2026 M.F.K. Emerging Writers Contest winners

I have played an integral part in shaping Earth. I have altered and aided evolution and caused mass extinctions, but also breathed back life. Although I have existed from time immemorial, humans discovered me just 400,000 years ago. Since that eventful day, I have been put to use in many ways – some good, some bad. I exist all around you, in many shapes and forms. I am Fire and I am a part of your story, your history, your culture and in many ways a part of you.

I.

A group of hikers have huddled around – braving the snow, freezing temperatures and biting winds of the Himalayan mountains. They shiver, rub their hands and blow warm air into the cup of their palms. The cold is numbing their body. Then, one of them starts a small fire. They all sit near it and let the heat warm them up. A smile spreads across their faces. I, the fire, have given them the warmth they craved. Here, I am a sustainer of life.

II.

It is summer. Scorching heat has stripped the vegetation bare. In places where lush green vegetation once stood, all that remains now are dried, dying trees and shrubs. A few dry leaves rub against each other and a spark is produced. Soon, the entire forest is engulfed in flames. Within minutes, huge trees are reduced to ashes. Everything in my wake perishes. Here, I am the destroyer.

III.

In the holy city of Varanasi in India, a family is bidding adieu to its matriarch on the banks of river Ganga. She has lived a long, happy life and has now left the mortal realm. Her old, frail body is given to me. I consume it and reduce it to ashes. I free her spirit and aid in her journey towards salvation or mukti. Here, I am the cleanser and the purifier.

IV.

In Hinduism, there is an age old tradition of performing the yagna or ‘The Fire Ritual’. In the epic Ramayana, King Dasharatha performs the ‘Putra Kameshti Yagna’ – an earnest prayer to the Lord seeking children. Here, I am the conveyor of the deepest desires to the supreme Lord. I am a ray of hope, of faith and a promise of a better tomorrow.

V.

There is a student whose honest efforts and unwavering dedication are met only by a wall of indifference. They are earnest to get better and do well. Here, I am in their heart, in the form of determination, pushing them onward. I motivate them and give them the perseverance to continue. Here, I am the torch that guides them on the right path.

I am the same fire, present in various forms, aiding and abetting different end results. I can sustain, I can consume, I can build and I can destroy. What form do you want me to take today?

I sighed as my branches swayed. The travelers strolled past me in awe with their bulky tripods,traveling from far and wide. I am proud from the top of my head to the tip of my roots. I glowed because they were here to see the geysers, the mud pots, the ponds and lakes, the rocks and the bears but also to see me and my forest of friends. I am a lodge pole pine and I am proud to be. Also my name is Sherman. In all of my 97 years I have made many friends. And the news I just received is concerning.

My roots tell me Isabella is burning but Isabella is fierce. In the heart lake Fire every tree for a mile around burned to the ground not Bella she stood strong it has been 57 years so she is getting weak but i know Bella. She says “fight till the end” . I hope the fire doesn’t spread. I ask Eli, the tree next to me, “how did it start”?

“It was two ” he says and that’s when I knew we should worry. when many merge it is mighty. Strength is in numbers they say. Here's a fact: they care, they let it burn and say its nature and it helps but it's scary the controlled ones are . but this one isn't controlled. Which makes me even more scared. Because nature is us, the trees that burn. nature is aunt Linda nature is uncle Bill. It's true though that nature is a new beginning, the fireweed creeping up dead trunks and squirrels having grand feasts. I look up at the now smoked out sky and smile.

When I wake up the next morning I look out at the forest. I arrange my leaves and shake my branches, check my reflection in the lake and shoo away the birds who were resting in my canopy. I am totally ready for today’s visitors. I am prepared for them to come back every year just to see me. I look towards the path where visitors usually arrive from, nones there but it's early and it's fine. I reassure myself. I look over at Eli. He looks peaceful in his perfect trunk. I look up at the sky. I notice it is bright red with flame. A tiny ping of panic touches my heart. I hear a whir

"a plane” I think. “This is going to be the pink stuff” I say to Eli. Everyone knows Eli loves the pink stuff even though it only happens during fires. But he doesn't answer me. I look up to see if he’s nodded off again but what I see is much more concerning Eli is on fire!!! Then i feel a prick i am on fire too it has passed along the plane is whirring towards us it is a race!

