Justin Waldron Memorial Prize
for Innovative Prose

2024

“The Justin Waldron Memorial Prize for Innovative Prose is awarded to works that capture and embody the spirit of Justin’s literary legacy. It is this spirit that aligns with the mission of the Swamp Ape Review and one that we aspire to embody in the prose that we publish and produce. We thank Justin’s family for their generosity in funding this award. ”
 

In honor of Justin Waldron

Thank you for everything you’ve done for your family, friends, community, and creative writers everywhere.

This prize was established to honor the life of Justin Waldron, an alumni of Florida Atlantic University’s MFA in Creative Writing and a longtime instructor for the Department of English. A writer of extraordinary and bizarre fiction, Justin was a man whose work aimed to unearth the human through the offbeat and circumambulatory. He was an extraordinary teacher; a loyal and generous friend; and a beloved son, grandson, and brother. 

 🕊️🕊️🕊️

“It will forever be too long since Justin has been with us, but I am still not entirely comfortable using the past tense in my habit of bringing up my friend in conversation. It is an odd thing, detangling the knots of so many experiences alongside Justin from the impulse to define all that time through this painful, unjust absence, with just a tiny piece of grammar to buttress the gratitude against the grief. However, the present tense of Justin’s wide impact on his community is
distinct and immutable. The literary present tense would be more appropriate because Justin is still speaking through his family, his friends, his students, his music, his writing, and what he teaches all of us about dividing the noise from the signal, prioritizing the path and the place, loving who you can hold onto and paddling the oars together. 

It’s hard to capture too much of Justin in one look because he means so much to so many people. I don’t think I’ve ever known a person who is so many people’s best friend while never seeming to run out of energy or flagging his desire to connect with his community. Justin embodies presence and care. An acutely moral person, Justin advocated for preserving nature by educating anyone who would listen to him about the Florida landscape and anyone who could see how thoroughly he enjoyed being connected to what wilderness can still be found. As an artist, Justin’s fiction is deeply human. It extends his relationship to the community by working to unearth the alienated and examine the forces that wound our bonds to nature and self and how the two would hold the center of our best experiences if only we were left with our most honest desires.” 

  • Jake Henson, MFA 

 🕊️🕊️🕊️

“I’ve never observed anyone, before or since, who was more difficult to dislike than Justin. He was a gravitational source. All people - and animals - who were grasped by this energy were better for it and went forth into the world able to pass a bit of that along to others. These types of things are written of those who’ve passed. Justin is still very much present. He lingers. Accosts my thinking with a hot take from some parallel universe while I suddenly dip through space time on a drive to work. Chuckle. Shake my head. Busy my way again through life. Better for it. 

Justin’s art was as weird and brilliant as he was. His best asset to humanity was existing with an honest oddity, at all times. His sincerity was matched only by his wit. An odd mixture of the genuine and sarcastic, he was a finely tuned hot mess in perfect accordance with nature, cobbled at creation to combat the mundane in this world where too often too much is taken either too lightly or too fucking seriously. He toed the line, bulldozed through it, and circled back around with a smile and a funny story. Any comical narrative related by Justin, in conversation or by written word, had a resolute message kernelled within: be better humans. World up.” 

  • Matt Parker, MFA 

 🕊️🕊️🕊️