THE FELLS Won WBUR/Drum Lit Mag’s Zip Code Stories

Expect the Unexpected. That was the theme for Zip Code Stories, a flash fiction-style contest put on by WBUR and The Drum Literary Magazine.

I had no expectation that my submission would win. In fact, I thought the deadline had come and gone, and someone else had won. I had moved on.

Rewind: last month on vacation in Provincetown, after downing a few hot-pink gumball martinis, I submitted The Fells, where the character is confronted by an unexpected event, and changed.

So when I got an automated email saying The Fells had been accepted, I assumed the submission-tracking system had gone wild. Mercifully, human emails followed not long after. Taping my reading with Anthony Brooks two feet away was a trip. And Drum Editor Henriette Lazaridis Power is just plain cool.

Expect the unexpected. Maybe it’s working for me.