That’s right, folks! The 2024-2025 Winter Short Story Award for New Writers is right around the corner, and this year’s winners will be chosen by none other than Bret Anthony Johnston! The contest is open from December 1, 2024, to February 2, 2025. We accept submissions of fiction or creative nonfiction up to 6,000 words from writers who have yet to publish a full-length manuscript with a major press. The grand prize winner will earn a $3,000 prize along with online publication and agency review from our partnered agents. The full contest guidelines can be found below or on our contest page.
Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of We Burn Daylight, Remember Me Like This, and Corpus Christi: Stories. His work appears in The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Best American Short Stories 2011, and elsewhere. He’s the Director of the Michener Center for Writers.
Submission Guidelines:
- The first-place winner receives $3,000, online publication, and agency review.
- The second- and third-place finalists receive cash prizes ($300/$200), online publication, and agency review.
- Submissions of fiction or creative nonfiction must be under 6,000 words.
- Submitted work must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs, social media accounts, and other websites. Previously published work will be automatically disqualified.
- The entry fee is $20.
- Simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $20 entry fee.
- Writers from historically marginalized or underrepresented groups are invited to submit for free until we reach fifty submissions in this category. No additional fee waivers will be granted.
- 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, but the guest judge will read the shortlist anonymously.
- 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interested in providing a platform to new writers; authors with books published by indie presses are welcome to submit unpublished work, as are self-published authors.
- 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.
- The contest’s deadline is 11:59pm PDT on February 2, 2025.
- All entries are also considered for publication in New Voices.
- Every submission will receive a response by the end of May 2025. The winners will be announced by the end of June 2025.
- AI-generated submissions will be automatically disqualified.
- Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for this award. Consider submitting to the summer contest instead!