Ashley Leigh Bourne Prize for Fiction

Ploughshares is pleased to present E. K. Ota with the fifth annual Ashley Leigh Bourne Prize for Fiction for her short story “The Paper Artist,” which appeared in the Fall 2022 issue, edited by Editor-in-chief Ladette Randolph. The $2,500 prize, sponsored by longtime patron Hunter C. Bourne III and selected by our editors, honors a short story published in the journal in the previous year.

Ota’s “The Paper Artist” centers on Muneo, a famous paper artist who lives in Kyoto, Japan. His daughter, Mana, visits to introduce him and her mother, Masako, to her boyfriend, and to tell them she is pregnant. Muneo rejects Mana, telling her “If you don’t take care of the baby and get rid of this man, don’t think that you are welcome to show your face here again.” When Mana leaves with her boyfriend for New York, a rift forms in the family and Muneo is left to reflect on his own life and the generational pressure that informs both who he is and how he treats his daughter. We see a father forced to come to terms with his rejection of his daughter, the familial divisions that formed when she left, and the grandchild he has never known.

E. K. Ota was born in Southern California and received her BA from Middlebury College and her MFA from Emerson College. She was a 2018 Massachusetts Cultural Artist Fellow and a recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in 2019. Her stories have been published in Ploughshares, ZYZZYVA, and Narrative, among other journals. Currently, she lives in Japan and is at work on a short story collection.

What inspired “The Paper Artist”?

It’s often the title of a story that will bring it into focus, and I’m reluctant to let any story loose in the world if I don’t have a title that somehow embodies its essence. Sometimes the title comes only after I’ve finished the last line, or I’ll struggle through a story, and then halfway through a title will materialize and give me the energy and clarity I need to drive it home. With this particular story, the title came before I even began writing, and it was inspired by a real-life paper artist, Reina Takahashi (who, by the way, is a lovely, considerate, and perceptive person—almost the opposite in every way to the paper artist in the story!). Before I met Reina, I’d never heard of anyone doing paper art. Almost immediately, I felt “The Paper Artist” as a title had an irresistible ring to it, and I wanted to explore the life of a character whose precision and control are vehicles for both thrill and evisceration. For a long time, all I had for the story was the title and two images: an old man in Kyoto and a young girl who visits him from the US. Occasionally, I’d revisit these three elements and jangle them around, but it took years for them to make any sort of music. As with a lot of my stories, I don’t know what happened or what changed, but one day there was a shift and it all came together and started flowing.

What did you discover or grapple with while writing the story?

I had a lot of fun slipping in and out of the points of view of different characters; it allowed me to examine the interplay of the narratives they have about their situation and the people around them. People are mysteries. We either forget this and treat them as if they are an open book with an ending we can already predict, or we are hyper aware of it and fill the void of our unknowing with stories to help us understand who they are. And so, beneath the surface of so many situations—even calm ones!—there is a wild current of narratives that rub up against each other, spark heat, contradict, and occasionally align in ways that produce intrigue and tension. In this story, I wanted to explore the power that these invisible narratives have to shape the situations the characters find themselves in, and I wanted to try to capture that moment when a character realizes that the story he’s told himself may not be the real one after all.

How does this story fit with the rest of your work?

I’m realizing that I’m drawn to those moments in which someone brushes up against the recognition of their own blindness. Though the experience can be disorienting and disturbing, there is a way for it to also be liberating. It walks that thin ridge we call awe, which can tip so easily into awful or awesome. I like exploring that territory. It comes with an alertness to profound possibility and danger that can, for even just a moment, tune the senses to a perfect pitch.

What does winning the Ashley Leigh Bourne Prize mean to you?

It means so much! I recently became a mom and often find myself moving through a daze of joy and exhaustion. It can be hard to find the time to write in the midst of it all, so this is such timely encouragement to make space and keep on going.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a collection of short stories.