2023 Best of the Net Nominations

Nomination season is already upon us, and it’s my pleasure again this year to present our exceptional candidates for the Best of the Net competition. It seems like it’s getting harder and harder each year to choose from the variety of spectacular pieces we publish, and I had a ridiculously hard time with fiction this time around. For whatever reason, the Best of the Net allows only two fiction nominees per journal, so I had to winnow down fifteen finalists to land on these two. As for poetry, I had six slots to fill and it was still heartbreaking to have to exclude so much of the prize-worthy verse we were lucky enough to feature in ’22 and ’23. And for the first time, this year we have two nominees in the art category.

As always, best of luck to the nominees, and a humble thank you to everyone who reads or contributes to The Disappointed Housewife. Dottie Corsair is eternally grateful!

FICTION

Moll (After Kincaid)—Richie Narvaez

We Are the Mice That Live in Your Basement—Sara Dobbie

POETRY

I Feel Like a Mosquito Taking on Godzilla—Ilari Pass

Two Poems—Laura Grace Weldon

Oddly Satisfying: a meditation— Mikaela Nyman

To My Daughter’s First Boyfriend—Kerry Trautman

when I was an EMT in the prison—Ron Riekki

You ask me to write a song & I tell you I’ll sleep on it—Victoria Nordlund

ART

Mixtape Stax 3—Oak Ayling