The ECA for MacQ’s debut issue was selected from a list of ten finalists, which in turn were chosen from more than a hundred works that appeared in the issue. Because I kept returning to this poem and this painting—both of which resonated exquisitely for me—I was unable to choose between them. Instead, I declared a tie:

⚡ Waking Alone After Drinking Too Much Wine in Umbria [poem after Li Po] by Rick Mulkey

⚡ Reclining Nude on Sofa: Tribute to Amedeo Modigliani [mixed-media, life-size figurative painting] by J.R. Lancaster

And here are the other eight finalist faves, listed in alpha order by author’s last name:

⚡ On the Beach With Linda [flash fiction] by Olivia Dalessandro

⚡ Hormonal [micro-fiction] by Kika Dorsey

⚡ Another Bad Year for Florida Man [poem] by Gary Glauber

⚡ Figment [prose poem, ekphrastic] by Lorette C. Luzajic

⚡ It’s a Hard Art, Living [lyric memoir] by Pamela Johnson Parker

⚡ The Magic Boomerang [lineated haibun] by Lew Watts

⚡ Post inferno [haibun, climate crisis] by Tony Steven Williams

⚡ Untitled (2019) [prose poem, climate crisis] by Paul-Victor Winters

The inaugural ECA, Earth Hymn by Bianca Glinskas, appears in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019).