When choosing a winner among a substantial batch of intriguing stories, what one looks for primarily isn't plot (though that helps) but a lively and original voice that makes you feel you'd like to hear it again. As the theme of this contest was "Red" (more and less closely adhered to by the contestants) — and given the fact that there was very little humor in evidence — the overall tone of these mostly dark offerings could be described as forming an original genre called "Rouge Noir."

In this group there were several delightful plots, including Rita Ciresi's sharp description of a failed marriage, "Parting Shot"; Michelle Oswald's mordant tale of cannibalism called "Daddy's Game"; and Frank Drouzas's shocking story of a boxer's sexual obsession, "The Blood-Eyes."

But the most captivating voice came through in a short, almost plotless, slice of life by Monica Wrobel. In her story, "May," a woman mourning the loss of a friend takes a walk. She comes across a dead dog and, in a voice reminiscent of Dostoevsky's "Underground Man," observes "black tail, black hind legs, soft black stomach. The flies have already begun to swirl around her head like some horrible halo. I can't look away fast enough so I take it all in."

Everything the woman notices causes her to plunge deeper into her own mind, where it's dark but not nihilistic: "I think that beauty follows death wherever it goes." As in Notes from the Underground, thought rather than action establishes character. In one of the few signs of wit in these stories, she sees a "flower in someone's dirt yard, just sitting there, looking too lush, almost obscene with fleshy petals and pink edges and something red right in the middle, suggesting that maybe if God created something like this, he does, in fact, have a libido."

The landscape, vaguely Southern, with its magnolias and egrets, is unlovely, messy, anonymous. The woman in Wrobel's story isn't named. She has been silent so long she's afraid her voice no longer works. It's a tribute to the force of this quiet tale that when the woman finally speaks — just two short words — the effect is dramatic: They are the right words, and make "May," with all its existential angst, not just another melancholy cry, but a small voice for hope and the future.

Peter Meinke has published 14 books of poems, seven in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, the most recent being The Contracted World (2006), Zinc Fingers (2001), Scars (1996) and Liquid Paper (1996). His poetry has received many awards, including two NEA Fellowships and three prizes from the Poetry Society of America. His book of short stories, The Piano Tuner, won the 1986 Flannery O'Connor Award; another collection, Unheard Music, will be published this fall, along with his book on reading and writing poems, The Shape of Poetry. He directed the Writing Workshop at Eckerd College for many years and has often been writer-in-residence at other colleges and universities. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New Republic and dozens of other magazines; he and his wife, the artist Jeanne Clark, have lived in St. Petersburg since 1966.

Winners and judges' notes:

This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2007.