The First Page Challenge 2026—3rd place

Congrats to Kirsten Shute for winning third place in the First Page Challenge! Here's what our judge (Michelle Barker) had to say:

"In third place, Carol Winter Writes an Essay: Here, voice and humour worked in equal measure to draw me into the story. The voice is quirky with an undertone of self-doubt I found very relatable."

Carol Winter Writes an Essay

When I was thirteen, I had a crush on Osama bin Laden. I saw his picture on page nine of The Gazette the day after he’d made all those planes crash. He had two white streaks running down his beard like Cruella de Vil’s hair, just more symmetrical. His dark eyes smoldered with the heat of the desert or wherever he lived. And his mouth curled slightly at the edges, as if he knew I was looking at him.

I thought about him at school while I was doing algebra problems. That kind of stuff didn’t need much thought and there wasn’t a lot to look at. Everyone’s desk faced the wall because we were in a weird Christian school where people had to work on their own. Anyway, I was thinking about bin Laden. You wouldn’t expect such an old person to have nice skin, but his was perfect. He looked like a model for a cologne that smelled of wood and cinnamon.

I guess this was what Gabby from class meant by liking someone famous. Only I was too late to answer her question.

See, the day of September Eleventh, before we knew anything was happening, she went right up to my face and said, “Carol Winter!”

I didn’t answer, “Gabrielle Lamoureux!” I just went, “Yeah?”

“Who’s your celebrity crush? I bet it’s Justin Timberlake.”

I shook my head.

“You look like you’d like Justin Timberlake.”

I shook my head again. I was prepared to nod if it was okay to like Justin Timberlake, but I wasn’t sure.

“Well, who do you like?”

The weirdest thought popped into my mind: Pranavy Bharati if she was a boy. That was my upstairs neighbour—who wasn’t even famous, just rich. So I shrugged. “Nobody!”

Kirsten Shute is the author of the chapbook Fanfiction Is for Teenage Girls (Cactus Press, 2025). She’s currently working on two longer projects: a poetry collection based on her language immersion experience in Germany and a novel set in 2001 Dorval, the first page of which appears here. Stories and poems of hers have been published in Twigs and Leaves, Soliloquies, and The Claremont Review. She writes, edits, and teaches in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal and posts on Instagram sometimes at @kirsten_shute_writing.