Thank you to everyone who read the finalists in this year’s contest. We love sharing these pieces with you! It's wonderful to see voters support their favorite writers and discover new voices. We're now ready to announce the Audience Choice winner and our Judges' Choice award.
Audience Choice Award
In audience voting, the top four pieces are:
4th place:
“Auxese” (An Exercise in Hyperbole) by Ana Claudia de Souza de Oliveira
3rd place:
“De amor y de piedras” (Of Love and Stones) by Maximiliano Martínez
2nd place:
"Os Cinco Anjos do Éden" (The Five Angels of Eden) by Claudio Antão Ribeiro de Oliveira
and
1st place:
“Além da Visão” (Beyond the Vision) by Edgar Farinon
Congratulations! Judges' Choice
In addition to the audience choice award, we ask judges to honor another piece for its quality of writing. This year, the judge's choice award goes to: "おじいさんのもの" (Grandpa's Member) by Tokuzawa Aiko Judge's Statement Once Brigham Young described how it felt to learn from Joseph Smith like this: "He took heaven, figuratively speaking, and brought it down to earth; and he took the earth, brought it up, and opened up, in plainness and simplicity, the things of God; and that is the beauty of his mission." Aiko Tokuzawa's takes the same approach in bringing together the everyday and the eternal. While capturing the awkwardness in end-of-life care, the poem also opens our eyes to the beauty of life, even at its dwindling.
Congratulations! Next Contest
Remember that submissions for the Twelfth Annual Mormon Lit Blitz writing contest are due on 31 August 2023 to everydaymormonwriter@gmail.com. Submitted works may be in any genre so long as they are under 1,000 words and designed to resonate in some way with a Latter-day Saint audience. Submissions may be written in any language. Previously published material and simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Up to three submissions are allowed per author. Further details can be found here.