Congratulations to Alisha Dietzman, a runner-up of the 2025 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, for “California.”
After struggling to make ends meet in South Carolina, a group of friends decide to move to California; embarking on a chaotic, hallucinatory road trip, the three discuss theology, tell elaborate, ritualistic lies to strangers, and perform a casino pool baptism in Reno.
“I am sincerely deeply grateful; writing can feel lonely, and the process from start to finish, long, so it’s a true joy to receive recognition and a home for “California.”
Alisha Dietzman is the author of Sweet Movie (Beacon Press, 2023), selected by Victoria Chang for the National Poetry Series. A finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Oregon Book Awards, Sweet Movie was also shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, Slow Motion Something For No Reason, received the Tomaž Šalamun Prize Editors’ Choice Award (Factory Hollow Press, 2022). She received her PhD in Divinity with a focus on aesthetics and ethics from the University of St Andrews, supported by a grant from the US-UK Fulbright Commission. Her creative and critical work has also received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rebecca Swift Foundation, the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. In 2025, her poetry manuscript-in-progress, XOXO, was selected by Cynthia Cruz for the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award. Raised between Prague, Czech Republic and Columbia, South Carolina, she now lives in Oregon.
Visit Alisha’s website, at alishadietzman.com
Find Alisha on Instagram @alisha_gabrielle