We are thrilled to announce Andrew Porter as this year’s judge for Best Emerging Writers! Porter is author of four books, including The Disappeared and the forthcoming This Imagined Life. Porter will select ten stories and essays from a shortlist of thirty provided by The Masters Review‘s editorial staff. All winners receive a $700 prize, along with publication online, in our internationally distributed print anthology, and a contributor’s copy. Submissions to this year’s contest will open April 10. Find all the details below or on our contest page—and stay tuned for the release of Best Emerging Writers 2024 in just a few weeks!
About the Judge
ANDREW PORTER is the author of the story collections The Disappeared (Knopf) and The Theory of Light and Matter (Vintage) and the novels In Between Days (Knopf) and The Imagined Life (Knopf). A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received a Pushcart Prize, a James Michener/Copernicus Fellowship, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His work has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Best American Short Stories, and on Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. Currently, he teaches fiction writing and directs the creative writing program at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Guidelines:
- Submissions of fiction or creative nonfiction must be under 8,000 words.
- This contest is for emerging writers only. Writers with single-author book-length work published or under contract with a major press are ineligible. We are interested in providing a platform to new writers; authors with books published by indie or university presses and self-published authors are welcome to submit unpublished work.
- Submitted work must be previously unpublished, which includes publication on personal blogs, social media accounts, and other websites. Previously published work will be automatically disqualified.
- The entry fee per submission is $20.
- Simultaneous submissions and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $20 fee.
- Writers from historically marginalized or underrepresented groups are invited to submit for free until we reach fifty submissions in this category.
- If your submission is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw your submission on Submittable, or contact us otherwise to let us know the piece is no longer available.
- We do not require anonymous submissions for this contest, though the guest judge will review the shortlist anonymously.
- International submissions are allowed, provided the work is written primarily in English. Some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- No translations, please.
- All submissions must be double-spaced with one-inch page margins and use Times New Roman or Garamond 12 (or larger, if needed for accessibility).
- The contest’s deadline is 11:59 p.m. PDT on June 8, 2025.
- All entries are considered for publication in New Voices.
- Every submission will receive a response by the end of September 2025. The winners will be announced in October 2025.
- Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are ineligible for this award.
- Writers whose work appears in previous editions of our anthology are ineligible for this award.
Ten winners will receive:
- a $700 award;
- publication in our internationally distributed anthology and on our website;
- a contributor’s copy;
- and exposure to over fifty literary agencies as part of our exclusive mailing. We send our anthology to editors, writers, and literary institutions across the country.