I’m honored that my story “The Pioneer” won the fiction prize in the Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival Contest (Agnes Scott College). It was selected as a finalist by the incredible novelist Jen Beagin, and then selected as the winner by former US poet laureate/Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove and award-winning playwright-librettist Jacqueline Goldfinger. Which is just insane.

I’m so thrilled about this, particularly as the story has been printed in the Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival Magazine alongside some of my dearest writer friends, including Paul Cunningham, Nate Dixon, Zack Anderson, Hannah V Warren, and Emma Catherine Perry.

“The Pioneer” is a very gay story about a secret love affair between an astronaut and a cosmonaut on the ISS, and I wrote it as a sort of homage to Jim Shepard’s classic short story “Love and Hydrogen.”

I’m especially thrilled because “The Pioneer” is a standalone chapter from my novel-in-progress, titled The Pioneers, and it’s such a nice acknowledgement that my book is on the right track.

If you have a few minutes, I’d love it if you read the story, which is here: http://writersfestival.magazines.agnesscott.org/fiction/the-pioneer/