Christopher’s story “Messages from a Storm” wins the 2016 Writers @ Work Fellowship Competition. His story appears in Quarterly West, and he participated in the 2016 W@W June conference in Utah as this year’s Fiction Fellow. The other 2016 winners are Samatha Deal (Creative Non-Fiction), and Jennifer Sperry Steinorth (Poetry).
“Messages from a Storm” is about an airplane mechanic in Mobile, AL, and his life and events surrounding a lightweight aircraft crash during a hurricane-like storm. The story is available online at Quarterly West, here.
Also see Christopher’s interview on the Writers @ Work website.
The author Peter Ho Davies was the fiction judge of this year’s fellowship competition. He is the author of the novel The Welsh Girl (2007) and the story collections The Ugliest House in the World (1997) and Equal Love (2000). He wrote this about Christopher’s story:
“Messages from a Storm” is written in a crisp, laconic prose well suited to its steely, feeling protagonist. There’s a great feel for community and place here, for the distinctive details of work, and most of all for character. The main character is exactingly evoked, but secondary figures are also attended to with care, a hallmark of good fiction. And from these characters, understood with such keen emotional intelligence, plot arises with an affecting inevitability.
Writers @ Work, a nationally-known independent writer’s organization, has successfully promoted and supported a creative writing community – locally, regionally and nationally – for thirty one years. While attending W@W events writers can hone their skills and meet to discuss their work with fellow writers, agents, editors and publishers. Learn more about Writers @ Work.
Christopher X. Shade 