For the first time, this year, our contest devoted to the short short was split into three specific categories: micro, flash, and sudden fiction. You all sent in your best and without further delay, we are ready to announce the final ten small fictions in each of our three categories! K-Ming Chang will be selecting a winner and a runner-up in each category, with the winners receiving a $1,000 cash prize along with publication. Congratulations to all authors represented on our shortlist, and thank you to every single one of our terrific submitters! Stay tuned for the winners next month.

Microfiction

Cinderella at the Podiatrist by Margaret Adams

Naz 8 Cinemas by Aliza Ali Khan

Sandbox by Colin Bonini

Abdomen by Allison Field Bell

Wedding Present by David Fowler

Non Sequitur by Elizabeth Fay Furlong

Avoidance by Ariel Katz

For the Birds by Ariya Kelly

Fire on Felsham Road by Kathryn Phelan

Forest of Stone by Matthew Torralba Andrews

Flash Fiction

The Good Daddies by Gianna Gaetano

Was Jesus a Socialist? by Jenny Hayden Halper

Hotel Elefant by Emil Jarczynski

Whale Song by Jeff Martin

Lizard Dreams by Sue McMillan

The Peach Keeper by Sonia Moses

Hatching Moths by Emily Pegg

Fuse by Alan Sincic

Rules Keep You Safe by Dawn Tasaka Steffler

I AM A TINDER LESBIAN HOLDING A SANDING MACHINE, SEEKING GSOH by Charlie Wührer

Sudden Fiction

Nectar by Kerry Anderson

Seven Sol Cycles by Samantha Bolf

SMOOTHING by Hayden Casey

Immaculate by Susanna Cupido

I Play One on TV by Carrie Grinstead

Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine by Ryan Habermeyer

How to be an Atomic Wife by Sarah Hassan

The Ravine by Sophie Holdstock

A Portrait of the Lobotomist as a Young Man by S.B. Kleinman

Glamour by Marcus Rosen

We are accepting manuscript submissions to our 2023 Chapbook Open until December 17! Got a flash collection in your drawer? Send it our way. Novellette? We’re interested. A really long short story that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else? You bet. For this prize, we are considering any submission of prose between 25 and 45 pages. The winner, selected by Michael Martone, will receive print publication through The Masters Review along with a $3,000 cash prize and 75 contributor copies. Find all the details below or on our contest page!

Submissions Open Through December 17!

Add to Calendar

For the fourth year, The Masters Review is open for submissions of literary prose chapbooks! We’re interested in collections of flash fiction, creative nonfiction essays, short stories, and anything in-between. We encourage you to be bold, to experiment with style and form, as long as you stay under 45 pages. One chapbook will be selected as our winner by our guest judge, Michael Martone! The winner receives a $3,000 cash prize, along with manuscript publication and 75 contributor copies. Our chapbooks are distributed internationally and are available through Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. A digital version of the chapbook will be made available to our newsletter subscribers six months to a year after the print publication.

Submissions will be accepted between September 1 and December 17, 2023. The Masters Review staff will select a shortlist of five to ten chapbooks to pass along to Michael Martone, who will pick the winner and write an introduction for the manuscript. The winning chapbook will be published in Spring 2025. Last year’s winner, Coats by Naomi Telushkin, selected by Kim Fu, will be published next spring. Masterplans by Nick Almeida, our inaugural winner, was chosen by Steve Almond, and Matt Bell selected Love at the End of the World by Lindy Biller as the winner of our second contest.

All submissions must be single-author prose manuscripts of 25 to 45 pages. We are not interested in poetry. All manuscripts must be complete: no excerpts, no chapters of a novel, no works-in-progress, or any other incomplete work. Individual pieces may be previously published, but submitted manuscripts should contain some unpublished material. If you have questions or concerns about whether your manuscript would qualify, please email us at contact [at] mastersreview [dot] com.

Submission Guidelines:

• Manuscripts should include a Table of Contents (if necessary) and an acknowledgements page listing any previously published material within the manuscript.
• Submitted manuscripts must be between 25-45 double-spaced pages, at 12-point font (not including front/back matter, i.e., title page, dedication, table of contents, etc.). For collections, each piece should begin on a new page.
• Manuscripts must contain some unpublished material. Previously published material cannot have been published in any other chapbook or full-length collection. (Work that was included in a multiauthor anthology is permissible.)
• Self-published chapbooks are previously published and are therefore ineligible.
• We are not interested in poetry chapbooks. (We will consider chapbooks that contain some prose poetry.)
• Only single-author manuscripts will be considered.
• Simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $25 entry fee.
• The winner receives $3,000, manuscript publication, and 75 contributor copies.
• The second- and third-place finalists will be acknowledged on our website, alongside any honorable mentions.
• 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.
• 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 and self-published authors are welcome to submit unpublished work.
• International submissions are allowed, provided the work is written primarily in English.
• Submissions are accepted through Submittable only.
• The contest’s deadline is 11:59 p.m. PST on December 17, 2023.
• Individual stories or essays within the manuscript may be considered for publication in our New Voices series.
• Every submission will receive a response by the end of April 2024. The winners will be announced by the end of May 2024.
• Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for this award, nor are past Chapbook Open winners.
• Editorial letters for up to three individual pieces within the manuscript may be requested. A significant portion of the editorial letter fee goes directly to your feedback editor. Scaling fees are in place to appropriately compensate your feedback editor.
• Please email us at contact [at] mastersreview [dot] com with any questions, or if you need to edit your manuscript after submission.

