Winning Entries from the 2026 SJVW Contest
Fiction Winner: Phoebe Shang (Orange County Branch)
The Fifth Inclusion
Dad always said that gems don’t lie—but people do. Especially the ones trying to sell them. The front door chimes, and a woman sweeps into The Velvet Cactus Trading Post, our family’s consignment store in Tucson, Arizona. She strides in like she owns the place, her grip tightening on a small pouch as she spills a green gem into the light.
“It’s Colombian,” she says, sliding it to Mom across the counter. “I want to know what I can get for it.”
Colombian emeralds command a premium price. With the store struggling lately, one mistake could sink us.
“I’ll examine it and let you know what we can offer tomorrow,” Mom says, handing her a consignment receipt.
What she really means is: I will—her sixteen-year-old daughter, Gemma. But she can’t say that. Everyone expects more from Christina Moretti, widow of famed field gemologist Daniel Moretti, although she hasn’t touched a gem since Dad disappeared.
I set the emerald beneath the microscope and adjust the dial with a practiced hand. Inside, a jagged cavity traps liquid 30 to 60 million years old alongside a cube-shaped salt crystal and a floating gas bubble—nature’s abstract art.
Minutes later, Mom returns. “Did you crack the mystery yet?”
“It’s no mystery if you know what you’re looking at.” I tick the inclusions off on my fingers. “Jagged three-phase inclusions, pyrite, shale. Classic Colombian.”
I pause and smile faintly. “From the top, anyway. Turn it to the side, and you’ll catch the giveaway—a clean line where the emerald top was glued to a glass bottom.”
I slide the gem back to Mom. “It’s a composite. We should return it.”
Mom shakes her head. “Just like your dad.”
Poetry Winner: Ron Sacchi (Mount Diablo Branch)
SPRING
Listen hard against the dank fingered fog
The insolent Black Shirts have rekindled anguished thrashing
Their discontent flares from decades of grievances.
Anger erupts in vicious caustic waves
And yet, amidst the icicled winter’s hopes
A delicate, solitary lemon blossom yawns a possibility
Full-open against its tree’s near frozen leaves
Essay/Memoir Winner: Jim Wolff (San Fernando Valley Branch)
Roots of My Discontent
Drying off after my shower, I catch my late Dad’s blurred face in the steam shrouded mirror. His questioning expression asks - What are we doing here? Our face, configured by shared genes and time’s erosion, reveals a likeness my short gray beard, longer hair, and relative youth can’t conceal. I imagine seeing him nod with a wide-eyed acknowledgment and a faint smile. I brush my beard and comb my hair, impatient to erase the ghostly reflection and the difficult memories of our time together. When my face reappears, I realize these suppressed feelings, surfaced by a foggy hallucination, remain symptomatic of my struggle to fully understand and reconcile our relationship. The answers I need won’t come from the mirror but rather from the unique story stitched together by an imperfect memory and breadcrumbs left behind by Dad and others.
In eight years, I’ll be eighty-two, the same age as Dad when he died twenty-one years ago. Until now his personal effects and documents have remained in storage, awaiting an unknown purpose beyond sentimental nostalgia.
When I looked in a small, battered, brown, plaid-striped case, I discovered an assortment of notes, cards, letters, and other documents all crammed topsy-turvy together without any discernable order. Carefully, fingering my way through the stack, I found my first breadcrumb, a worn yellow legal pad with sixteen pages where he’d written short blurbs about his childhood up to age seventeen and a half. Although, the details he described felt familiar; I knew there was more to his story, just as there is more to mine. This first breadcrumb marks an ideal place to begin.
Honorable Mention in Fiction: Kristen Bodie (Mount Diablo)
But I'm Not a Detective
I wasn’t thinking when the hand grabbed my upper arm and purse strap. I dropped, grasped his wrist, twisted it under and around his body, then slammed his arm up against his shoulder blades. The joint cracked. I let go and he pitched forward. Adrenalin pounded in my ears. I almost didn’t hear the guy in uniform gasp, “Did she kill him?”
The body lay face down, unmoving. A crowd gathered, watching the uniform roll him over. I heard myself say “It can’t be him! He’s dead!”
The uniform agreed. “He is now.”
Three weeks ago was the last time I saw the dead man, Hilton Hayes. At his funeral. I didn’t actually see him. The casket stayed closed. Word was he was in bad shape after the accident. No one could tell me anything about it. I didn’t pry. I didn’t care. I was there for my friend Shasta, not him.
She introduced me to him at a party out on the Island. She imagined herself his girlfriend. Shasta cried and drank a lot at the wake. As her designated driver, I stuck with diet 7-Up. I missed adding a shot of whiskey from the pricey labels at the bar.
