Iron Horse Prize

A mother is a myth, a figure, a body. Through a series of essays spanning the political to the personal, Lucky Bodies reckons with motherhood. Marianne Jay Erhardt's striking debut takes inventory of what we demand and withhold from mothers, and what counts as care. Plucking stars from the constellation of stories that have shaped her own emergence as a mother, she explores fables, family, religion, fairy tales, television, mythology, and games, all with exceptional wit and empathy. Erhardt considers the nature of care alongside Peter Pan, Where the Wild Things Are, and Little House on the Prairie. She reassembles memory with Busby Berkely chorus girls, 90's TV commercials, and a mid-Atlantic hurricane. She grieves her father's death and the wreckage of war through Aesop and discovers how little the Mother of God says out loud in The Bible. She reimagines Red Riding Hood's wolf, reflects on faith with Bigfoot and repurposes a Covid wellness survey to take stock of our collective isolation, asking readers, "How alone are you?" Throughout Lucky Bodies, Erhardt establishes herself as a memoiric cultural critic, imagining how we might make and inhabit stories that cultivate an ethic of care.

This debut collection takes readers to small-town Ohio, New York City, and beyond, presenting the unique voices of troubled characters-Polish and Ukrainian, young and old, rich and poor-as they face life-altering challenges and struggle with their faith in religion, family, society, and themselves. A Polish immigrant catches his son making porn and tries to punish the local video store for inspiring him; a Christian teenager keeps her rapist's baby, only to be banned from her high school yearbook; a pastor shocks his congregation by using his sermon to confess to an old crime; a lawyer haunted by his sister's murder is asked to witness the murderer's execution; and a daughter of Russian immigrants, now successful on Wall Street, gets stuck in rapidly rising waters after ignoring warnings about Superstorm Sandy. In ten unforgettable stories that draw on a range of inspirations, from the Bible to recent headlines, Paul Linczak boldly probes the dark to ask about the ideals we believe in and illuminates the powerful human moments that spring from confrontations with an often merciless, and aggressively changing, world. Unsparing and tender, with a vision that ranges across borders without missing the small, telling detail, Świnica vividly presents a slice of American life, full of danger, bewilderment, determination, and hope.

<span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;color:black;mso-themecolor:text1">The Birthright of Sons<span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;color:black; mso-themecolor:text1"> is a collection of stories centered around the experiences of marginalized people, namely Black and LGBTQ+ men. Though the stories borrow elements from various genres (horror, suspense, romance, magical realism, etc.), they're linked by an exploration of identity and the ways personhood is shaped through interactions with the people, places, and belief systems around us. <span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;color:black;mso-themecolor:text1">Underpinning the project is a core belief – self-definition is fluid, but conflict arises because society often fails to keep pace with personal evolution. In each of these stories, the protagonists grapple with their understanding of who they are, who and how they love, and what's ultimately most important to them. In almost every case, however, the quest to know or protect oneself is challenged by an external force, resulting in violence, crisis, or confusion, among other outcomes. <span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;color:black;mso-themecolor:text1">The Birthright of Sons<span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;color:black; mso-themecolor:text1"> colors in "the other" as three-dimensional, by highlighting the unique obstacles that marginalized people face while simultaneously centering their humanity and unearthing universal struggles and commonalities. Be it experiencing a sexual awakening, contemplating the cumulative effects of racial tension in the workplace, or searching desperately for a moment of peace in the attention economy, the collection amplifies underrepresented voices in a playful and contemporary way, elevating, critiquing, and confronting its characters. <span style="font-size:11.0pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;color:black;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-ansi-language: EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Through a mix of heart, dark humor, and social observation, The Birthright of Sons ponders the power of difference in a world defined by rigid definitions, ideological silos, and an unwillingness to change

A collection of sixteen short stories surrounding queer men of various ages trying to temper their expectations of the world with their lived experience.