I wait as I wonder which new beginning this fire will bring and what wonderful things will become of it.

When I was in fourth grade I loved playing with my sister (and reading). That was about all I did back then. I didn’t really study at home. But when my Mom said “you should study more math so you could get ahead,” I did. It was my Mom who lit the fire under me to study, to get good grades, and to do this all on my own.

Math is like a habit for me now, just like eating and sleeping. But if my Mom hadn’t encouraged me, it never would have come into my head. At first it was hard to adjust to all the extra studying. I looked at it like a chore. It made me mad sometimes. It also intimidated me. The first time I got the extra math book it was as thick as my fist. Sometimes I’d be really stressed about what I was studying because I felt stuck. Then I’d go to my Dad for help.

But once I started doing math at home I felt smarter than the average kids in my grade. Because of that I suddenly started hanging out with more people like me. Now most of my friends have skipped one or more grades of math and being around them has helped motivate me to study just like them. In other words it was my Mom who lit the fire but my friends who helped fuel it.

My Mom changed my entire life and my path by helping me to study independently. I think this didn’t just help me study but learn to solve problems on my own. I’m happy that she got the idea into me otherwise I wouldn’t feel as smart without her doing that. My Mom didn’t do the work for me. She encouraged me to do all of it on my own and succeed for myself.

I’m grateful to my Mom for giving me a push when I needed it. She pushed me because she loves me. Achieving what I do shows I love her back.

I haven’t had a hot dog in years. I don’t think I mind them or anything, but I grew to know them not as sausage and bread, but as a stench. My dad used to make them as a last-resort meal whenever it suited him, and without fail, he would burn them. Every single time. Usually, I would be in my room upstairs when the smoke would enter, carefully sneaking through the security of a closed door. It would sit beside me and poke at my nostrils with its meaty fingers until I could ignore it no longer. Upon opening my door, the fog would twist my face into a squinty sort of grimace as I trudged downstairs through the haze, the sounds of sizzling oil whispering louder still. Entering the kitchen, I would stop. 

There’s something beautiful about a hot-dog kitchen. The light filtering through the windows lazily dancing with the grease-coated air. Though the scent seemed to be shoving itself down my throat, it resembled a playful noogie more than an attack on my life. There’s something so comforting about the warm familiarity of an arid stove emitting meat-smell. Nonetheless, as soon as I gave the scene its due diligence, I would rush to open a window. 

As I next turned off the stove, watching the little blue flame snuff out, I would notice the wieners were barely charred. It’s incredible what two bastions of processed flesh will survive, if only to dare us to consume them. 

I would travel to my dad’s office, not bothering to knock. The room was always dark, maybe so he couldn’t see the smoke. The glow of a TV-turned-computer monitor illuminated his face just enough for me to see his surprise when I would tell him he burned the hot dogs. He would rush past me, only to find out I had already turned the stove off and opened a window. Then, he would finish toasting the buns while I sat at the kitchen counter watching his strange reverence for a simple meal. He would cover the hot dogs in spicy dijon mustard and the sauerkraut he kept in a gargantuan jar in our pantry. Then, he would offer me a hot dog. 

I always said no. The charred meat smell, still lingering around the room, was a gentle reminder to my stomach that it actually was fine, thanks. I would stare at the debris of char and grease coagulating around the pan, and politely decline. I would return to my room and ignore the call of the smoke until it faded away. One day, it never came back. 

The gigantic jar of sauerkraut was thrown away, and the spicy dijon mustard had long been expired. I haven’t looked, but I think the wieners are still in my freezer, having outlived the man to burn them. If I made one for myself now, it would be odorless and perfectly cooked, and I wouldn’t know what to do about it. 

Sitting on the windowsill of my bedroom is a nondescript candle. The candle rests within a white frosted glass jar with black soot stains along the inner wall. Its design is minimalist, featuring only the word “DAYDREAM” with the scents listed beneath: cactus and rose. A wooden lid tops the jar. Inside, the wax is creamy white and has dips in the surface from use. The short, blackened wick sits far from the center of the candle. To most people, it is simply a worn-down candle nearing its end. But to me, it has become something else entirely. 

