Island Rule: Winner of the 2017 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, selected by Richard Bausch

This short story, winner of the 2017 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, selected by Richard Bausch, concerns a professor of island biogeography, who finds her career in jeopardy after her research proposal to study the island she grew up on is rejected due to her status as “one who fled.” At the age of fourteen, she escaped the island, ruled by a dictator and policed by men in uniform, with the help of her cousin Shasta. She keeps her story a secret, keeping people at bay, certain they would never believe her; as a scientist, she has a hard time believing it herself.