March 21, 2008

AAJA-LA Member Vanessa Hua has won first prize in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly student fiction contest. The award comes with a $1,000 prize. Hua’s entry, titled “What We Have is What We Need,” is the story of Lalo, a Mexican who crosses the border to join his parents in San Francisco. His father, a locksmith, is teaching him the trade when they make a shattering discovery on one of their house calls. The short story also will be published in the spring issue of the journal American Literary Review, which is available in May.

Hua is an AAJA-LA Unity 2008 stipend winner. She is a first-year student in UC Riverside’s Master of Fine Arts program. She was formerly a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. She is a graduate of the ELP Class of 2007 in New York City and is a past co-president of the AAJA San Francisco Bay Area chapter.