For Immediate Release:
Gival Press /Arlington, VA
Contact: Robert L. Giron
T: 703.351.0079
Givalpress@yahoo.com

Vikram Ramakrishnan Wins the Gival Press Short Story Award

Arlington, VA—Gival Press is pleased to announce that Vikram Ramakrishnan of Roslyn, New York has won the Gival Press Short Story Award-2020 for his story Jackson Heights, which was chosen anonymously by the judge A. J. Rodriguez. The award includes a $1K cash prize and the story will be published on Gival Press’s website.

Praise for the Story
“Jackson Heights is one of those stories that hands things over to the reader, saying ‘here, I’ve painted this intricate, tense, yet utterly beautiful portrait around two lovers swimming within different levels of a diaspora, embodying the disparities of privilege, and trying to make it work through it all; now it’s up to you, reader, to fill in the remainder of the picture, color your own pains and yearnings and remembrances into these characters; I’ve given you their griefs and misunderstandings, their desire and their history, so however you want to imagine the significance of these elements is what this story is about. Like all moving fiction, this story raises questions, questions about the intersections of love, of the bridges between culture, of the accessibility to one’s own identity, and, more concretely, what will become of these two lovers. But a definitive answer is not the point; the point is that those investigations lead us to a resonant emotional truth—something I think we all long for at the end of the day, especially these days. In that sense, Jackson Heights, succeeds, flourishes as a work of art, and above all, it is a pleasure to read.”

About the Author
Vikram Ramakrishnan is a Tamil-American writer who was born in Bangalore, India and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania and an enthusiastic member of the Odyssey Writing Workshop Class of 2020, where he was awarded the Walter & Kattie Metcalf scholarship. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His work has been published in SAND Journal, Newfound, and F(r)iction.

Finalists
Runner up: Cloud People by Jacqueline Henry of New York, New York
Blue Light by Jodi Lawaich of Burlington, Vermont
The Tree Whisperer by Peter Curtis of Seattle, Washington
Cree by David Rothgery of Beaverton, Oregon

Jackson Heights can be read on the Gival Press Website