Leona Theis (BA'80) wins first prize in the 2015 American Short Fiction Contest

Leona Theis (BA’80) has received American Short Fiction’s first place prize for her story “How Sylvie Failed to Become a Better Person Through Yoga.” Theis’s prize-winning story will appear in an upcoming issue of the magazine, which publishes work by emerging and established writers.

The story's inspiration came from an overheard scrap of conversation and went through over a dozen revisions before Theis submitted it to the contest. “You have to love it when an American literary magazine of note recognizes a story that's set in Saskatoon and references Gimli, Manitoba and Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan,” she says.

Theis, who has been a mentor in the college's MFA in Writing Program, lives and writes in Saskatoon. Her stories and personal essays have appeared in journals across Canada, including Brick Magazine, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly and enRoute, and have received numerous awards. Her collection of interlocking stories, Sightlines (2000), won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and the Saskatoon Book Award. She is also author of a novel The Art of Salvage (2006). For more information about her work, visit her website.

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