Image: Shane Gorski

2012 Indiana Review  ½ K Winner

“Michigan Central Station Has Been Closed Since 1988”

Lindsay Tigue

Ames, IA

Runners-Up

“Lies”

Jenny Halper

Brooklyn, NY

“Co-lo-ny Col-lapse Dis-or-der”

Megan Moriarty

Staten Island, NY

When asked to say a few words of the winning piece, contest judge Michael Martone writes:

I love trains, and I also adore ruins. I admire this piece for its content of irresistible decay and how its form replicates the unstoppable rot. This is a story that consumes itself, composts as it confounds. It is rich with stuff, with detail, with nominative junk. It names names, chock-a-block, only to have it all melt and fade away. There is no better drama in such a condensed and pressured space. To have a lump of coal transformed into diamond and then, beyond that rock, into the elemental idea of crystalline and holy loss.

“Michigan Central Station Has Been Closed Since 1988” will appear in Indiana Review 34.2, due out this winter. You can order a single issue or a year’s subscription here.

A huge congratulations to our winner and runners-up, and many thanks to all who helped make our 2012 1/2K Prize Contest a success!