When I look at the candle, I do not see wax or soot. I see my family waking up at 3 a.m. to the sound of sirens. I see my dad holding my eight-year-old sister in his arms as he runs towards the bomb shelter. I see my mom’s eyes fill with tears as she calls her sister back home. I do not smell the cactus and rose of the candle anymore. I smell the mildew that lines the white concrete walls of the barren “safe room” where we spent our nights. 

My parents told me not to waste space in my luggage on a candle; they were probably right; as my suitcase broke halfway through our trip. At the time, I insisted, saying I needed the soothing aroma to fall asleep. I do not find the cactus and rose scent as calming as I did then. 

We arrived in Israel on June 10, 2025. The streets were packed, and the city seemed to pulse with life. Two days later, those same streets were deserted. Instead of hearing sounds of traffic, people now listened for sirens. 

And yet, when I think back on that trip now, fear is not what I remember most. 

I remember how my family gathered together in those underground rooms. I remember my grandpa, who died several months later, sitting in the corner of the shelter, making friends with the few other people there. I remember how, after enough nights without sleep, even exhaustion united us. I remember appreciating how lucky I was to be in the bomb shelter with those I love most. 

There is something unsettling about discovering how fragile life is while simultaneously realizing how full it can be. 

The candle now sits half burned because I cannot bring myself to finish it. Part of me believes that if I light it too many more times, I will somehow use up what remains of those scary but unifying moments. Because the truth is, the candle doesn’t only remind me of fear—it reminds me of moments more important than almost all other moments in my life. I think grief changes ordinary objects into landmarks. 

So now the candle remains on my windowsill, worn and blackened and nearly gone. And every time I look at it, I am reminded that light is not valuable because it lasts forever. It is valuable because it doesn't. 

The first fire I met was a bursting and brilliantly coloured firecracker at Chinese New Year, in my grandfather’s house in Malaysia. I remember colorful spirals of red and orange dancing in the sky, my parents cheering as we watched the beautiful firework displays from our home in Kuala Lumpur to welcome the New Year. I remember the sharp crack of the gunpowder from homemade firecrackers, smoke curling around the garden of my grandfather’s home. To four-year old me, fire was a spectacle, a form of entertainment and wonder, but most strikingly, a tradition I did not understand. Only after growing up between Malaysian-Chinese roots and the modern settings of Singapore, did I learn that fire was simply not for entertainment or display. Fire represents my culture, inheritance, and tradition —time tested and impossible to extinguish. 

Years later, the fire that shaped me most was not the scarlet fireworks bursting in the night sky. It burned in my grandfather’s kitchen. Each year, returning home to Malaysia meant stepping into a scene alive with the power of a flame: the snapping of oil, the blue flame of the wok curling beneath the blackened steel of the frying pan as my aunts and relatives hurried around the kitchen like dancers moving to the music of the cleavers and the clatter of porcelain plates. As a child, I only waited to eat. I did not understand that every braised dish and stir-fried meal was crafted with hours spent in front of the flame. In this case, fire was not marvel, but a symbol of devotion, transforming raw ingredients into reunion, and labour into love. Helping out in the kitchen, I learned that fire can connect as powerfully as it can dazzle, symbolising love and unity amongst my family. 

Growing in the modern city of Singapore, fire felt controlled —behind stovetops, softened by the glow of the city, reduced to strict rules and regulations. However, heading back to Malaysia each year to celebrate Chinese New Year meant experiencing a different kind of flame, one less controlled, and much more alive. 

Fire once was simply noise to me- with the firecrackers embodying the joy of celebration. Now, it means something quieter, but everlasting. The steady flame that heats the wok. The heat of the kitchen. The invisible labour using flame to represent my heritage. Growing up between Singapore’s modern skyline and Malaysia’s festive atmosphere, I have uncovered how fire is not destruction or wonder. It is a force that creates memories and carries my culture into the future. Long after the last lantern dims and the fireworks disappear, the fires that make me who I am l burn within me. 

The first fire I ever truly knew was blue.

