Announcing the Winners of The Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction

Gertrude Stein Award

Eckleburg is pleased to announce the Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction winners. Thank you to all the talented writers who submitted and their incredible patience as we, our families and literary community recovered from the COVID pandemic. It is always a difficult task choosing among so many fine stories and it is truly the talents within our Eckleburg community that often kept us going. Much love to all. We look forward to reading more from you.

First Place Winner of The Gertrude Stein Award
“Frittura” by Judith Goode

Second Place
“Little Sister” by Jarrett Kaufman

Third Place
“The Angle of Desire” by Jason Harris

Honorable mention
“Next Stop” by Daren Schuettpelz

The Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction is open to submissions of all stories in English no more than 8,000 words. No minimum word count. Stories may be submitted by authors, editors, publishers and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Award-winning manuscripts will be published by Eckleburg. Honorable Mentions will be listed with titles and author names. 

Charlotte Sometimes

April Vázquez

As a teenager, my favorite band was The Cure. This was pre-Radiohead, pre-Editors, before bands—even alternative bands—tended to be literary. Yet The Cure turned out songs like “Killing an Arab,” based on The Stranger by Albert Camus, and “How Beautiful You Are,” an echo of Charles Baudelaire’s essay “The Eyes of the Poor” (both facts that I discovered, in those dark ages before Google, when I fortuitously—serendipitously?—stumbled upon the originals… one in a borrowed book that I came this close to not taking home with me). In that arid early-90s musical landscape, The Cure was an exception in more ways than one (the Smiths were another, but Morrissey has gone so far off the deep end with his white nationalism these days that I find it hard to listen to his music). I remember, during those years, several vivid dreams featuring the band’s teased-haired, heavily made-up vocalist Robert Smith, including one in which he appeared at my Shelby, North Carolina home to take me away with him. April Vázquez

(Sigh.)

I mention the The Cure because the title of one of their songs—“Charlotte Sometimes”—afterward became a kind of euphemistic shorthand with which I would refer to the period of months I spent at two different mental institutions during the fifteenth year of my life. My parents, at their collective wits’ end with my depression, self-harm, and runaway attempts, had decided to “send me off,” as it was referred to in the common parlance of my hometown of Shelby, North Carolina. (In retrospect, I have to say that I think my depression was justified; a close friend had recently been left paralyzed by a stupid, completely avoidable accident, and my reading of a college environmental studies textbook had convinced me not only that the adults running the show were doing a shit job of it but that the entire planet was in imminent danger, both of which have turned out to be all too true.) April Vázquez

The lyrics to “Charlotte Sometimes” fit the circumstances of my internment with an eerie similarity. The hospitals were both located in Charlotte, and my stays there were intermittent, first one, then another, over a period of months. The song describes a girl who lies in bed, eyes open, in a city in which the streets look strange. It mentions the “expressionless games” that the people (nurses? psychiatrists?) around her play. There are many of these strangers—they have “many different names”—and they’re too close to her; they crowd in on her. The song describes the wall around the girl, “glass-sealed,” and refers to unfamiliar sounds and lights (industrial, fluorescent?) that seem too bright and glare off of the (hospital’s?) white walls. April Vázquez

There’s a line in the song about the girl preparing herself for bed, which stands out because, one night as I lay in bed, eyes open and not yet asleep, one of the counselors came into my room to “tuck me in” and rubbed his hand from my cheek down my neck to my chest, where he got a good feel before finally bidding me good night. April Vázquez

I spent the next day nervous and uneasy. I suspected that Jamal, the counselor, would come back into my room that night, and that his groping might escalate into something more. Finally, in the evening, I made what I thought was a discreet inquiry: “Is Jamal working tonight?” When Nurse Radcliffe told me he was, I must have looked worried enough to prompt concern. “Why, April?” she asked gently, at which point I burst into tears. April Vázquez

I was a minor, away from home, and under the care of a group of adult healthcare professionals. Today I see clearly the potential for a lawsuit, just as the hospital’s administrators must have seen at the time. Jamal was phoned and told not to come in that night. Kids were questioned. It turned out that, although no one else accused him of sexual misconduct, he was well-known for making jokes and comments of an inappropriate, often sexual, nature. Jamal was fired, I was apologized to, and my parents were called in, presumably to head off any thoughts of litigation. April Vázquez

The administrators needn’t have worried. The only anger my parents expressed—privately, in my room, after a meeting with several hospital bigwigs in tailored suits—was with me. They were miffed at having to drive all the way to Charlotte on a weeknight for what they viewed as a tempest in a teapot, and my mother blamed me for provoking the incident. “You must have done something,” she concluded peremptorily, “to make him think you wanted it.” April Vázquez

When I look back on Charlotte Sometimes, I’m surprised how vivid my memories of that time are. I can still taste the spicy Blistex handed out to soothe the effects of the canned heat, and see the city’s rosy morning skyline as it was framed by the window of my room. It was a welcome revelation to encounter doctors and counselors who blamed my parents for most of my problems, who told them to stop making me sleep in the bed with my nine-year-old brother or capitulate to his other demands. Forced to eat a healthy diet for several months, I realized that I felt better. When my period came, for the first time in my life, it wasn’t heralded by gut-wrenching cramps. One of the counselors, a dark-haired young man named David who wore cloth shoes, told me that I should go vegetarian. “You’re too compassionate a person to eat meat,” he said with a smile. April Vázquez

He was right. A month after I was discharged from the second hospital, I dropped all meat from my diet. For twenty-eight years, I’ve eaten considerably more vegetables than typically figure in the American diet. At 40, a doctor told me, “You’re healthier than a lot of people half your age.” My only regret is that I never got to tell David what a difference he made in my life.

