pull of the slot machine, the roll of the craps table, and in the midst I thought about her words. I searched her face for the look of thought or concentration but all I could see was a woman who plays her games, the puppeteer with millennia of practice. 

I sat with Fate once in Vegas. I asked her a question. 

“How much choice do we have, in your games, in the grand scheme?” 

She said to me, “how much choice did you have in being born?”

Sanctuary, Taryn Midtbo

Taryn is a first-year Biology Major, a Pre-med Co-Major, and a Spanish Minor. She loved writing this little story, and hopes you enjoy reading it!

Sanctuary

You can think of universes like cells. Uncountable, constantly changing orbs that pulse and squish with life, all floating together in a place beyond time, beyond reality. There’s no name for that emptiness, the great dark nothing between the infinity of universes. Personally, I call it the Void. 

That’s where I was born. 

I didn’t have a name back then. I didn’t have a shape either. It’s hard to describe what I was like; no language I have found in any universe has quite the right words for a formless blob of something that is none of the phases of matter, but has the capacity to think. 

There’s no way to know how much time passed before I understood anything about where I was, what I am. All I know is that as soon as I realized what the universes around me were, I wanted to explore them. 

I found my way in. I took the shapes of the beings that lived inside them, all different kinds. I went by many names then, wore many bodies, lived many stories. One day in this wild youth, I was travelling through a version of Mexico. I forget the exact year. I got lost on the road with nothing to my name, wandering for wandering’s sake. My abuela found me then. I won’t write her name, that’s for me alone. But she clucked her tongue at me, told me to come inside and have some food. She made me tacos, the best I’ve ever tasted. 

“Why did you help me, señora?” I said between bites, “Why take the risk? I’m just a lost boy you found on the road.” 

“M’ijo,” she told me, smiling a smile I won’t forget no matter how long I live, and I am very old now, older than some worlds. She put her wrinkled hands on mine and she told me, “remember this: a hot meal and a safe space, they can change someone’s world. Little kindnesses have big impacts. Now, have another taco.” She paused. “And it’s abuela to you, young man.” 

She is long gone now, but her memory lives on, in every taco I make just as she taught me to, with every warm smile and kind word in every universe I exist in now. The bell above the door to my taqueria dings. Someone new steps in, again and again, in every iteration in every universe this shop connects to. It is a sanctuary, one I have built in many worlds, it is a hot meal and a safe space for those who need it most. 

Now, I see a young man, wild black hair and bone-pale skin, the most striking green eyes you could imagine, and he looks like he doesn’t know where he’s going. 

“Hello,” I say warmly, as I have said uncountable times, because this is another lost boy in need of a little kindness, just like me, “welcome to Paul’s Tacos. What can I get you?”

and get out.

Two for Luck, Zoe Fowler

Zoe Fowler is a freshman HCML/Spanish major from Mason, OH who has been writing music, short stories, and poetry since she could hold a pencil. When not writing, she enjoys running, singing, and going to Bible study. She hopes you enjoy her piece, "two for luck"!

Two for Luck

“You can’t be serious.” 

“It’s just an audition, Ella. People go to them all the time.” 

“Yeah, people with years of training and lots of talent.” 

A small frown crossed Asher’s face. “I’m talented,” they insisted, crossing their arms and doing their best to not sound like a petulant child. 

“You are,” Ella conceded. “But this is Broadway. And I love your confidence, darling, but you don’t…you’re not…” she trailed off with a huff, staring at a spot slightly to the left of Asher’s head as if the words she were looking for might be hiding behind their ear. 

“I’m not what? Good enough? I thought you believed in me.” Asher pouted dramatically, exaggerating their hurt in hopes of downplaying it. 

“You’re really good. You know I’d always rather listen to you sing than any of that autotuned crap on the radio,” Ella assured them, cradling Asher’s hand as she spoke. “But you’re not formally trained, and this is Broadway. And you’re…sensitive about these things. Which isn’t a bad thing! It makes you a more emotional performer. Which is wonderful! But…will you be okay if you don’t get it?” 

Asher chewed the inside of their lip, considering. “I’ve got a good feeling about today,” they declared instead of answering, and Ella sighed. 

“Take this, then,” she said, reaching clumsily for her nightstand and plucking something out of the top drawer. “For good luck.” 

Asher peered curiously at the object that had been placed in their hand. It was a tarnished gold chain with a rather old-looking pocketwatch dangling from its end. The watch had stopped at 11:11, the second hand still ticking fruitlessly in place like the metronomes they’d spent the last months practicing with. 

“Turn it over,” Ella prompted, and Asher complied, their eyes catching on the engraving on the back of the watch. There were two little birds (ravens, or perhaps crows) with script underneath them reading, ‘two for luck.’ 

