SMITH’s community of storytellers rose to our latest challenge in the style and spirit we’ve come to expect, submitting more than 430 entries from as close as across the hall to as far as at least India
for “Six Words on a Significant Object”. The contest was a collaboration with Significant Objects, the brainchild of Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. Their contention is one we can get behind: objects with stories attached to them increase in value. The pair have recruited writers like William Gibson, Nicholson Baker, and Curtis Sittenfeld to craft significance for flotsam purchased on the cheap at thrift stores, then selling story and object as a pair on eBay (Gibson’s story of an ashtray catapulted its value to $101 from $2.99). eBay is where the object you see above and this winning story are now headed: “You lose,” she puffed. True. Again.”

The scribe is Rob Agredo, who tells us he is a “reluctant dolly grip, living in the Bronx with his beautiful wife, twin three-year-old girls, and little dog Zuzu.” Rob receives all the loot from an online auction of that lighter/pool ball and his tale about it. Make a bid yourself or follow the money on eBay. Hemingway would surely approve.

It wasn’t easy to arrive at one winner—scroll through the entries, they’re awesome—so we also wanted to mention five more of our favorites and their authors.

“After pool table sex, smoked cigarettes.”
– Kelly Kreth

“He smoked me, I just smoked.”
– Cameron Vest, Reston, Virginia

“Old flame. Great rack. Plays game.”
Paul de Denus, Santa Rosa Beach, Fl

“Fire ball…….colliding………Earth………remain ca…”
Kritika Kushwaha, New Delhi, India

“Never needed those eyebrows. Your rack?”
Pete Sosalski