There was another benefit to my Girl, Interrupted interlude. Though I had always been a voracious reader, in the first hospital I was exposed to a new kind of literature, writing so fresh and exciting that, I’m ashamed to say, I tore several pages out of a literary anthology—including poems by Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, Ted Berrigan, and Sylvia Plath—to take with me when I left. Like the Velvet Underground’s Janie, whose life was saved by rock and roll, in a very real sense, my life was saved by literature. That delicious tome and others I found in the seventh-floor library offered me a glimpse of a new world, one in which I would immerse myself just a few years later, when I majored in literature at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

When my parents “sent me off,” I don’t think they expected to be blamed for my problems. They resented my talking about my home life to doctors and counselors, “telling their secrets,” as they saw it, and they retaliated by declaring that they’d spent enough and wouldn’t be shelling out a penny for my education. The last time I saw her, twenty-eight years after Charlotte Sometimes, my mother was still complaining about what my stint in the hospitals had cost them. But somehow, Fate paved the way for me. I got a full scholarship to college, a Master’s degree paid for by my employer, and today I’m a PhD student at one of the top ten public universities in the country, again on a full scholarship. I haven’t spoken with my parents in years, but it’s okay. I’ve made it without them.

Today, I see my time in Charlotte as one of the best things that ever happened to me. As “a woman standing where there was only a girl” (to come back to the The Cure), I see Charlotte Sometimes as formative in my life, a turning point. Those months “off” taught me that the world was bigger than my parents’ house, bigger than the town of Shelby, broader and grander and more interesting than anything I’d yet seen. As Robert Smith would say, “the party just gets better and better.”

ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB | The Empathy Academy by Dustin Grinnell

In 2032, biotech entrepreneur Sonja Woodward has created a genetic test that can identify a predisposition in teenagers for unethical behavior before they reach adulthood. Those who test positive are sent to Woodward Academy on Nantucket Island. Montgomery Hughes, a high school senior, is among the first students sent to the school.

But Monty is there under false pretenses. He switched his test result with another student’s and is using an alias to hide his identity. Haunted by his disgraced father’s scandal, Monty is convinced he’s a bad seed. At Woodward, Monty discovers a dark side to Sonja’s ethics-intervention school. Students who don’t respond are treated in a secret lab with a technology that alters genes associated with empathy: the equivalent of a high-tech lobotomy. When Monty’s identity is revealed, Sonja’s gene-editing “cure” offers her the perfect opportunity for punishment—and Monty is scheduled for treatment.

The Empathy Academy by Dustin Grinnell is a high-concept philosophical novel that explores the science and perils of using genetic technology to predict and enhance complex human behavior.


What People Are Saying about The Empathy Academy

“The Empathy Academy is a thought-provoking thriller that balances action and contemplation. It prompts readers to ponder larger questions even beyond nature versus nurture: What does it mean to be a good person? How should we deal with the faults in ourselves and others? Should we stop loving people if they do bad things? Dustin widens the lens on these topics by including references to related books and psychological experiments. This story’s action-packed plot will keep readers guessing, and the energy it infuses into the deep questions at its core will keep them thinking.” — BOOKLIFE

“While sci-fi readers interested in thriller atmospheres will be the most likely audience for The Empathy Academy, it’s also highly recommended as a discussion piece for philosophy students interested in moral and ethical dilemmas. Placing it on the reading lists of such an audience will assure that its message, couched in strong adventure descriptions and ethical probes, will translate to thought-provoking debates and classroom discussions as students absorb a more contemplative message than the usual sci-fi read offers.” — D. DONOVAN, SENIOR REVIEWER, MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

“The Empathy Academy by Dustin Grinnell is filled with thought-provoking ideas. In the continual search for right and wrong, this book reveals the difficult grey areas that are the hardest to avoid. With relatable characters and a writing style that makes it easy to dive straight in, this book is a must-read. This story is definitely suited for younger readers who find themselves questioning life in general as well as their own path to follow. The more experienced readers who have an interest in science and philosophy will also find this book intriguing. There are quite a few solid ideas regarding sorting our feelings and emotions that I would try myself. I also found the entire storyline quite relevant to our current global situation regarding medicine intended to help us, which really harms us more.”
— RONÉL STEYN FOR READERS' FAVORITE


Publisher’s Information

  • PUBLISHER: Atmosphere Press
  • ISBN: 978-1639882205
  • DIMENSIONS: 5.25 x 8
  • PAGES: 246]
  • PRICE: $17.99
  • RELEASE DATE: 02/05/2022
  • PURCHASE HERE

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    About Dustin Grinnell

    Dustin Grinnell is a writer based in Boston. His creative nonfiction and fiction combines medicine and the humanities and has appeared in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Perspectives in Biology & Medicine, New Scientist, Hektoen International, Ars Medica, The Awakenings Review, Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine, and Tendon: A Medical Humanities Creative Journal. His two novels, The Genius Dilemma and Without Limits, were self-published in 2013 and 2015. His sci-fi thriller, The Empathy Academy, is forthcoming with Atmosphere Press. He has MFA in fiction from Lasell University, and an MS in physiology from Penn State. He’s a full-time copywriter for Bose Corporation.


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