The 2025 Porter Fleming Literary Competition Award Winners 

The winners of the 2025 Porter Fleming Literary Competition have been announced by the Morris Museum of Art. They are:

Fiction

1st Place: Ashley Beresch, Athens, Georgia; Good Girl

2nd Place: Karen Wiegman, Atlanta, Georgia; Mr. Jesus Ecstatic

Non-Fiction

1st Place: William Paul Davis, Aiken, South Carolina; Thick Heart

2nd Place: Sea Stachura, Augusta, Georgia, My Mother’s Ghost at 30,000’

Poetry

1st Place: Eric Nelson, Asheville, North Carolina; "Canoeing the Forest"

2nd Place: Marie Isa-Lee Burdett, Altamonte Springs, Florida; "Arctic Tern"

*Unfortunately, there were not enough One-Act Play submissions this year to fairly judge and award this category.

Judge: Spencer Wise.

The author of the novels, The Emperor of Shoes and The Last People You’d Expect (Fall 2026), Wise's writing can be found in journals such as TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, Witness, Tampa Review, and The New Ohio Review. His work has been listed as an Other Distinguished Stories in Best American Short Stories, and he has won fiction prizes from Gulf Coast and Narrative Magazine. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships to the Vermont Writer Studio and Ragdale Foundation in Chicago. Wise is an associate professor of English at Augusta University and leads the creative writing curriculum and programming within the Department of English and World Languages.

The Porter Fleming Literary Competition, recognizing talented writers who reside in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington D.C. was established in 1993 by Shirley Fleming to honor her late father, noted author and artist Berry Fleming. Funded by the Porter Fleming Foundation, which is administered by the Trustees of the Academy of Richmond County, the competition is organized and administered by the Morris Museum of Art. The Porter Fleming Foundation was established by Berry Fleming in 1963 as a memorial to his father, Porter Fleming, a prominent Augustan and one of the city’s leading philanthropists.