Contest Judge Adam Lewis Schroeder wrote:

“How Mosquito Got His Name” by Gord Gr[i]senthwaite is a horror story—the first I’ve seen set on Haida Gwai—in which the reader is placed squarely and sickeningly within the victim’s head; the story’s honesty, humour and dignity leaves us wanting to be nowhere else.

Excerpt from “How Mosquito Got His Name:”

IMAGE: thumbnail of Prism International cover

Being eight years old seemed a lifetime ago. Then, I was short for my age. My grandmother said it wasn’t so much that I was short, but that I carried a man’s weight on a boy’s shoulders, and my bones were squished up tight like a new, squished together Slinky. In time she said, I would make my full height. She said that in time all men did.

He was drunk one night back then. He was drunk many nights, maybe even most nights, but this one night he looked at me like it was the first time he ever saw me. He said, “aren’t you the slinky I bought for my boy? Where’s your frog face and your frog behind? Did the little bastard break you already?”