Congratulations to the finalists of our 2026 SASFest Short Fiction Contest.  Stay tuned for our 2026 SAS Short Fiction Winner!

Finalists are pictured below alphabetically from the top, left to right, and their bios are below.

Kyle Alderdice is a fiction writer, poet, and French translator from New York. He is the winner of the 2025 American Short(er) Fiction Prize chosen by Tony Tulathimutte, and his work appears in Pinch, Swing, Carve (Editor’s Choice 2023 Raymond Carver Contest) and Strange Hymnal, among others. He has received funding from the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, which he attended in 2024 and 2025. He studied French and Political Science at Duke University and he holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Jeza Belle is a drag queen, author, and comedian whose writing has appeared internationally in publications including The Huffington Post and The Advocate, with regular columns in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Her books range from the cult-favorite cocktail cookbook The Harlot’s Guide to Classy Cocktails to the controversial Jeza’s Jesus Juice: A Drag Queen’s Christian Devotional, the first mainstream Christian book written by a drag queen. Jeza is also the author of The Presence Collection, a series of historical fiction novels centering LGBTQ+ protagonists in eras where their lives have long been minimized or erased.  

Ariadne Blayde is a New Orleans-based author and playwright. Her debut novel, Ash Tuesday, is out from indie press April Gloaming. Her short fiction has won the Saints & Sinners LGBTQ+ Literary Festival Fiction Contest and the Quantum Shorts People’s Choice Prize, she has twice been a finalist for the Patty Friedmann Fiction Competition, and her work has been published in various anthologies. Her play The Other Room is performed internationally. She writes speculative fiction, historical fiction, and work focusing on social and environmental justice. Ariadne moonlights as a ghost tour guide in the French Quarter. 

Su Chang is a Shanghai-born Chinese-Canadian immigrant writer. She is the author of a novel, The Immortal Woman (House of Anansi), which is a CBC Best Fiction of 2025, a nominee for the Toronto Book Award, a Rakuten Kobo Best Fiction of the Month, and won the 2025 Independent Publisher Book Award, among other accolades. CBC named her a “Writer to Watch” in 2025. Her short stories have been nominated for the Journey Prize, won awards or been shortlisted by the Montreal Fiction Prize, Prairie Fire Fiction Contest, Canadian Authors’ Association National Contest, ILS/Fence Fiction Contest, among others.

Anil Classen is a German writer of Indian descent born and raised in South Africa, now based in Switzerland. With a background in psychology and journalism, he is a dedicated bookworm and former book seller. Winner of the Writing District and Parracombe Prize, his work has appeared in The New York Times and various journals. 

RUNNER-UP: David Egan is a writer from Altadena, CA. His work has also appeared in Adroit Journal, The Foundationalist, and Westwind Journal of the Arts.

WINNER: Cheryl A. Head’s writing often explores Black life. Her Charlie Mack Motown Mysteries, whose female private eye is queer and Black, was featured in 2025 on Jeopardy!  Head’s 2023 crime fiction novel, Time’s Undoing, was shortlisted for the LA Times Book Award, the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and the Anthony, Macavity, Agatha and Strand Critics Awards. Head is a 2019 inductee to the Saints & Sinners LGBTQ+ Literary Festival Hall of Fame, and a 2022 recipient of the Alice B. Award. She is a two-times Lammy finalist, and winner of the Golden Crown Literary Society’s Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. 

RUNNER-UP: Sandra Gail Lambert is the author of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award winning My Withered Legs and Other Essays and the memoir A Certain Loneliness as well as the novels The River’s Memory and The Sacrifice Zone: An Environmental Thriller. Her work is widely anthologized and has been published by The Sun, Orion, The NYT, Nerve to Write, and Uncharted. Lambert was the winner of the 2013 Saints & Sinners Short Fiction Contest. 

RUNNER-UP: Dan McDermott spent years as a rock and roll journalist before earning an MFA in fiction and literature from Bennington College. His stories have appeared in Ploughshares, The Southampton Review, Gertrude, Fractured Lit, Moon City Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, and elsewhere. He teaches in the writing program at Montclair State University.

