HEAD OF THE CLASS: Doll taught in Mozambique. Courtesy Jacob Doll

former stegner fellows Julie Orringer and Ryan Harty, who also are wife and husband, judged the eighth annual STANFORD Fiction Contest. They selected a winner and two honorable mentions from among a dozen finalists selected by STANFORD editors from 50 entries. Harty is the author of Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona, which won the 2003 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Orringer, the author of How to Breathe Underwater, has won two Pushcart Prizes and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation.

They praised the “fable-like tone” of Jacob Doll’s winning story and storytelling that “seems to borrow from African culture while at the same time transforming its legends into contemporary tales. If the tales carry a quiet and pervasive sense of tragedy, they also serve to illuminate the connections between ancient traditions and modern technology, between elders and children, between mystery and understanding.”

The honorable mention stories are “Notes from the Refrigerator” by Ann Newton Holmes and “Cruise Control” by Vanessa Hua. Holmes, ’62, from Deer Park, Calif., writes about a trucker husband and a teacher wife whose hectic lives are revealed in notes they leave one another, especially those concerning a small apartment complex they’re trying to manage. Hua, ’97, is a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. In her story, a young woman named Lisa ponders her friendship with a gay man, Geoff, after the two of them help a Mexican family slip through a border checkpoint.