“Monsters We Made” Finalists

by Rebecca Paredes

Editor’s Note

For our very first challenge, “Monsters We Made,” we asked writers to send us work that responds to what we doomscroll through. These pieces made us pause and consider the forces shaping us, reexamine how we engage with technology and culture, and reflect on how we are both victims of the monsters within our global society and participants in perpetuating them. Congratulations to our inaugural finalists, and keep your eyes peeled for their published pieces at the end of November!

First place

“Garry Learnt How to Be a Man Off the Internet” by Rhys L’Hermite

Second place

“Feed” by Celeste Amidon

Third place

“Aswangs Wear Barong Tagalog” by Tresia Traqueña

Rebecca Paredes

Rebecca Paredes is a writer from Lake Elsinore, California, where the IHOP is located next to the graveyard. She is an alumna of PEN America’s Emerging Voices Workshop LA. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Epiphany Magazine, Barren Magazine, Hunger Mountain Review, and other publications. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Texas Tech University and is currently working on a novel inspired by her hometown.

“Monsters We Made” Finalists

First place

Second place

Third place

Rebecca Paredes

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