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Fernie native published in KLC anthology

A Fernie native won first place in the adult fiction category of this year's Kootenay Literary Competition.
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Fernie native Eli Geddis’s short story

By Sam Van Schle

Black Press Staff

A Fernie native won first place in the adult fiction category of this year's Kootenay Literary Competition.

Eli Geddis, 27, graduated from Fernie Secondary School and currently lives in Nelson. His winning short story, Ninety Corn Dogs and a Porcupine, is about a man grieving the death of his twin brother who goes camping with a childhood friend in the Flathead Valley — only to get caught amid last summer's floods.

"I wanted to ground the story in a specific place and time that people who lived here would see as a reference point," Geddis explained. "Over the course of the nine days that the story takes place, the two characters are forced to confront both their relationships with each other and the past."

His story and all of this year's winning entires are published in the Kootenay Literary Competition Anthology, which is available at Polar Peek Books in Fernie.

The annual Kootenay Literary Competition is open to writers across the East and West Kootenay with categories for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and youth writing. This year's contest asked writers to incorporate the theme "refuge" into their stories.