Matt Kendrick
Writer | Editor | Teacher
WELKIN GENRE PRIZE 2026 - WINNER OF THE EARTH PRIZE
Severe Thunderstorm Warning Issued for Nose Hill Park
by T.L. Tomljanovic
Your lungs drink electricity, a metallic sulphurous tang. Prairie dogs and insects go to ground. Their whistles and clicks muffled by an angry ocean of grass. Wind whips your hair into snakes. Your boyfriend begs you to go back to the car. It isn’t safe. You’re too exposed. What about wildfires? But you don’t want to go back. On the summit, you can finally see where you’ve been and where you’re going. You say, We need to talk. He cries, makes a speech. But this time you don’t suffocate the storm inside. The storm is already here.
T.L. Tomljanovic is a short story writer based in British Columbia, Canada. She is the guardian of a dog the size of a donkey, an avid reader of anything with dragons, and a superhero in her own mind. She's also widely published and a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction nominee. Find more of her work at tomljanovic.wordpress.com
Judge's comment:
This piece is wonderfully alive, wonderfully vivid. From the very first sentence, I feel fully transported into this particular scene rather than simply observing the story from the side. This is achieved by the powerful use of second person and the keen observation of the sensory that roots both place and character so well. That’s what I love here. This is a piece that manages to be so many things all at once. It’s a description of place, it’s a description of the titular thunderstorm, and it’s also a description of a character and relationship that splits open in the ending to imply so much more story beyond what’s so brilliantly rendered on the page.