J. Michael Norris often writes about the beauty found within tragedy. His work resists clean victories and happy endings, favoring stories shaped by loss, mystery, and the strength found when life refuses to cooperate. His fiction has appeared in Beyond Queer Words, Screen Door Review, Prometheus Dreaming, and Louisiana Words, among others. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from LSU and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. He lives in and around New Orleans with his husband, Bruce, and their three cats, Mack, Muna, and Milo.

Scott Pomfret is the author of Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir; Hot Sauce: A Novel; the Q Guide to Wine and Cocktails; and over seventy short stories published in magazines including Ecotone, Smokelong Quarterly, The Short Story (UK), Post Road, New Orleans Review, Fiction International, and Fourteen Hills. Scott earned an MFA in creative writing at Emerson College, lives in Provincetown MA, and is working on a comic queer Know-Nothing alternative history novel set in antebellum New Orleans.

Steph Rantz is a North Carolina Writer. His work may be found in Miracle Monocle, Prime Number Magazine, and O. Henry Festival Stories. His chapbook, The Real Satyrs of Mt. Airy, is available from Appalachian Books. He has had two one-act plays performed in a Raleigh (NC) theater.

Patrick Earl Ryan was born and raised in New Orleans in a family spanning 5 continents and 7 generations in the city. His debut short story collection If We Were Electric won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Ontario Review, Best New American Voices, Pleiades, Best New American Voices, Men on Men, James White Review, and Gertrude, and he was the founder and editor-in-chief of the queer literary journal Lodestar Quarterly.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Compson Sater, U.S. Air Force (retired), spent most of his military career as a photojournalist, a veteran of both Operation Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. His first novel, Rank, was published in 2016, followed by Thirst (2025). Sater earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Pittsburgh, a master’s in creative writing from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in fine arts from Ohio University. He has at various times been a college professor, radio announcer, bookkeeper, bricklayer, bartender, clerk, music critic, and window-shade salesman. He lives in Seattle with his handsome spouse, two dogs, and one cat

Subraj Singh is a writer from Guyana. He has an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Maryland. His work has been published by AGNI, Granta, and New England Review.

Mary Switalski’s work has been published in Third Wednesday, as the George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest Winner; in The Moth as Finalist for the International Nature Writing Prize, in The New Guard as a Top 10 Finalist in the Machigonne International Fiction Contest; in Bird’s Thumb as a Top 5 finalist in their Summer Fiction Contest; in Newfound, where her essay “November Interval” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize; and elsewhere including DigBoston, Monday Night, Bethesda Magazine, The Dunes Review, etc. She lives in Takoma Park, MD with her wife and two legendary cats.

RUNNER-UP: Jeff Walt’s poems have appeared in journals such as Los Angeles Review, Alligator Juniper, Cimarron Review, The Sun, Connecticut Review, Inkwell, New Millennium Writings, The Good Men Project, Harpur Palate, Cream City Review, The Ledge, and Slipstream. His book, Leave Smoke, was published on Oct. 1, 2019 by Gival Press and was awarded the 2020 Housatonic Book Award given by the Western Connecticut State University MFA Program “to promote excellent writing, to identify authors who serve as professional role models for writing students…”

Jerry L. Wheeler is the editor of seven anthologies of gay erotica for Bold Strokes Books, Wilde City Press, and other publishers. His collection of short fiction and essays, Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award in 2012. His first novel, Pangs, was released by Queer Space/Rebel Satori Press in 2022, followed by the BookFest Award-winning Mercedes General in 2023. He lives and writes in Denver CO, maintaining his review blog, Out In Print: Queer Book Reviews and his own editing business, Write And Shine. 

 

SASFest is grateful to:

Publisher – Rebel Satori Press

John Burton Harter Foundation

Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival is a program of the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival. Visit sasfest.org for more information about our annual event.