Subito Innovative Writing Contest

Jenny Drai's Bewildered Physical Spaces selected as winner of the 2026 Subito Innovative Writing Prize.

Contest judge Rajiv Mohabir had this to say about Drai's winning manuscript:

What draws me to Bewildered Physical Spaces has to do with the meeting of the rivers of indeterminacy, linguistic history, and the re-humaning of historical figures. From the Windeby Girl to Joan of Arc, to mermaids, to Saint Barbara, to Old English-descended poetry, the reader swirls through hybridity of form and narrative voice, the speakers changing and changeling. Personal story is threaded throughout as to remind the reader of archetype, its questioning and thwarting, as framework for living.

Jenny Drai is the author of [ the door ] (Trembling Pillow Press) and Wine Dark and The History Worker (both from Black Lawrence Press), as well as two chapbooks. Her short stories and hybrid pieces have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Hayden's Ferry Review, Pleiades, and Tupelo Quarterly, among other journals. She is online at and lives in Chicagoland where she works as a bookkeeper.

Bewildered Physical Spaces will be available soon.

Congratulations also to the following manuscripts which were selected as finalists:

  • sentinel, Jay BreckerÌý
  • Odors of Ozone, Black Coconut & Brine, Wenmimareba Collins KlobahÌý
  • Valerie is a Friend of Mine, Rocko Foltz
  • Within Sky Kissing God, Ayesha Raees
  • The Honey & Mercy Method and Other Prose Home Movies, Katie Jean Shinkle

The Subito Innovative Writing Contest is now closed for submissions.Ìý

Subito Innovative Writing Contest

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Contest Judge -- Rajiv Mohabir

Rajiv Mohabir stands in front of the ocean.
Poet, memoirist, and translator, Rajiv MohabirÌýis the author of five books of poetry that have been awarded gold in Forward Indies and Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur. His other honors include being finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/America Open Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and both second place and finalist for the Guyana Prize for Literature. His translations have won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets.
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