Enter to win First Consonants
Enter to win First Consonants by John Whittier Treat. To enter the contest, fill out the form below between Tuesday, September 20, and Tuesday, October 11.
Brian Horace Moriarty grows up a normal child in the Seattle suburbs, save for his debilitating stutter. Brian endures prejudice and bullying but is unable to control his violent outbursts whenever frustrated at being unable to communicate with words. A priest to whom Brian is sent by his parents for spiritual counseling takes advantage of Brian's vulnerability in an incident that haunts Brian and complicates his view of himself and the speaking world. Angry with himself for having been a victim, he victimizes others in seeking revenge for his hurt. Eventually an elderly Brian moves to the Alaskan outback with the intent of writing a novel about a stutterer who saves the world. In a dramatic climax, the Tongass wilderness is set ablaze and Brian realizes, on the verge of his death, that his stutter was always a gift as well as a curse.
John Whittier Treat is the winner of the Christopher Hewitt Award in fiction and a Pushcart Prize nominee. He is the author of the novel The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House (Big Table Publishing Company), a finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Best Gay Fiction. He was also a finalist for both the fiction and poetry prizes in the 2021 Saints & Sinners competition. His opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost, and Out magazine.
