Read the winning piece of our 2025 Nonfiction Contest “Through the Mirror” by Jessie Cato selected by Lucy Ives.

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Photo of Winniebell Xinyu Zong

Winniebell Xinyu Zong

Winniebell Xinyu Zong is a Chinese poet and the 2024–25 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry magazine, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, swamp pink, and The Southern Review, among others. Zong has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, Best of Net, and AWP’s Intro Journals Project. Winner of the Meridians Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award and the Urban Justice Labs Mellon Fellowship, Zong taught creative writing as a lecturer at Cornell University, where she received her MFA.