Bren Davis ’22 honored in ACM short story contest

Bren Davis ’22 of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, received an honorable mention in the 2021 ACM Nick Adams Short Story Contest. Held annually since 1973, the contest is open to students at Associated Colleges of the Midwest schools.

Six finalists were selected, and the winner and honorable mention stories were named by final judge Sandra Cisneros, award-winning author of the classic, coming-of-age novel The House on Mango Street.

She said of Davis’s story “Blackberry’s Blues,” “I commend this writer for the story’s succinctness, verbal acrobatics and poetry. A taut, dreamlike, innovative tale told in astonishing language.”

Davis is majoring in English with a minor in women’s and gender studies and says on the contest’s webpage, “Writing in all forms has always been a space of safety for me, and fiction became very important as I grew older because it gave me the opportunity to express my personal feelings and the feelings of others like me in a way that could be appreciated or empathized with.”

An interview with Davis is available here.