Winners of our FREE monthly 53-Word Story Contest

Each month we offer a prompt to subscribers of Prime Number Magazine to write a 53-word story—no more, no less—and send it to us by the fifteenth day of the month. Our judges select one winning story, and the author receives a book from Press 53 as well as publication in Prime Number Magazine. Want to play along? Subscribe to Prime Number Magazine for free and we’ll send you the prompt on the first day of each month.

Below, read our winners:

October: David Meyer / November: Jean-Luke Swanepoel / December: Jo Mularczyk

Bougainville Tsukimi, 1944

Balanced cross-legged at the intersection of adze-shaped ridges between makeshift rice paddies, the last three soldiers raise coconut cups with reed-thin arms—“Kanpai!”—then slurp the dregs of rice and taro, fermented quickly, with neither hope nor filtration.  Canisters of industrially brewed diesel and palm oil explode around them, outshining the full moon.

~ ~ ~

David Meyer is a mathematician and physicist who has been teaching his daughter algebra while sheltering at home. Trying to compensate for the limitations of online schooling, that has expanded to writing poetry and bicycling with her. Crafting prime number-length stories together is a natural synthesis of at least the first two activities.

Buy a Donkey

The last thing the self-help presenter had said was buy a donkey. So Irma bought a donkey. The presenter, being South African, had in fact said baie dankie, Afrikaans for “thank you very much,” but Irma found the donkey to be an excellent listener, and urged her friends to buy donkeys as well.

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Jean-Luke Swanepoel was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and immigrated to California with his parents and younger brother in 2005. Much of his writing is influenced by his memories of South Africa, and he returns there for a visit every year. He is the author of The Thing About Alice, published in 2020.

The Signs

 A woman’s scream rent the air.

“The lake is boiling!”

“Father these portents warn me not to marry,” Helena entreated. Her betrothed was old and cruel.

“Nonsense daughter.”

A bird fell beside them, dead.

“By the Gods, Father, read the signs!”

“Enough! Today I give you to the richest man in all Pompeii.”

~ ~ ~

Jo Mularczyk’s stories and poems appear in magazines, anthologies, and online in Australia, US, and UK. She won the 2020 Mayoral Creative Writing Prize. Jo shares the joy of writing through workshops, student mentoring, and co-authoring with Littlescribe, www.littlescribe.com. She lives in Australia with her husband and three children. Follow @ www.facebook.com/jo.mularczyk.author, www.instagram.com/jo_mularczyk_authorpage/