The school bus is squeaking past again, there’s a pumpkin/watermelon cage match in the produce aisle and — most critically — the annual influx of dynamite entries in Streetlight’s flash fiction contest have been read!

As before, the judges were gifted with glimpses of whole worlds built a mere five hundred words at a time. Some captured the quotidian, others, terror; some broke our hearts and a few, too, were laugh-out-loud funny. (You’ll see.) All of which means that picking winners was freaking hard. We are not talking about a bridge design competition which can be objectively measured for things like standing up in a stiff breeze. It’s subjective. And story specific (ie. not a referendum on talent!)

All that said, the 2025 winners are:

First Place: “A Special Place in Hell” by Christine Wilcox
Second: “The Taste of Copper Pennies” by Timothy Collyer
Honorable Mention: “Second Shelf” by Mariel Hixenbaugh

If you submitted, thank you for participating. And for the love of all things holy, keep writing! We need each other’s art–now more than ever.

Erika Raskin is Streetlight Magazine’s fiction editor. Her most recent novel, Allegiance, is about a fascist take-over in America—and came out before the election. More of her words can be found at erikaraskin.com and https://erikaraskinwriter.substack.com/.

Mary Esselman has an extensive background in writing and editing. She currently serves as program coordinator and editor for Iris magazine, a student-run publication of the University of Virginia Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center. She is the author of HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?: Poems for the Not So Young Anymore, YOU DRIVE ME CRAZY: Love Poems for Real Life, KISS OFF: Poems to Set You Free, and THE HELL WITH LOVE: Poems to Mend a Broken Heart.