John Van Rys (Niagara Branch) has won the 2022 Prairie Fire MRB Short Fiction Contest. His winning story, “Excavations,” will be published in the summer edition: https://www.prairiefire.ca/previous-contest-winners/. In December, John also had his story “Parking Spots” published in Blank Spaces: https://www.blankspaces.ca/magazines/p/december2022. Earlier in the fall, his story “The Homely Dreams of a Silly Soul” appeared in Solum Literary Journal: https://www.solumpress.com/publications/p/solum-journal-summer-2022. John Van Rys (Niagara Branch) has won a Word Award from The Word Guild in the General Market Short Story category. His winning story, “Eggsistential Crisis”, was published in Agnes and True. His story “Nether Lands,” which appears in his collection Moonshine Promises, published by Wipf and Stock, was also the runner-up in this category. Recently, John had book signings to promote Moonshine Promises at the Indigo store in Ancaster, Ontario (September 18) and the London North Indigo (September 24).