About the Author
Vince Omni
Vince Omni is author of 1989, winner of the CRAFT 2025 Novelette Print Prize. Other awards include a PEN/Dau Short Story Prize, the Jesmyn Ward Prize in Fiction, and the Margaret Walker Memorial Prize in Creative Writing. His writing has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review and will be featured this year in Virgin Islands Noir and The Best Debut Short Stories 2025. Vince holds an MFA from the University of Kansas and a PhD from Florida State University, where he was a McKnight Doctoral Fellow. He teaches African American literature and creative writing at Lake Forest College and is cofounder of SoulClap: A Black Joy Journal.
The Masters Review Anthology Volume V
“The year is 1989. The culture is basketball. The religion is basketball. The language is basketball. Black basketball.”
Davyon, exiled to Denver after a fight with his abusive father, has a basketball jones. Tryouts at Jackson High are six weeks away, but the competition is tough. So is Church, the closeted ex-pro whose toxic manner is triggering but whose talent is undeniable. Davyon hopes the OG will coach him into shape, but Church isn’t interested-at least, not until Davyon squares up with Tyree, a homophobic hoop phenom and the one person standing in his way.
Selected by ‘Pemi Aguda as the winner of the CRAFT 2025 Novelette Print Prize Vince Omni’s 1989 is a coming-of-age that unfolds across scrimmages both on the court and off. Structured as an interview for a film student’s documentary, Davyon reflects on his summer in Denver being mentored Church, a former NBA vet with twelve seasons under his belt, ahead of his own high school tryouts. A marvel of narrative voice, 1989 is steeped in Black basketball culture but universally applicable, capturing “the pain that comes with an expanding understanding of the world.”