Bryan Washington, guest judge for our 2020 short story contest, is always on the lookout for stories displaying “a keen sense of place and a palpable intimacy.”
Dutch Simmons answers that call with “Solitary,” the first of four contest finalists we’ll publish throughout October. The place is a 9-by-6 cell in solitary confinement, “the prison within the prison,” and the intimacy comes via the first-person perspective of a man with nothing to do but pace and think during the day and sleep “on a metal slab, like a cadaver” at night, “guilt … my blanket.” —David Duhr, fiction editor
