The flash fiction contest for our March “Identity” issue was quite competitive and we will be including a number of these jewels in this issue as well as future issues. The winner is Dana Wall of Manhattan Beach, California, with “The Language of Limestone.” A mother, also a scientist, searches for her daughter, lost in the depths of a limestone cave where they have spent hours together mapping and researching. The cave is a shared space of curiosity and wonder, and on this particular night a discovery is made that illuminates the relationship between mother and daughter and affirms their commitment to each other and to science. Dana illustrates how identity is part inheritance and part choice and how beautiful it is when it is an inheritance of curiosity and wonder is passed on with joy. Beautiful imagery and engaging personal connection abound within 310 words–and that’s counting the title.
We note that the runner up was Julie Murdock’s “Lost and Found,” another uplifting piece with a lot of emotional connection.
We will have more about “The Language of Limestone” in Dana’s artist feature, coming out later this winter.
Dana Wall traded balance sheets for prose sheets after years of keeping Hollywood’s agents and lawyers in perfect order as Accounting Manager at ICM and CFO of Granderson Des Rochers. Armed with a Psychology degree that finally proved useful when creating complex characters and an MBA/CPA that helps her track plot points with spreadsheet precision, she ventured into the haunted halls of Goddard College’s MFA program.
Between snow squalls and ghost sightings in Vermont, she discovered that limestone caves make excellent metaphors for life’s darker passages. Her work in Bending Genres Journal and Mixed Tape Review, ‘The Day Time Got Hiccups’ and ‘The Memory Orchard’ confirms that words are more reliable than numbers, though occasionally harder to balance.
If you would like to pre-order “Identity,” you may do so at https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Congratulations, Dana!