After much deliberation, Engen Books is proud to announce the winner of the May 2020 Kit Sora Flash Fiction Photography Contest: Melissa Bishop with the story, Brightest & Best!
Born and raised in the St. John’s /Mount Pearl area, Melissa Bishop is a newcomer to the genre fiction scene in Atlantic Canada whose fantastic prose has taken the provinces community by storm. Her work has won two Kit Sora awards prior to this: in 2019: July 2019 ‘Cycles’ and September 2019 ‘Huntress of the Woods,’ and has placed numerous other times.
Bishop describes herself as a loyal Tolkien fan and high school teacher, teaching at the same high school she attended in her youth. She started writing when she was very young and honed her skills in High School, when she started a pen pal friendship that has lasted for over 17 years, writing stories back and forth to each other.
She was published in Pulp Science-Fiction from the Rock with her her short story ‘The Photograph.’
We had three judges for this contest:
Matthew LeDrew has written twenty novels for Engen Books, Black Womb, Transformations in Pain, Smoke and Mirrors, Roulette, Ghosts of the Past, Ignorance is Bliss, Becoming, Inner Child, Gang War, Chains, The Long Road, Cinders, Sinister Intent, Faith, Family Values, Touch Your Nose, Jacobi Street, Infinity, The Tourniquet Reprisal and Exodus of Angels.
Kaleigh Middelkoop is a photographer who primarily uses self portraiture as a means to tell stories and express ideas with the aid of costumes and props she makes by hand. Heavily influenced by fairy tales and the slightly strange, her work has surreal and magical elements woven throughout. Kaleigh is a featured artist at Bellazo in downtown Wabash, IN as well as Ocean View Art Gallery in Carbonear, NL.
Kit Sora Photography. Kit Sora is an artist and photographer from St. Johns, Newfoundland. Her photography draws inspiration from fantasy, dystopia, and thrillers to create evocative imagrey that startles, inspires, and excites.Kit signed with Engen Books in 2018 as head photographer, producing the thrilling image for Chillers from the Rock and re-imagining the covers to the entire Black Womb series into the Coral Beach Casefiles series. Drew Power is a currently seated member of the Sci-Fi on the Rock committee. He was recently featured as the model on the cover of the bestselling collection Chillers from the Rock.
Runners up include Mortal Love by Jennifer Shelby, and Experimenter by Teigen Bond.
The Flash Fiction Photography Contest is sponsored in part by FictionFirst Used Books, which specializes in previously enjoyed Sci-fi & Fantasy Novels, Roleplaying Manuals and Graphic Novels. It is run out of the Annapolis Valley and open by appointment only. Their inventory is currently over 5000 titled strong and they ship within Canada, USA and Europe. You can find them on Facebook, here.
The winning entry will be featured on this website as well as on the Fantasy Files newsletter (click to join!). Both runner-up entries will also be featured.