Not the leaping orange of birthday candles or the roaring yellow of a bonfire at the beach—though I knew those, too, in that vague, childish way one knows the backdrop of a photograph. The first fire I knew was a neat, perfect ring of blue flame on the black iron burner of my grandmother's stove. It hissed when you turned the knob too fast, a little serpent's warning before settling into a silent, concentrated halo.

In M.F.K. Fisher's world, fire is the heart of the "Last House," the warmth that fights off the damp of a California winter while eating alone. But in my grandmother's kitchen, fire was a tether. It kept her anchored to the spot by the window, a view of the dying lawn framed by lace curtains. She would stand there for what seemed like hours, not cooking grand feasts, but just waiting. Waiting for the kettle to scream. Waiting for the butter to foam in the cast iron. Waiting for the toast to turn the exact shade of brown that bordered on burnt but wasn't quite—the shade only she could recognize.

I learned to read the temperature of that fire by the sound of her movements. When the flame was high and rude, she was rushing, the spatula clanging against the rim of the pan in a frantic percussion. But when the flame was low, just a whisper of blue on the burner's edge, that was when the stories came. That's when she'd take the kettle off before it could scream and pour the water over the tea leaves with a slowness that felt like a prayer.

"Fire's only good if you can hold it back," she told me once, her hand on the knob, adjusting the gas with a micrometer's precision. "A wildfire eats the forest. A match burns the finger. But this—" she pointed to the blue ring, "—this cooks the rice so it doesn't stick. This warms the milk for your stomach."

I thought she was just talking about cooking. I was twelve, and my mind was full of the smell of cinnamon toast. It took me twenty years and a wildfire evacuation to understand she was talking about everything else.

Last autumn, the hills behind that old kitchen turned black. The "devastation and renewal" the contest speaks of was not a metaphor; it was the air in my lungs. We had thirty minutes to pack a life into a trunk. I didn't grab photo albums. I ran into the kitchen, empty now of her voice for a decade, and I wrapped my hands around that heavy, cast-iron skillet. It was cold. I stood there in the smoky twilight, looking at the dead burner, and I thought about the fire that used to live there.

I thought about my father, who I only saw cry once. It wasn't at her funeral. It was years earlier, sitting under that canyon oak she loved, eating a peach pie she had baked that morning. The juice ran down his chin, and he looked at the mountains and said, "This is what a good fire does. It makes the fruit taste like the sun, even when it's gone." That is the lasting fire Fisher wrote about—the one that buzzes inside you like an agonized bee because the love is so fierce it hurts.

We were lucky. The winds shifted. The house is still there, though the view from the window is now a study in charcoal and ash. Last week, I went back to check the pilot light. I turned the knob, heard that familiar serpent hiss, and then saw it: the perfect, silent blue ring.

I made toast. I stood by that window, and I let it go past golden brown, right up to the edge of burnt. Just like she used to. I didn't eat it right away. I just held it in the palm of my hand, feeling that particular warmth—the fire that is tamed but not extinguished. The fire that feeds you, not the kind that eats the forest.

The kettle is starting to sing now. It's a low whistle, building. And for the first time in a long time, I'm not in a rush to turn it off. I want to hear it scream a little, a high, clear note over the quiet blue flame. It sounds like a woman who knows exactly how hot the water needs to be. It sounds like memory, refusing to boil dry.

My father’s hands were stained with soot. He knelt before the stone fire pit in our backyard, a rusted iron poker in his grip, tending to a mound of burning maple logs. It was late October, the evening air sharp enough to make our breath plume, but the heat radiating from the pit forced us to take a half-step back.

We were waiting for the collapse. Novices build fires for the flames—the tall, snapping, arrogant yellow tongues that consume oxygen and command immediate attention. But my father taught me early on that the flames are just the preamble. The true magic of fire, the part that sustains and transforms, lies in the embers.

"Not yet," he murmured, his eyes reflecting the orange light. He was seventy-four, his shoulders slightly stooped, the wild, restless fire of his youth having long since settled into a quiet, enduring warmth.

