RUNNR RESIDENCY CHALLENGE WINNER
"Sandia is Spanish for Watermelon" by Joel Tomfohr
The RUNNR Residency Challenge explored the aesthetic shiver—that physical chill you get when a piece of music or writing speaks into you, causing the reading mind and the feeling body to vibrate as if strung on the same thread.
How, you might ask, does writing do this?
Blake and I invited writing that sought to capture that sensation—and the submissions glowed with insight. Shocking in their twists and surprising in their imagery, these pieces offered thrilling investigations into the shiver of attention we crave as readers.
Thank you all for your submissions. I hope to return to this idea in future issue challenges.
Congratulations to the winner of the first RUNNR Residency Challenge, Joel Tomfohr, and to the shortlisted pieces:
“Watchers” by Alivia Varvel (Fiction)
“Never Mind the Betel Booth” by Shantell Powell (Flash/Hybrid)
“Sandia is Spanish for Watermelon” by Joel Tomfohr will be publishing on RUNNR this weekend alongside an interview with the author.
RUNNR is open to general submissions. If you’d like your work to be considered for publication in our magazine, click the link here to submit! Subscribe below to not miss any of our posts!
“Sandia is Spanish for Watermelon” by Joel Tomfohr
Immediately, this piece grabbed our attention:
“And we are sitting on a hillside at the top of Mountain View Cemetery at sunset.”
How can you not be curious what happens next?
Often, gooseflesh comes through a gradual build—an intensifying sense of something coming—before it flares suddenly into a flash of feeling or image. Picture the slow awe of looking out over ‘the lights of the desert city flickering like electric candles.’" Consider, for instance, how wonder might arise from ‘the primate brain where love and fear live’—and more—in this remarkable piece publishing this weekend.
Joel Tomfohr is a writer living in the Bay Area. He is the author of the chapbook, A Blue Hour (Bottlecap Press). His short stories can be found in Bright Flash, Short Beasts, Bending Genres, Joyland, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, X-R-A-Y, BULL, Hobart, and others. You can find him online at joeltomfohr.com and on Instagram at thesword1979.