Judge's Comments
Not surprisingly, coming-of-age stories dominated the submissions to the Middlebury fiction contest, and many of them were quite strong and moving. Of all these, "The Girl in the Hat," though a simple story, was most resonant. In it, a boy notices a girl and knows that if she notices him back, his life will be made. It's such an accessible sentiment, so full of longing and hope, that the reader is carried along with it. The boy's feelings become the reader's feelings, and the emotional weight of the story spreads and gathers strength. In addition to its poignant moments, the story has some lovely descriptions, places where the emotions embedded in the work find their true expression. This is also true of the very strong runner-up story, "A Man's Lesson," in which a boy's self-flaggellating desire for an older girl is felt not only by him, but by his little sister, who wishes—hope against hope—nothing less than his untortured happiness.
— Sue Halpern
About the Judge
Sue Halpern is the author of Migrations to Solitude,Four Wings and a Prayer, and The Book of Hard Things. Her latest novel, Introducing Sasha Abramowitz, will be published this fall. A scholar-in-residence at Middlebury, Halpern's work has appeared inGranta,the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Rolling Stone,Orion, and Mother Jones.