“Where’d you get this?” 

“It was my mother’s. And her mother’s before that. I always wear it when I need a little extra luck, and it’s never let me down yet.” Ella shrugged. “I do believe in you, sweetheart, I promise.” 

“I know,” Asher murmured, pulling her in for a hug. “Thank you.”

When Asher received the notification that they had booked the job (two weeks later, at 11:11 am, which surely couldn’t be a coincidence), Ella was first to hear the news. 

“I’m so proud of you,” she laughed, lifting Asher off their feet to spin them around, a gesture that made them squeal with delight. 

“It was all your watch,” they said between breathless giggles, and Ella shook her head vehemently. 

“No. If that were the case, I’d be the one on Broadway. You’re the one with the brilliant talent.” Asher held out their pinky. “My talent and your luck. Agreed?” 

Ella linked her pinky to Asher’s. “Agreed.”

Poetry: Cycles of Change

Shapes by Brooke Westgate

Brooke is a first year poetry MFA student from Michigan who is pursuing a career in higher education. She has previous publications in magazines such as Central Review and Mosaic Art and Literary Journal. and hopes to continue writing and publishing well throughout her academic career. Her writing stems from the idea of personal experience being universally recognized — specifically, in this piece, she focused around the idea of loss and grieving while continuing to live a “normal” life. She is honored to be among the last group of the poetry MFA program and hopes to accomplish more within the creative writing community in the future!

Shapes

I am memorizing the shapes 
of strangers for the ways they almost 
become you – a neck bent just so, a laugh that lands too harshly, it’s
like a ritual – i track each one on a fingertip & then 
fold them into my palm each morning for safe keeping – 
like a locket with your face on it – in it – wrapped all around the chain 
& the clasp & the rusted spots found where it lies atop 
my skin, sweaty, rocking slowly across my chest – lies
beneath my collar bones, which preface my ribs, which 
hold my heart, which                     holds you. always. 

in the line for the ferris wheel, on the backs of the spoons in that restaurant you used to love, inside the rhythm of a strangers footsteps falling beside my own, in the chorus of a song i don’t remember learning, when the bartender looks away – even now, after all this time, 

                        when i look into a crowd, 
                        i am looking for you. 

& each afternoon you return to me in fragments,
so i gather you again.
          fold you small.
          press you into the center of my palm —
                    as if you have always lived here,
                    as if i was built          to hold you.
as if letting go is just another way
i am memorizing the shapes. 

Wintry Encore  by Kavita Shrestha

Wintry Encore

Everything was fine but fine was not enough 

Dreams were big, the hunger was bigger 

Life packed into a suitcase and crossed oceans 

Living the moments you had once only wished

for New people, fresh bonds, crisp enthusiasm 

Expectations were high. The belief was higher 

Hand in gloves, standing at a lab bench, solving problems

The heart felt like a warm day after a long and dark winter

But winter knows well to come back like a late freeze

No one warned that the graph would not always climb up

Results that never agreed with what you hypothesized

Body running on caffeine and stubbornness alone

Another paper published, another name on a journal page

While you sit with your experiments in disobliging phase

Somewhere between the maze of data and the doubt

The scientist you had to become felt beyond the horizon

Still, you stand, not all at once but piece by piece

Like apricity, like how the spring arrives unannounced

Something green and alive pushing through where nothing was

You return, run your experiments again, you learn, slowly

You stop comparing your chapter one against their epilogue

And some mornings not all brings gratitude quietly

Like good data, unexpected and true 

Because the brain will do this again 

And you keep raising your bar and push your limits

Winter always returns before spring does, but so do you.

You were never behind, just looking in the wrong direction

Everything was fine but fine was not enough

Same Cycle, Different Season by Olive Cole

Olive Cole is a Colorado native and freshman marketing major. This was her first poetry contest, and she really enjoyed the creative process while writing this piece. For Olive, it was especially meaningful to create a poem centered on women’s empowerment.

Same Cycle, Different Season

It is the moon’s old song,
a crimson tide that rises
when the body remembers
where all life belongs

Each month, she breaks
not shattered, but wide,
a sacred unraveling,
where ache and power
collide inside.

The world may call it burden,
may whisper shame and pain,
but inside every cycle
is the proof that strength
is born through pain.

She is the storm and shelter,
the wound and the cure,
a rhythm fierce and ancient,
strong, wild, and pure.

Her body speaks in seasons,
in tides both fierce and mild,
carrying the wisdom
of mother and child.

So let the blood be honored,
let every cramp remind:
there is power in the breaking,
in the feminine design.

A force both deep and endless,
for she was built strong,
in endings that renew
It is the moon’s old song.