This year's Extra Fiction contest was very close, we had many great submissions. 
The judge Ernest Hogan has chosen the winners from the five finalists:

1st place:
"Attack of Las Quetas" by Toni Margarita Plummer 

2nd place:
"Beast of Cabo Rojo" by Arnaldo Lopez Jr. 

3rd place:
"Sacred Evolution" by Carmen Baca

Honorary Mentions:
"la guadaña amorosa" by Samir Sirk Morató
"I Migrated to the US to Escape a Demon" by Javier Loustaunau

Thanks to everyone who submitted and to those who shared the announcement. The editors and judge loved reading these stories and hope to encourage all to write and submit their stories, extra fiction or otherwise. 

Stay tuned for the publication of the finalist stories here on Somos en escrito. 

…and happy Halloween from Somos en escrito.

​Somos en escrito is pleased that the first two books from our press are ILBA finalists! Theorizing César Chávez is a finalist in the category "Victor Villaseñor Latino Focused Nonfiction Book – English" and Insurgent Aztlán is a finalist in the category "Best Political/Current Affairs Book – English." 

Congratulations to other finalists who have appeared in Somos en escrito, Alvaro Huerta, Eduardo Cabrera, Sergio Troncoso, and Juan Alvarado Valdivia.

​See more at the International Latino Book Awards site.
Click here for the full list of finalists.

Theorizing César Chávez: New Ways of Knowing STEM presents a new paradigm for examining and analyzing science through an understanding of César Chávez’s values and beliefs, theorizing the application of his innovative thinking to STEM, particularly to address its state in U.S. education today. Author Armando A. Arias ("Dr. Sonny Boy") forges connections between the arts, humanities, social and behavioral and hard sciences, using science friction, including his own visionary travails, to create a presence in the absence of César Chávez. 

​Learn more and get a copy here.

Best Latino Focused Fiction Book – English or Bilingual

Cabañuelas: A novel, Norma Elia Cantú; University of New Mexico Press; Mexico/Xicana; San Antonio, TX
Click here to read an excerpt of Cabañuelas. 


Best Play or Collection of Plays

Teatro de inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos, Eduardo Cabrera; Argentina; Chicago
Click here to read an excerpt of another book by Eduardo Carbrera.


Best Collection of Short Stories – English or Bilingual

A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, Sergio Troncoso; Cinco Puntos Press; U.S. Mexican American; New York

Ballad of a Slopsucker: Stories, Juan Alvarado Valdivia; University of New Mexico Press; Mexico/Peruano; San Francisco
Click here to read an excerpt of Ballad of a Slopsucker.


Best Political/Current Affairs Book – English
​
Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities, Alvaro Huerta, Hamilton Books; Lanham
Click here to read an excerpt of Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities.

We had many great entries and loved reading and discussing them all.  Thanks to the judge, Ernest Hogan, mutante recombo latinoid father of Chicano Sci-fi and author of Smoking Mirror Blues and High Aztech. 

The winner receives $100 and all finalists receive a signed book by Ernest Hogan.  The Writer of Promise receives feedback and mentoring from Rudy Ch. Garcia, winner of the Extra Fiction contest in 2018 and author of The Closet of Discarded Dreams. Stay tuned for the winners' stories on Somos en escrito. 

​Somos en escrito Magazine is proud to announce today, Halloween 2018, the winners of the first annual Extra-Fiction Writing Contest. The contest is open to all aspiring and established escritores to compete for recognition of their talents as writers of extra fiction, works that go beyond the standard notion of fiction to awe, terrify, challenge reality and force us to look around corners before we get there.

We welcome submissions of ex-fi works throughout the year, so new writers, hone your skills. All writers of Latinidad with a bent toward ex-fi, that extra dimension beyond reality, can look to Somos en escrito as the magazine most welcoming of the kind of writing you like, ex-fi with a Latin twist.

To keep everyone involved, we also plan next Halloween to name the best ex-fi work submitted during the year, with two runners-up.

The envelope please:

First Place Winner:
“Fatherly, dragonly, motherly . . . love, luck and touch”
Rudy Ch. García of Denver, Colorado, co-founder of and dedicated contributor to La Bloga, is perhaps best known for his alternate reality/fantasy novel, The Closet of Discarded Dreams, which was a finalist in the International Latino Book Awards’ Fantasy/Sci-Fi category in 2013. He has been a longtime proponent of extra-fiction.

Second Place:
“The Archivist”
Ricardo Tavarez, who hails from Watsonville, California, and now lives in Oakland, has an MFA from San Francisco State. He is part of La Brigada, a collective that organizes the International SF Flor Y Canto Literary Festival. His writing has appeared most recently in the anthologies, "Poetry in Flight : Poesia en Vuelo” and “The City is Already Speaking,” the City being San Francisco.

Third Place:

"Sessions In Augmented Reality"
Chicano writer Nicholas Belardes has appeared or is forthcoming in Latinx Archive: Speculative Fiction For Dreamers, Afterlives of the Writers, Acentos Review, Carve Magazine and others. He teaches for the Online MFA Creative Writing Program at Southern New Hampshire University. Nick lives in San Luis Obispo, California.

The First Place winner receives $100 and all three top finalists will get a copy of an original, first edition of Smoking Mirror Blues (2001), autographed by the author, Ernest Hogan, considered by all who care for the genre as the Godfather of Chicano ex-fi, who was the judge for this first competition.


Look for the winning short stories this November 2, Día de los Muertos, on this same batchannel.

Finalists:
“La Muñeca"
Carmen Baca, a long-time teacher in northern New Mexico where she lives, published her first novel in May 2017, El Hermano, a historical fiction based on her  father’s induction into the Penitente society and rise to El Hermano Mayor.

"Death Eye Dog"
Michelle Robles Wallace has an MFA from Mills College in Oakland and was a recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist’s Grant. In recent years, she ran the Kaleidoscope Reading Series and The Borderlands Lectura series.

Congratulations to the winners and our heart-felt encouragement to others who submitted their work.



—The Editor