A story called ‘Ghee’ is the winner of the 2025 New Ohio Review Annual Contest. Super happy about that, for a couple of reasons. First, there is nothing magical or odd about this story. It’s not imbued with strangeness or cosmic realities, it’s not trying to stretch for anything vast. It’s just a story about people in a moment in flow. I like to think my desire to bend genres occasionally means that I arrive at a place where a story really is just a literary piece of fiction. There’s nothing else, just those people. I love that. Second, it’s more or less a true story. I don’t usually do that. I do fiction. But this story is based on real people that I have known, and I’ve never stopped thinking about them. Stories permeate your consciousness, until they’re ready to come out. This one took a while.

I think this story going public gives me the most pause out of any that I’ve published, in part for the two reasons I just listed. It’s rather personal. It’s fairly raw. There’s no hiding from this piece.

Still, I’m tremendously happy about this. The story (it’s short – roughly 3,200 words) is going to be published in issue 36 of The New Ohio Review. That literary magazine has been around close to 20 years and is produced by Ohio University’s Creative Writing Program. I love that university connection. Congratulations to all the winners!

To celebrate, I figured I’d do something different. I have a new website which I love, and it has an email address associated with it. I don’t get many emails there. I’m going to buy a few extra copies of Issue 36 and would love to share them. Figure I’ll give them away to the first three people who email me at info@trentlewin.com. That would make me really happy! All you have to do is tell me you want a copy, and maybe say something funny. Anything will do.

Ghee, by the way, is clarified butter.