The judge of the 2024 Best in Rural Writing Contest, Dr. Chea Parton, just completed the difficult task of choosing 10 shortlisted entries.
This year’s contest received 126 submissions, nearly double that of 2023. Perhaps more impressive was the level of quality in the writing. Engaging, reflective and challenging prose came from all over the world to help lift up the rural voice. For that, those of us at The Milk House are grateful.
The shortlisted entries will be published on The Milk House throughout 2025.
Here’s the 2024 Best in Rural Writing shortlist, in no particular order.
Nonfiction
“A Labor of Love” by Brooks Lamb
Brooks Lamb is an author, advocate, and agrarian. His writings explore the themes of affection, care, closeness, and community, typically with a rural and agricultural bent. In addition to his writing, Brooks teaches a course at Rhodes College called “Agriculture, Society, and the Environment,” where he helps students envision a better future for food and farming. Beyond his writing and teaching, Brooks serves as the land protection and access specialist at American Farmland Trust. There and in previous roles, he has worked to support rural people and places on the local, state, and national levels. Brooks grew up on a small family farm in Marshall County, Tennessee, and remains an active caretaker of the place. He and his wife now live in Memphis. For more information, visit www.BrooksLamb.com.
“Haying Season” by Bill Conlogue
“Rebounders” by Don Stewart
“Milking Cows and Throwing Curves” by Randy Hisner
Randy Hisner is a semiretired public school teacher in Decatur, Indiana, where he still substitute teaches and coaches cross country at Bellmont High School. He also reports on high school sports for WZBD.com and umpires baseball. His freelance work has appeared in Coach & A.D. Magazine, Referee Magazine, and the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette.
Fiction
“The Birth” by Pearl Benjamin
“Flystrike” by Pearl Benjamin
Pearl Benjamin grew up raising sheep and beef cattle in MidCoast Maine. She studies creative writing at Middlebury College in Vermont and works part time at a local dairy farm. Pearl enjoys reading science fiction, making jewelry, and talking to animals like they’re humans.
“Bucolia” by Danielle Barr
Danielle Barr is a full-time mother of four children aged nine and under living in the rural Appalachian mountains. As a writer of short stories, she was named the winner of the annual Driftwood Press Short Story Contest. Her novels have been named to the shortlist in the Regal House Publishing Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction, the Unleash Press WIP Prize, and the Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration. She is currently querying her debut novel and is an avid cyclist, Arabic linguist, and college football fan.
“Blood Brother” by Jeremy Haworth
Originally from the seaside town of Bray, Jeremy now lives in Laois, the most landlocked county in Ireland. In 2017 he and his wife returned to the farmstead where she grew up, to begin the work of restoring a moribund walled garden. Since 2019, they have been serving people in the local community with a weekly share of the organic seasonal produce they grow in Charis Garden. In conjunction with Social Farming Ireland, the garden also serves as a space of welcome and support for those living with poor mental health or disability. Last year, Jeremy published his first book, a sequence of 90 haibun entitled Four Season Farm. Haibun is a Japanese-related form combining prose with haiku. Unique to Japan but practised worldwide, haiku is a verse-form that records a single, glowing moment. It is unrhymed, one-breath poetry. The interplay between the rhythm of prose and the meditative flash of haiku creates the unique dynamic of haibun. Apart from haibun and haiku, Jeremy also writes long-form poetry and short stories. In 2019 he won the Cuirt New Writing Prize. You can visit him at www.jeremyhaworth.com or on Instagram @jeremyhaworthwrites and @charisgardenlaois.
“Johnny’s Coming” by Gwyl Weatherford
Gwyl Weatherford grew up in a small San Joaquin Valley town and much of his writing has its roots from that part of California. His short stories have been featured in Living Springs, Evening Street Press, Five South, Aethlon and others. In 2014 he wrote and directed the feature film, Underclassmen (IMDb). He lives on the Golden State’s Central Coast.
“Agata and the Mice” by Peyton Ellas
Peyton Ellas writes from the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Their work has appeared in Pilgrimage Press, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Fragmented Voices’ Heart/home summer anthology, FiftyWordStories, Streetcake Magazine, Gihon River Review, OnTheBus, and elsewhere. They write gardening features for local news media and is the author of Gardening with California Native Plants: Inland, Foothill, and Central Valley Gardens.