Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
(last name pronounced Shh-Low-Tee Bone-Ay)
Literary Awards and Honors
2022 Narrative Magazine Top Five Stories of the Week for "Suspicious Minds"
2021 Narrative Magazine 30 Below Contest Finalist for memoir
2020 Diverse Worlds grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation
2020 Dogwood Literary Award finalist in Nonfiction
2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards 2nd place Winner for Fiction
2018 Columbia Journal Creative Nonfiction Contest finalist judged by Alexander Chee
2018 New Ohio Review Creative Nonfiction Award finalist judged by Roxane Gay
Suspicious Minds
Spring 2022
Max has arrived. He’s wearing a tux and he’s baked me a cake. Like all the cakes he’s made for me, this one is just as elaborate, practically a small wedding cake with the words I love you so much Tatiana you have made me the luckiest man alive xoxoxo crammed into the frosting. It’s such a beautiful cake I don’t believe a sixteen-year-old boy perpetually on the brink of a mental breakdown could have made this, or the one-month, three-month, or five-month-versary cakes, the Christmas cake, the Just Thinking of You I Can’t Wait Until We Can Get Married Someday cake. But Max swears, he made them all.
Blackjack
Summer 2022
You sit at a $5 minimum bet table to play heads-up with the dealer, but an old man sits to your right, his silver chest hair poking through the buttons of his Hawaiian shirt. He shakes $80 out of his wallet, checks his pockets, and drops another crumpled $5 onto the table. He bets $10. Chest Hair is dealt a 17 and you’re dealt a 12.
High School for Dummies
Winter 2021
The homecoming dance was only a week away, and I was consumed by the details. Should I wear my hair up or down? Long dress or short dress? High heels or wedges? It was such a nice, normal obsession. When I wasn’t daydreaming about my actress career, I was obsessing over whether or not I was pregnant. I feared any headache or hunger or pimple as a sign of pregnancy.
Riding Dinosaurs with Boys
Summer 2019
I ran toward the mountain, crouching behind trees to hide from Carnotaurus, eating berries for stamina. We were still on a Discord call but neither of us spoke. I wanted us to talk, but I didn’t know what to say. I knew he was an experienced player and I didn’t want to say something that made me seem like a noob. ​Pushcart Prize Nominated