Celeste McMaster - Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest 2016

Best

S hort S tories

from

The Saturday Evening Post

Great AmericanFiction Contest

2016

Edited with a preface
by Steven Slon
Editorial Director and Associate Publisher, The SaturdayEvening Post

Series Editor, Patrick Perry
Executive Editor, The Saturday Evening Post

Other Anthologies in the Best Short Stories Series:

BestShort Stories from The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest2015

BestShort Stories from The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest2014

BestShort Stories from The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest2013

Copyright 2015The Saturday Evening Post Society. All rights reserved.

No part of this publicationmay be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic ormechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage andretrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in theUnited States by The Saturday Evening Post Society, 1100 Waterway Boulevard,Indianapolis, IN 46202

saturdayeveningpost.com

This book is awork of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events,and incidents are the product of the authors imaginations or are usedfictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events orlocales, is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Introduction

Winner

Runners-Up

Honorable Mention

Preface

There is no greater agony than bearing an untoldstory inside you.
MayaAngelou

The Saturday Evening Post has always beenknown for its wonderful fiction, having published such legendary authors as RayBradbury, Agatha Christie, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar AllanPoe, J.D. Salinger, and Kurt Vonnegut. It is in this grand tradition that thePost presents this years finalists selected from more than 330 thatwere entered in our fourth annual Great American Fiction Contest.

In this e-book, youll find 31 stories from our talentedroster of finalists and semi-finalists, plus, of course our winning story,Zelda, Burning, by Celeste McMaster, which ran in the January/February 2016issue of the Post. Its an imagined account of Zelda Fitzgeralds last days ina mental hospital and her troubled romance with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Zelda Burning is McMasters first piece to be publishedin a national magazine, a fact that fills us with pride at the Post, as we arededicated to discovering the best emerging writers of the modern age. Toauthors just tuning in, we encourage you to participate in next years contest.Guidelines for the competition are posted at saturdayeveningpost.com/fiction-contest.

Id like to thank Joan SerVaas, our publisher, withoutwhose commitment to writing and to the arts this project would not have beenpossible. I also thank the entire Saturday Evening Post staff for their hardwork and dedication. And a special thanks goes to our judges, including pastwinners Lucy Bledsoe, Linda Davis, and N. West Moss, as well as other editorsand literary friends of the Post, Amanda Bixler, Peter Bloch, Ed Dwyer, WilliamJeanes, Michael Knight, Holly Miller, Patrick Perry, Estelle Slon, and JesikaSt Clair.

Steven Slon
Associate Publisher and Editorial Director

Introduction

The Collaborative Nature of Encouragement

By N. West Moss

The Saturday Evening Post has been in publicationsince 1728, before America was officially a nation. Through the decades, the Posthas given home to the American writer. No one has been more stalwart, formore years, than the Post has been, publishing many of Americasgreatest authors Edgar Allen Poe, William Faulkner, J. D. Salinger,Jack London, Zora Neale Hurston, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Tyler, Agatha Christie, F.Scott Fitzgerald, among so many others.

In truth, the Post helped shape our rich literaryheritage.

As a writer, I see how much this can mean to otherwriters, that there is a place, a flagship even, where the hard, lonely work ofwriting is celebrated, supported, and promoted.

Last year, my short story Omeers Mangoes won the PostsGreat American Fiction Contest. You may ask, what does that do for a writer,winning a contest? It doesnt make a writer instantly rich or famous, althoughyou do win some money, and my story was read by more people than any other Idwritten. That was understandably gratifying. But the real gift of a prestigiousaward goes beyond the tangible.

We writers toil away in private, trying to maintain thefaith required that the stories we nurse to completion are worthwhile. Thewriting life requires large doses of faith over long periods of time. The firststory I ever published was sent to over 50 magazines before it found a home.There were countless moments when I considered giving up.

The biggest benefit I received when I won this award lastyear was the inestimable gift of encouragement from an institution I have heldin such high esteem since I learned to read. Being published in the Postspages made me feel that I was part of our cultural legacy, part of the club,that included Hurston and Faulkner and Poe, that the editors and judges sawpromise in me, and sought to do what they could do to keep me writing. Theirfaith paid off. I have continued to write and I dont plan on stopping. Morethan an honor, the award has helped me to believe that I am a writer,and that is the greatest gift of all.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote for the Post before hewas a novelist. Years later, he recalledhis excitement at the news the magazine accepted his work, Id like toget that thrill again, but I suppose its only once in a lifetime. Just likeme, he couldnt believe his good luck. Happily for Fitzgerald, and for us, the Postcontinued to support his work, paying him well enough that he could supporthimself on his writing. It is not impossible to consider that, without itssupport, Fitzgerald might not have had the wherewithal to do much of his laterwriting, including The Great Gatsby. Part of the Posts charterremains to seek out and discover emerging writers of the 21st century. Inthis way, institutions like this magazine, and readers like you, collaboratewith and support artists. Without you, where would writers find themselves?

It is fitting that the winner of this years GreatAmerican Fiction Contest, Celeste McMaster, chose Zelda Fitzgerald, the museand wife of F. Scott, as the subject for her award-winning short story Zelda,Burning, where readers are pulled into the imagined, but plausible, workingsof a troubled mind. Even though Zelda is confused, she is often confused inways that are touchingly familiar. How did she get old, she wonders. Where doher fictions begin and truths end? Dont even robust minds ask these questions?The lines between well and troubled, the past and the present, sane and insane,can be blurred and indistinct. It is Zeldas spark of humanity, believable andrelatable throughout that makes the story so successful.

With this years winner and the honorable mentions tofollow, the long line of American writers marches forward. In the winningstory, Zelda says to herself, Scott will never die, She is right, thanks tothe writers who do not give up, to readers who keep reading, and topublications like The Saturday Evening Post that continue to search forand publish the best fiction our nation has to offer.

Winner

Zelda, Burning

By Celeste McMaster

H ow is it that shes come to this? From flapper tofrump, sitting here in an oversized sweater, the color of cerulean blue, herhair a frowsy tangle though just now she doesnt care about that.Theres sun in her chest thats pushing out through her limbs. Shes still.Warm.

She knows this place,this white windowless office, is not where she belongs. But shes not surewhere it is that she does.