Senior Will Hall and sophomore Cylina Wang each was awarded gold in the 2026 Katharine Brush Flash Fiction contest. 

Will’s piece, “A Brief Examination of a Fictitious Arson,” is a twist on how people generally think of the word “character,” which was the theme of this year’s contest. “Often, I think we assume that ‘character’ implies a sense of strength or quality,” Will said. “I tried to stay away from this tunneled definition of ‘character’ as much as possible. My piece, to its core, is about a nocent man who goes about his life ‘stealing’ the identities of people and committing heinous crimes.” 

Cylina’s piece is titled “Two Dollars a Bowl.”  

“This piece centers on immigration and, in its truest form, explores the idea that coming-of-age can be understood as a form of ‘waiting’ in Chinese families,” Cylina said. “Plot-wise, the story follows a single winter evening in New York, where a girl waits for her father to return home, and in that act of waiting, layered histories of immigration, labor, and familial love are gradually revealed through memory.” 

Katharine Brush was a widely read author in the 1920s and 1930s whose career is preserved in a collection in the Loomis Chaffee Archives. Katharine’s son, the late Thomas S. Brush Jr. ’40, chair of the Loomis Chaffee Board of Trustees from 1980 to 1988, donated the naming gift for the Katharine Brush Library. He also donated a nine-foot portrait of Katharine from 1968 that once hung in her apartment in New York City and is now on the second floor of the library. The portrait was the backdrop for a celebration of this year’s Katharine Brush Flash Fiction winners on Thursday, May 21.    

Each year students are given prompts, one of which must be used in their story. 

Cylina said she chose to write her piece “because I find displacement, cultural transition, uncertainty, love, and responsibility to be deeply intertwined. When I read the line/prompt ‘This was her second winter in New York,’ I was immediately drawn to its emotional fragility and cultural richness.”  

The judges this year were Tory Henwood Hoen ’02, a West Hartford native whose second novel, Before I Forget, was released this winter and was selected as a Reader’s Digest Book Club pick for December 2025; Nicole Seymour, who works in the environmental humanities examining how literature and other cultural forms mediate our relationship to environmental crisis; and Chrystine Morrell, an attorney and author of middle-grade novels, including Trex, which was named an Eleanor Cameron Notable Book for Excellence in Science Fiction. 

2026 KBFF Contest Results 

Gold: “A Brief Examination of a Fictitious Arson” by senior Will Hall 

Gold: “Two Dollars a Bowl” by sophomore Cylina Wang 

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Silver: “Untitled” by senior Frieda Bilezikian 

Silver: “A Call in the Night” by sophomore Klara Oppenheimer 

Silver: “A Small Correction” by sophomore Olivia Koo 

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Bronze: “Untitled” by junior Anya Mocciolo 

Bronze: “The Zephyr” by sophomore Jason Jun 

Bronze: “how to forgive” by freshman Vivian Zou 

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Honorable Mention 

Most Surprising POV: “Good Boy” by freshman Irene Kim 

Compelling Title: “The Diary of an Unemployed, Middle-Aged, Caucasian Male in the Boondocks” by sophomore Tidal Fisher 

Emotionally Evocative Prose: “Untitled” by sophomore Eva Borges 

Creative Use of the Prompt: “The Sleepers” by sophomore Avery Stewart 

Character Arc: “Porcelain Teeth” by sophomore Yveson Hsaio 

Worldbuilding: “Untitled” by freshman Charlotte DiFabio