The Makings of a Contest-Winning Story at The Masters Review

A look at “Sermons,” by Katie Henken Robinson

As many of you may remember, I served as a reader at The Masters Review last year. As part of my duties, I read submissions for several contests, including the Best Emerging Writers 2025 anthology judged by Andrew Porter.

One of the many submissions I was assigned was “Sermons” by Katie Henken Robinson. Among the 180+ submissions I read for that contest, Katie’s story was one of 3 pieces I nominated to move on to the next round. After several more rounds of judging, Katie’s story was ultimately selected among the final 10 for the anthology.

Before we dive into what made this story stand out in the submission queue, I want to share a little background on what contest reading looks like.

The Masters Review has a pretty large number of readers—their current masthead lists 32. For a contest, let’s consider that each reader is reading 180+ submissions, and then narrowing down those submissions to their top 3 (as requested by the editors). This means that from 5,700+ submissions, 96 move on to the next round of reading, which will eventually be narrowed down to just 10.

I share those numbers to help you understand just how rare it is as a reader to have one of your nominations make it all the way to the top. When it does happen, it feels really good!

Now, let’s take a look at Katie’s story and what made it a winner.

Photo by Damir Samatkulov on Unsplash

Why This Submission Stood Out

The first thing I want to mention is that in her cover letter, Katie noted that the story had been a finalist for the Missouri Review Perkoff Prize in fiction in 2024. This definitely caught my attention, and I had high expectations for the story heading into reading it. If you’re ever sending out a piece that made a long or short list, received an honorable mention, or was named a finalist or semi-finalist (but without publication), you should absolutely mention this in your cover letter just like Katie did.

However, I did see a different writer do one thing I would advise against. They submitted a piece that had been a finalist in a previous Masters Review contest again for Best Emerging Writers 2025. I highly recommend that you always send your work to new literary magazines unless you’ve received a specific request from a lit mag to resubmit a piece to them.

Okay, back to Katie’s story. Here is what I wrote in Submittable about why I was nominating this story:

“This story has strong writing, good tension, unique characters, and a fresh angle on guilt.”

Unique Characters

In the opening paragraph, we get a very detailed and unique description of Pixie, who is the main catalyst in this story:

“Pixie showed up on our doorstep one morning in June, looking more like a carnival sideshow act than our new renter. She was tiny and frail, holding a caged parakeet in one hand and a purse as big as her body in the other. Her hair was dyed purple with grey at the roots, and she wore a tie-dye dress plastered with emojis. When she smiled, I counted three missing teeth.”

Nothing about this description of Pixie is vague, generic, or cliché. Not only can we picture her perfectly, but we also can’t wait to learn more about her.

This specificity applies to her dialogue as well. Many writers might’ve had Pixie engage in a typical small-talk scene after the father introduces himself and Charlie. Instead, Pixie says something unexpected and revealing: “Do you have CNN? That’s his favorite.” We skip the boring part, and instead go somewhere surprising, which reveals more about the characters.

Then we get introduced to perhaps an even more memorable character—a parakeet named Father Skeeter, who is a minister. This is a character unlike any I had ever read before, and it made the story really memorable.

Tip: Avoid the generic and the expected.

Good Tension

There are several sources of tension in this story. The first is Pixie’s presence in the narrator’s life, which triggers him in several ways. The second is that the narrator’s mother is in a coma in the hospital, which is putting financial strain on the family, stopped the narrator from going to college, and is a source of guilt for the narrator. We’ve also got the fact that the narrator has been lying to his father about visiting his mother, as well as the tension between the narrator and his co-worker Joey-Jim.

The truly masterful thing about this story is that what seems like three separate narrative threads at the beginning—1) Pixie and Father Streeter, 2) the mother’s coma, and 3) the narrator’s relationship with Joey-Jim—all come together by the end.

Also, notice how the writer leaned into conflict instead of avoiding it. We have the scene where Pixie puts on the mother’s apron as well as the climax scene where the narrator attends Father Streeter’s service. So many writers set up conflict and then sidestep it. Here, Katie dove right in.

Tip: Don’t shy away from conflict or let your character off the hook.

A Fresh Angle

This story uses a first-person narrator who has some level of self-awareness but is also disconnected in other ways. However, there are three things he’s doing throughout that make the story impactful:

1. He has a “take” on what’s happening.

   1. A mistake many writers make is just having their narrator report what’s happening. To create complex narrators with depth, they need to filter what they’re sharing with the reader through their unique perspective. We can see this in places like, “He was the color and scent of dehydrated piss and had a strangely judgmental facial expression for a bird. It felt like he was waiting to peck our eyes out,” and “The doctors said talking could help, but it seemed fake to me, the kind of thing they say to make you feel useful when really all you can do is sit and wait.”
      

2. He is reacting to the world around him.

   1. As an editor, one of the comments I make on writers’ work the most is “need a reaction here.” What that reaction is can be a multitude of things, but when something important or unexpected happens to a character, they need to react to it. We can see this in places like, “I had flash images of wringing the bird’s neck, smashing all the shit in Pixie’s bag. I wanted to swing a baseball bat at something, beat something with my hands until it softened to dust,” and “I felt like a stray shard of glass on a tile floor, waiting to wedge itself unexpectedly into the soft meat of someone’s heel.”
      

3. He is being vulnerable.

   1. Your reader doesn’t necessarily have to like your narrator or characters, but your reader does need to emotionally invest in them to keep reading. When a narrator or character is vulnerable, it provides an opening for the reader to connect with them. We see this in places like, “I hated to admit it, but I thought maybe sleeping on the floor of Dad’s room would help, just to have someone else there,” and “I couldn’t look him in the face while we waited for the ambulance. I was too ashamed he’d had to do what I should’ve done.”

Tip: Your narrator’s point of view shouldn’t be generic. Everything should be filtered through a unique perspective informed by their personality, life experience, and mood.

Here are a couple comments on this story from other readers:

“This is really well done. I wasn’t sure at first, but the voice and pace and characters landed really well for me.”

“Not in love with the ending note, but I imagine this is one of the overall stronger stories we’ll have on the shortlist.”

What did you think of the story?

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👋 Hi there, and thanks for reading! I’m Janelle Drumwright, a writer, teacher at The Writers Studio, former editor at Carve Magazine, and former reader at The Masters Review. I help writers strengthen their work and submit to literary magazines. Interested in working together? Visit janellewrites.com for more info.