Congratulations to Bethany Bruno from Huntsville, Alabama
for her amazing nonfiction essay titled:
Half of What I Hear
Check out Bethany’s submission,
Half of What I Hear as well as all the other winning entries
and then stop back here to read Bethany’s engaging interview with
Crystal J. Casavant-Otto from WOW! Women on Writing.
Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author and amateur historian. She holds a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her work has appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and magazines, including The Sun, McSweeney’s, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Brevity, and The Huffington Post. A Best of the Net nominee, she won 2025 flash fiction contests from Inscape Journal and Blue Earth Review. She is the winner of the 2026 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. Learn more at www.bethanybrunowriter.com.
WOW: Thank you Bethany for being with me today and sharing so intimately with the WOW! Readership. Keep up the great work and I look forward to working more with you in the future!
What is the take-away you’d like readers to gain from Half of What I Hear?
Bethany: For a long time, I treated my hearing loss as something to overcome. Instead, it taught me how to listen differently. I learned to pay attention to pauses, expressions, and what goes unsaid. Silence shaped how I move through the world and how I parent my daughters. I hope readers leave thinking differently about connection, and noticing how much meaning lives in quiet spaces.
WOW: Bethany - that is such a beautiful explanation for those of us who can only imagine the silence. As someone who is often overwhelmed with an overabundance of noise I can’t really imagine it, but I try… I find myself searching for somewhere quiet when I need to study or write. That makes me wonder, if it’s different for you. Where do you write? What does your space look like? Where did you write your winning piece?
Bethany: I write wherever I can find a little quiet. On telework days, that means writing at home while the house is empty. Most nights, it happens after my kids are asleep. Time is always the hardest part, so I’ve learned to write in short bursts and take what I can get.
I actually wrote No Swimming at Monson’s, the piece that won the Great American Fiction Contest, in my husband’s computer lab at work. During the summer, the university is nearly silent, and I loved slipping into that empty space to focus.
At home, I write at a large wooden desk I bought when we first moved to Alabama. I keep it mostly clear, partly by choice and partly because my toddler loves to grab anything within reach. I do keep a Far Side rip-away calendar on one corner, which feels like just the right amount of chaos.
WOW: The computer lab sounds dreamy - but I feel like my children might find me as they just love those screens! What’s next for you? What are your writing goals for 2026 and beyond?
Bethany: Over the past year, I’ve made a real shift toward writing more consistently. For a long time, I only produced a few pieces a year, which limited where and how often I could submit. Writing more changed everything. It opened doors I once thought were closed.
In the last year alone, I’ve had work accepted by places I’d been submitting to for more than a decade, including McSweeney’s, The Huffington Post, and River Teeth’s Beautiful Things. I started submitting seriously in 2011, right after college, knowing this was the life I wanted. Those acceptances felt like quiet confirmation that persistence matters.
Looking ahead, my goals are simple but big. I want to keep writing, keep submitting, and keep aiming higher. I’m also starting a new book. I’ve written two books in the past three years and queried widely without landing an agent, which has been humbling. Still, that goal hasn’t changed. I want to build a sustainable writing life. A Pushcart nomination is high on my list, not just as an honor but as a sign that the work is reaching beyond me.
WOW: You have an impressive bio. What’s one strange story about yourself that may surprise us?
Bethany: I’ve had a lot of interesting jobs, from English teacher to National Park Ranger to records manager for the Army. But one of the strangest experiences came when I was an undergraduate at Flagler College in St. Augustine, where I worked as a ghost tour guide.
For two years, I dressed in full nineteenth-century mourning clothes and played a grieving Spanish widow, hoop skirt and all. In the summer, it was brutal. I used to joke that I was slowly roasting as I walked people through the city.
One night, while leading a group of Girl Scouts, I stopped in front of the gates of the Tolomato Cemetery. As I was telling a story, several of the girls started pointing into the cemetery and whispering. One of them finally said, very calmly, “There’s a little boy in the tree.”
What unsettled me was that there’s a well-known local story about a young boy buried there whose spirit is said to appear playing in a tree nearby. I’ve always wondered if they knew the story or if they truly saw something I couldn’t. I never saw anything myself, but that moment has stayed with me.
WOW: Well if that isn’t the most surprising job I’ve ever heard of! Thank you for the photos - what fun!
Who is your support? What sustains you in writing and in life?
Bethany: Support has always been a complicated idea for me as a writer. The people in my life are kind and encouraging, but most aren’t deeply connected to what literary work means or how long the road can be. When something gets published, they’re happy for me, but the scale of it often lands differently.
My husband supports me in the way that matters most. He knows writing makes me happy, and he believes in the part of me that needs to keep doing it, even when the process is slow and quiet. What I’ve learned is that writing requires a certain self-reliance. You do it because you want the work to exist. In the end, you become your own support system, and your own reason for continuing. 
WOW!: Bethany - next time we chat I want to know more about being my own support system and my own reason for continuing… If only we had more time.
Thank you for sharing so much about yourself and your life - you’re amazing and I’m so thankful for our time together!
Today's post was penned by Crystal J. Casavant-Otto
Crystal Casavant writes.
Everything...
If you follow her blog you have likely laid eyes on every thought she has ever had as well as most of the recipes she's tried. She's a lot and she's not for everyone.
Her debut novel, It Was Never About Me, Was It? is still a work in progress and shall be fully worthy sometime in 2026...or maybe 2027. She has written for WOW! Women on Writing, Bring on Lemons, and has been featured in several magazines and ezines relating to credit and collections as well as religious collections for confessional Lutherans. She runs a busy household full of intelligent, recalcitrant, and delightful humans who give her breath and keep her heart beating day after day.
Crystal wears many hats (and not just the one in this photo) including college student, mom, musician, singer, administrator, writer, teacher, and friend. She fully believes in being in the moment and doing everything she can to improve the lives of those around her! The world may never know her name, but she prays that because of her, someone may smile a little brighter. She prides herself on doing nice things - yes, even for strangers!
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