MFA second-year Matt Weinstock has won the Graduate Writing Award from the The St. Louis Literary Award for his short story: "Whatever Happened to Jupenlaz?". The first ever Inspired By Showcase is an opportunity for students to use their own creativity in making works connected to Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. The winners will be recognized at the Author Craft Talk with Michael Chabon on April 16th. The St. Louis Literary Award event will take place on April 15th. Both events are virtual and are open to the public.
Selected Paragraph from the short story “Whatever Happened to Jupenlaz?”
Matt Weinstock
In 1949, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer celebrated its silver jubilee by gathering 59 of its 81 contract players on Stage 29 of the studio lot. After consuming bowls of the MGM commissary’s fabled chicken soup, the likes of Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Wallace Beery, and Arlene Dahl congregated on a serried platform for a “family” portrait. Most were dressed in the unobtrusive beige businesswear of the era, with the exception of Jennifer Jones, who came straight from the set of Madame Bovary and wore a white polonaise with black crimping around the bosom. Lassie sat curled at Mary Astor’s feet, and the closeted stars all wore red ascots, as if in a collective act of semaphore to future generations. The stars were arranged alphabetically, but somehow Judy Garland found herself seated at the rightful heart of the tableau. She wore a black dress, a honeysuckle brooch, and had in her lap a Delftware planter containing Metro’s strangest and most inexplicable star: a twelve-pound double rose bush named Jupenlaz.
