2023-2024 Nine Muses Review Prose Contest Winners

Brett Ann Stanciu is the author of Unstitched: My Journey to Understand Opioid Addiction (Steerforth Press, 2021). A recipient of a 2020 Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant, her essays and fiction have appeared in The Rumpus, Memoir Monday, 101 Word Story, Vermont Almanac, Taproot, Vermont Literary Review, and Green Mountain Review, among other publications. Her novel Hidden View (Green Writers Press, 2015) portrays the challenges of a hardscrabble family farm. She lives in Hardwick, Vermont, in a 100-year-old house surrounded by lilacs and blogs at stonysoilvermont.com.

Ray Hoo is a 20-year-old creator from Singapore who is fond of exploring literary transcendence through a refreshing mix of both intellectual and emotional inspiration. The co-owner of creative and copywriting brand TheGildedRaven has grand plans to publish a speculative poetry book and a novel in the next five years, on top of starting up a literary magazine for the bizarre and the wonderful. Their brutally vulnerable and evocative pieces offer no shortage of emotional complexity, and they are not afraid to play with visceral images and crazy concepts to bring the worlds in their head to life. They write to haunt, to provoke, to inspire. A full-time demon and a dedicated experimental poet, you can always expect them to be overdressed for any occasion while indulging in a hot drink and a good book. Similarly, you can expect them to be hunched over the drawing board, peering out at the world from behind a camera, or whipping up something new in the kitchen. You may find more of their works at @thericedemon on Instagram, as well as publications such as Queer Gaze Magazine and Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine.