“‘Goon’ is a stunning essay about anger and survival. It’s about sexual violence and unexpected forms of caregiving. It’s about bruises and little toothbrushes and running amok. It’s about the quest to find language for feelings that seem impossible to express—its fiercely acute intelligence is powered, throughout, by the desperate throb of a human heart and its stubborn pulse. The vitality of the prose itself feels like a reminder of what the essay itself quotes from a textbook—that running a fever is proof of life. The prose in this essay is running a fever, and it’s very much alive.”

— Leslie Jamison, 2020 Contest Judge