As readers, we can't help wondering about our writers. We want to know what their lives are like, and whether they experienced what their characters did. But that's not really what fiction tells us. Fiction tells us what the writer's imagination is like and what she can conjure. And it's a gift when fiction can take us into an imagination unlike our own and expand us.
That's what the prize-winning stories did this year, each in their own way.
Judges Joey Bui and Bram Presser
