Ted Hayden wins the 2021 Innovative Short Fiction Contest!

Elle Nash has chosen Ted Hayden’s “The Sky Saw” us as the 2021 Innovative Short Fiction Contest winner! Ted’s piece will be published in The Conium Review: Vol. 10. He’ll also receive $500, contributor copies, and a copy of Elle Nash’s latest book, Nudes.

Ted Hayden‘s stories have appeared in literary publications including “Newfound Journal” and genre publications including “Nature: Futures.” Read more of his work at tedhaydenstories.com.

This year’s finalists were Alexandra Blogier, Aimee Herman, Kaleena Madruga, Jerome Newson, K. W. Oxnard, and Pascale Potvin.

Here’s what the contest judge had to say about Ted’s winning story:

“‘The Sky Saw Us’ moves cinematically between two narrators at once. The story follows Cassie and Arturo through a new kind of apocalypse: one in which our worst selves are reflected back to us, quite literally, through a new sky full of mirrors. Humans become their own enemies. What is most tense about the story, however, is the relationship between love and loss, friendship and desire, and the blurred lines between our person who strangely becomes infected by the falling sky and what this infection contains within: all the moments that make up a life, how we relate to each other. In ‘The Sky Saw Us,’ all the loss of one’s life becomes stored inside the body, where one reflects on it forever.”

–Elle Nash, contest judge & author of Nudes