Phyllis Grant Zellmer Prize for Fiction 2025
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
May 19, 2025
West Trade Review is happy to announce the results of the fourth annual Phyllis Grant Zellmer Prize for Fiction.
Congratulations to each of the writers!
GRAND PRIZE ($1000 & publication in the spring 2025 print edition): "A House Built Out of Color" by Vincent Perrone
"The narrator of this story is my hero. She is the sort of person we all hope we are or will be, even as we are very afraid to become her, which is to say, aged, infirm, improper, trapped in a care facility and subject to rules that would be overkill with respect to a toddler, a woman, a former wife. This said, this protagonist has a bold inner life, she has reflection, and it is the genius of this tale to so adroitly calibrate tools for the quantification of this mild but undeniable vibrancy. The tools are exact. The reading they give is beyond measure..” --Lucy Ives, Contest Judge
Look for Vincent's story in the Spring 2026 print edition of West Trade Review.
Vincent Perrone is a writer from Detroit. He’s the author of the poetry collection, Starving Romantic, and a contributor to the experimental fiction anthology, Collected Voices in the Expanded Field. His recent and forthcoming work can be found in Split Lip, The Los Angeles Review, Wigleaf, and Pithead Chapel. Vincent is currently based in Charlottesville, VA, where he is pursuing an MFA at the University of Virginia. He reads for Meridian and Conduit and is a member-owner of the co-op bookstore, Book Suey.
Honorable Mention: "Migration Patterns" by Frankie Concepcion
“This lucidly and beautifully told narrative of the forms hope takes in the face of climate change is also—so cleverly—a tale about relating to your mother through online dating. Although its surface is calm, oceanic distances hang below. Here is a graceful and philosophical response to the strange nature of fate in our time. ”
--Lucy Ives, Contest Judge
Frankie Concepcion is a writer from the Philippines living in Massachusetts. She is a graduate of the M.F.A. at Arizona State University, where she served as Managing Editor for Hayden's Ferry Review. A 2024-25 Tin House Reading Fellow, she has received additional fellowships from Tin House, Sibling Rivalry Press and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and her writing has been published in Barzakh, StoryQuarterly, Joyland, HYPHEN, and more. Her short story chapbook "Aftermath" was published in 2022 by Bottlecap Press, and she is the winner of The Good Life Review's 2024 Honey Bee Prize.
Honorable Mention: "Burial Home" by Hunter A. Allund
“An unflinching portrait of the magnetic nature of grief, this story dances with the unbearable. Surreal in the best way, vivid, and bracing, it teaches the strategies necessary to life’s most unexpected outcome, survival..” --Lucy Ives, Contest Judge
Hunter A. Allund is an MFA candidate in fiction at Brown University. They currently write, paint, and live in Providence RI with their partner, two cats, and an imaginary greyhound named Gauss.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Contest Judge: Lucy Ives
Lucy Ives is the author of Life Is Everywhere: A Novel and, most recently, An Image of My Name Enters America: Essays, both published by Graywolf Press. Her writing has appeared in Aperture, Artforum, Harper's, The Paris Review, and Vogue. She teaches at Brown University.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
© 2025 Iron Oak Editions
Stay Connected to Our Literary Community. Subscribe to Our Newsletter
