Here is the moment everyone has been waiting for:

WE ARE GOING TO ANNOUNCE THE WINNERS!

But first, we're going to tell you how we got to our conclusions.

Firstly, we got over 180 entries to the contest.

Only 46 of those made it past the staff member who was our elimination judge, and onto the second round of judging.

The authors' names were removed, and we got to judge them based solely on creativity. We gave the entries a score from 1 to 10. After five staff members (the elimination judge was not allowed to vote) had posted their vote, the votes were averaged. Anything with a vote higher than seven moved to the third round.

This is where judging became rigorous. The authors' names still had not been revealed, and were not revealed until the end. Each piece of poetry or prose which had made it into the third round was judged on a rubric.

The Prose Rubric:

__ Creativity
__ Proper use of grammar and punctuation
__ Character development
__ Effective use of dialogue (internal or external)
__ Originality in use of selected words
__ Believability
__ Readability
__ Total Score

The Poetry Rubric:

__ Creativity
__ Effective use of line breaks and punctuation
__ Imagery
__ Metaphor or simile
__ Originality in use of selected words
__ Readability
__ Coherency of message or meaning
__ Total Score

Each of these criteria were given a score of 1 to 10. Every piece in the third round was judged by two judges, two of the prose commenters and two of the poetry commenters. The two judges' votes were then averaged, and our winners are:

First Place: A 1 year subscription to DeviantART and 30 dollars of DeviantCASH go to:

, for the prose "The Addict, the Dyke, and the Killer", with a score of 60.

Second Place: A 1 year subscription to DeviantART goes to:

, for the poem "Ad Maiorem dei Gloriam", with a score of 58.

THERE WAS A TIE FOR THIRD PLACE!

We solved this by a poll. The tying score was 54 for a prose and a poem. The final vote was based on the best-written overall for the work's genre. With four out of five votes...

Third Place: A three month subscription to DeviantART goes to:

, for the poem "Congestion", with a score of 54 and an overall staff vote of 4 to 1 in favor of her writing.

...and now...

The Unexpected Honorable Mention: A one month subscription for Honorable Mention goes to:

, for the prose "A Nice Morning", which was the tying prose for third place.

Congratulations to the winners!