The Big Brick Review
Building on the narrative of our lives...one brick at a time.
ISSUE 2: ESSAY CONTEST 2015 WINNERS
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1st Place ($300) by Grace Fetterman I WAS BORN and raised in the town where everybody claims to be Somebody, 90 hours a year are spent seething in traffic, and if you look closely at the children careening through the park like horses, you will realize...read more |
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2nd Place ($200) by Richard Hague AFTER HIS FIRST visit to this 1890 beauty of a building my wife and I purchased in Madisonville in l981, my brother confided to my mother that he would never buy a "used" house...read more |
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3rd Place ($100) by Sally Bittner Bonn I KEEP PUTTING this orange sweater on. The orange sweater I bought from Target a year ago November to hide the pregnancy that didn’t work out. The sweater I thought I might never wear again. I pull it close around my body to brace against this winter’s cold... read more |
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Honorable Mention ($50) by Carol Edelstein FIRST IT MUST be said that she, my dental hygienist, Annabelle Banner, is one of only nineteen living persons who have touched me deeply inside my personal space, and we did it on the very first encounter...read more |
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Honorable Mention ($50) by Robert W. Maddamma WHEN I HIT the ground, I couldn’t breathe. I laid limp, unable to react to the blood dripping from my mouth. I must have bitten my lip. I wasn’t sure; I was only five years old...read more |
GUEST ESSAY
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by Michael Allen Potter WHEN ENSIGN RECORDS released Sinéad O’Connor’s second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, I was a twenty-year-old Ivy League dropout back in my hometown, completely unsure about the trajectory of my own sexuality...read more |
LITTLE BRICKS
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by Geoffrey Neil I QUIT SMOKING at 11. It was after a summer of mischief that fell just shy of hellraising. My best friend, Billy, was a grade ahead of me and the pack of Marlboros and Zippo he flaunted were about all I knew of his middle school education...read more |
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by Patricia Roth Schwartz SHE WAS ONLY seven but in it from the beginning—longing to be a dancer—for the wardrobe only: the desire to wear pink satin toe shoes and a fluffy tutu. The lesson she learned...read more |
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by Peter Teall A BOY BORN in winter. A boy raised on an island hill over a sea of rooftops, a lawn-mown quilt of greens and grays. A boy, feral and Catholic. A boy running with dogs, his closest companions...read more |
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While not every essay submission can win one of our five prizes, many were worthy of praise.
At least we can offer you the following recognition for your writing resume:
Finalists:
After the Fall, by Rae Theodore
Bricks and Mortar, by Karen Faris
ACE, by David Brabec
The First to Go, by Laura Dewender
Building Experiential Insight as a Vietnam Medevac Pilot, by Bob Robeson
Additional Entries of Note (in no specific order):
Old Men on Bicycles, by Martin Nott; My Father's Name Written Out, by Patricia Kester; A New Room, by Suzanne Adams; Cinnamon Girl, by Christine Green; Home, by Kathleen Kelley; Foundations, by Johanna Falkenham; Necessary Things and Other Ramblings, by Laura Dewender; Blame Sohn-dra, by Joy Underhill; Thy Rock is My Foundation, by Barbara Warrick-Fischer; If We Build It, They Will Come, by Patricia Roth Schwartz; The Gasman, by Chuck Kensler; Finding My Father, by Sandra Anfang; What Was I Thinking, by Janet Snyder; Just One Nerve, by Joan Taylor; Possibilities, by Pam Rands; Building a Better America, by Beth Shankle Anderson; A Machine Full of Magical Memories, by Karen Shipman; One Less Rat, by John Palermo; Castle in the Sky, by Geoffrey Neil; The Penitentiary, by Judy Catterton; Unbelief, by John Schnitter; 1000 Sunsets, by Andrea Somerville; Twenty Going on Thirty, by Brian Nafarrete; Self Portrait, by Mark Shipley; The Faithful, Departed, by Bob Shea; and Dachau, by Jayme Wintish.
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