Three weeks later, driving a drunk friend was the least of my problems. Explaining Hilton Hayes’ newly dead body to the police was a problem, one that didn’t make sense. It was impossible. The officer’s face told me I’d better figure something out. Soon. This situation wasn’t covered in my self-defense class. How was I supposed to solve this puzzle? I’m no detective! I guessed I’d better learn fast if I wanted to stay out of jail. Or worse.
Honorable Mention in Fiction: Lauren Woo (Sacramento)
The Beauty Queen
Riley Wong should have taken the wallet straight to the police. That’s what any normal person would have done. Especially given who it belonged to. But Riley had heard enough cases to know that police investigations in a small town like Roseville were easily botched. Officers here were more versed in e-bike theft and speeding tickets than any serious crime.
She didn’t see the wallet when she first entered the old Roseville City Cemetery. Words from the most recent rejection ricocheted in her head as she walked past the rising headstones to the oldest plots at the far edge of the grounds. Her fifth rejection that month and twelfth since she moved back home that summer: We regret to inform you… A large pool of extremely qualified applicants… Wish you the best in your professional endeavors…
Grandma Wong didn’t need to know about this one. Riley’s mother, either. Riley couldn’t stand the look in their eyes every time they learned of another rejection. She could see the disappointment leaking from them like a dripping faucet, pooling at their feet before slowly gurgling down a clogged drain as they choked out attempts to make her feel better.
It’s not like she could tell Alice either, so she came here, where she could spill her secrets to the dead without judgement. The cemetery was “just gorgeous” according to Grandma Wong, with its sweeping expanse of manicured lawns and marble headstones. Gorgeous is hardly the word Riley would use to describe a bunch of rotting corpses trapped under six feet of rocky earth. Essentially human fertilizer that fed the dominating oak trees. How else did they grow so tall? What else made the lawn glisten so green?
Honorable Mention in Poetry: Ron Sacchi (Mount Diablo)
The Cheat
Years of bombastic scholars died today
Darwin and Newton and Kodak were all forgotten
Monks in ancient abbeys sheathed their long-frayed quills
Romance novels and scriptures alike Lost their true meanings
As a few silver-blue bytes of code erased
Centuries of meaningful learning
In one gratuitous, self-centered
Algorithm.
Honorable Mention in Essay/Memoir: Colleen Dolan (Marin)
Legally Blind
I remember the first time I saw my mother clearly. I was 12 years old.
“Line eight, dear.”
I felt it was my duty to pass the vision exam each year. The Auxiliary Church Women of St. Christophers Catholic Parochial School were sweet old ladies (probably younger than I am today) who administered the vision tests, and bless their hearts, they asked us all to read the same line on the vision chart. My last name started with D, so I had the opportunity to hear the correct response five or six time before it was my turn. I always gave the correct answer, and year after year the church ladies proudly declared my vision “20/20.”
Then, in sixth grade, I entered public school. Early in September, we lined up for our vision exams, but this time I was asked to place my face into a mask-like device that supposedly had letters visible in the view finder. There were no letters, just a grayish blur.
When I was eventually taken to the ophthalmologist, the gentle doctor placed glasses on my face and I shuddered. His face was covered in black stubble. I turned to my mother for reassurance and saw red, blotchy skin and worry lines on her forehead. Swiveling my head, I was accosted by dirt in the corners of the floor, peeling linoleum, chipped paint on the doorframe, and streaked windows. Outside, the shock was worse: weeds growing through cracked sidewalks, dented cars, broken streetlights, stupid signs in store windows, potholes, and ugly people everywhere. I was horrified. Up till that day, I thought the world was a soft, dependable cushion of love. How could I live in this hideous place?
Honorable Mention in Essay/Memoir: Judy Davis (San Francisco Peninsula)
Killing Papi
Have you ever tried to accidentally, intentionally, maybe kill someone? I don’t mean through a planned murder. I mean accidentally, on purpose. If you could do so, and not have any suspicion, doubt, or family member take legal action against you, would you do it? Could you do it?
This is a how to guide that is best subtitled “how to make sure you do not ever accidentally on purpose try to murder someone.” Not even a beloved Papi.
No one will admit they want their parent gone. I mean, not without the benefit of an alcoholic starter, or private journaling, or, horrors, the round-table discussion of a support group. But. I know I’m not the only one. How could I be? I mean, really?
My siblings and I had a very regular Boomer childhood. Usual parent-child conflicts, the expectation that high school is followed by college. It was the 60s and 70s, so minor delving into contraband was not unexpected, also not discussed. Mom worked, therefore a modern woman example for her daughters. Papi was a great guy and great dad, but worked hard to support his family and could be a busy, active guy.
At the risk of offending everyone in the known world, and at the same time earn a fist bump from every adult child of a return-to-toddlerhood parent, I present to you the absolutely true and partially untrue story of my killing Papi. I want you to avoid the pitfalls. And bask in the knowledge that what I am about to lay out in this how-to guide will assist you in the fun yet to come. But let’s start at the beginning.