About the winner

An enormous, hard-to-sell mansion in Spokane's Lincoln Park neighborhood is the unlikely fulcrum of Steve Wing's short story, "Seeing," which is the winner of The Inlander's 6th Annual Short Fiction Contest.


"The house is not too far from where I live," says Wing. "It's actually the old Hutton Mansion." As a member of the Friends of Lincoln Park Committee, he sometimes led tours of the graceful old residence, which is how he discovered the realtor was having a hard time moving such an enormous, expensive property. "It's so huge and so beautiful, but there was no parking lot for any commercial use, and it was too big or expensive for a lot of families to afford. I thought it would make a great setting for a story some day."


Wing spent his formative years in Montana. He was born and raised in Butte, and he has a degree in creative writing from the University of Montana, where he studied under Richard Hugo, William Kittredge and Rick Demarinis. He lived for a time in Seattle before settling in Spokane with his wife and two children. Although he currently works as a technical writer for the Lambert Group, Wing has continued to write both non-fiction and short stories, including one three-year novel endeavor. "It didn't work out, but I learned from it," he says. "I learned what I couldn't do." When asked what he does when he's not writing, Wing smiles and says "reading. To prime the pump." F





Auntie's Bookstore, sponsors of The Inlander's 6th Annual


Fiction Contest, will host Steve Wing at a reading on Thursday,


Jan. 17, at 7:30 pm. Our runners-up, Ann Clizer and George


Thomas, will also participate. Call: 838-0601.