Finally, the logs broke apart with a soft crump, collapsing into a bed of pulsing, ruby-red coals. This was the moment. He set the poker aside and picked up a pair of heavy leather gloves. From a woven basket beside him, he retrieved foil-wrapped parcels: whole sweet potatoes, ears of late-season corn still in their thick husks, and apples cored and stuffed with butter.

With careful precision, he buried the food directly into the heart of the fire, covering the parcels with a blanket of white ash and glowing fragments.

Cooking over a gas stove is a matter of control, but cooking inside the embers is an act of surrender. You cannot see the food. You cannot stir it or turn a dial to lower the temperature. You must simply trust the fire to do its unseen work—to wrap its fierce, insulated heat around the raw ingredients and coax the sweet, dark sugars out of the starch.

Forty minutes later, he unearthed the blackened lumps. We sat on the cold patio stones, peeling back the charred foil and husks. The sweet potatoes had collapsed into themselves, their flesh transformed into a caramelized, smoky custard. The corn was tender, infused with the woody scent of the maple. We ate in a reverent silence, burning our fingertips, wiping soot and butter from our chins.

I looked at my father, watching him savor the simple, ash-tinged meal. The fire in the pit was dying now, reduced to a faint, powdery glow against the encroaching dark.

It struck me then that we spend so much of our lives chasing the roaring blazes—the passionate romances, the dramatic career shifts, the loud, visible triumphs. We want the tall flames. But as the cold night pressed in around us, I realized the flames eventually burn themselves out, leaving you grasping at smoke. It is the quiet, unassuming heat of the embers—the steady love of family, the comfort of shared rituals, the profound act of eating food forged in the ashes—that actually sustains you through the dark.

There is a particular kind of silence that lives in a kitchen after the last of the broth has been poured and the last of the bread has been torn. It is not the silence of absence, but the silence of completion. It is the quiet that M.F.K. Fisher would have recognized in a farmhouse in Provence or a rented room in Dijon—the soft exhalation of a room that has just fed a soul.

I learned to cook lentils in a kitchen that was not mine. The stove tilted slightly to the left, a geological fault line left by a century of settling foundations. The pot was a hand-me-down enamel thing, chipped at the rim like a secret smile. I was twenty-three, living in a city that smelled of wet brick and exhaust, and I was desperately, bone-achingly lonely in the way only a young person new to a vast grid of streets can be.

The recipe was from a yellowed index card, written in my grandmother’s looping cursive. It did not call for garlic confit or toasted cumin seeds. It called for a bag of brown lentils, a single bay leaf, and "enough water to cover by a thumb’s width." It was arithmetic for the poor or the wise.

That first night, I watched the lentils roll and settle in the bottom of the pot. They clicked against the metal like tiny, dry beetles. And then, the water began to steam. There is a moment in the cooking of a legume when the starch surrenders to the liquid, when the distinct separation between object and medium dissolves. The water ceased to be clear and became something else entirely: pot liquor. I remember standing over that crooked stove, a wooden spoon in my hand, and feeling a profound, almost embarrassing wave of relief. I had not created a grand meal; I had merely performed a basic act of survival. But in that steam, the arithmetic of the apartment changed. One person plus one pot plus one hour of quiet bubbling suddenly equaled a home.

Fisher wrote that dining alone is one of the last great civilized pleasures. She was right, but she omitted the prerequisite. You cannot truly enjoy the company of yourself until you have first fed that self with intention. The lonely eat from the carton, over the sink, their eyes on a screen. The solitary cook eats from a bowl they have chosen, sitting at a table they have cleared.

Last week, I found myself making that same pot of lentils. The kitchen now is mine, the stove is level, and the city is no longer a stranger. The bay leaf went in, then the water. As the steam rose to kiss my face, I was twenty-three again for just a breath. I tasted the broth, not for salt, but for the memory of that first night. It was still there, hiding in the cloudy amber liquid.

We often speak of food as a time machine, and the cliché is true only because it is so relentlessly accurate. But it is not the taste that transports us; it is the warmth. The steam on the chin. The weight of the bowl in two cupped hands. That is the silent arithmetic of the empty bowl. It proves, with a certainty no algebra can match, that we were here. We were hungry. And we took care of it ourselves.