We don’t have any preferences topically or in terms of style. We’re simply looking for the best. We don’t define, nor are we interested in, stories identified by their genre. We do, however, consider ourselves a publication that focuses on literary fiction. Dazzle us, take chances, and be bold.

About the Judge

MICHAEL MARTONE’s recent books include Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana; The Complete Writings of Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone; The Moon Over Wapakoneta; Brooding; and Memoranda. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, Story, Epoch, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Bomb, StoryQuarterly, American Short Fiction, and many other magazines.

Martone has won two fellowships from the NEA and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. His stories and essays have won numerous awards and have appeared and been cited in the Pushcart Prize, The Best American Stories, and The Best American Essays anthologies. In 2013 he received the national Indiana Authors Award; in 2016, the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to Midwestern Literature; and in 2023, the Truman Capote Prize for Distinguished Work in the Short Story or Literary Non-Fiction.

Submissions for our 2023 Novel Excerpt Contest will be open from September 1 (that’s today) through November 12. Unpublished excerpts up to 6,000 words are eligible for this prize. The grand-prize finalist will receive a $3,000 cash prize, along with online publication and an hour-long consultation with a literary agent. Matthew Salesses will select three finalists from a shortlist of fifteen excerpts, prepared by The Masters Review‘s editorial staff. Find the full details and a link to submit below or on our contest page!

Submissions Close November 12!

Add to Calendar

Each fall, The Masters Review hosts a call for novel excerpts! Writing a novel can be an arduous and lonely process, but we’re here to champion the great work being produced. Whether your book is not quite finished or ready to pitch, we want to read your words. For this contest, we’re looking for self-contained excerpts that display a strong voice, compelling characters, and carefully constructed narrative arcs. You may submit an excerpt from any section of your completed or in-progress novel, but choose wisely: a synopsis should not be required for understanding the excerpt. As always, we have no limitations on genre, though we are primarily interested in literary fiction.

This year, our guest judge is Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, and The Hundred-Year Flood. Salesses will select the finalists from a shortlist provided by The Masters Review’s editorial team. The winning excerpt will be awarded $3,000; online publication; and an hour-long consultation with Halley Dunne Perry, a literary agent with The Hamilburg Agency. Second- and third-place excerpts will be awarded online publication and $300 and $200 respectively, in addition to written feedback from Dunne Perry.

Submission Guidelines:

• Submitted excerpts must be under 6,000 words.
• Submitted work must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs, social media accounts, and other websites. Previously published excerpts will be immediately disqualified.
• The entry fee is $20.
• Simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $20 entry fee.
• The winner receives $3,000; online publication; and a consultation with Halley Dunne Perry, a literary agent with The Hamilburg Agency.
• The second- and third-place finalists receive cash prizes ($300/$200), online publication, and agent feedback.
• If your submission is accepted or contracted 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 judge will review 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 and self-published authors are welcome to submit unpublished work.
• International submissions are allowed, provided the work is written primarily in English.
• All submissions must be double-spaced with one-inch page margins and use Times New Roman or Garamond 12 (or larger, if necessary).
• Excerpts from novels under contract for 2023 or 2024 are ineligible, but novels under contract from 2025 and beyond are eligible.
• The contest’s deadline is 11:59 p.m. PST on Sunday, November 12, 2023.
• All entries will be considered for publication in New Voices.
• Every submission will receive a response by the end of March 2024. The winners will be announced by the end of April 2024.
• Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for this award, nor are past winners of the Novel Excerpt Contest.
• A significant portion of the editorial letter fees go to our feedback editor.

About the Judge

MATTHEW SALESSES is the author of eight books, most recently The Sense of Wonder (Little, Brown, 2023), the national bestseller Craft in the Real World (a Best Book of 2021 at NPR, Esquire, Library Journal, Independent Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Electric Literature, and others), and the PEN/Faulkner Finalist and Dublin Literary Award longlisted novel Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear. He also wrote The Hundred-Year Flood; I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying; Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity; The Last Repatriate; and Our Island of Epidemics (out of print). Forthcoming is a memoir, To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time (Little, Brown).

Matthew was adopted from Korea. In 2015 Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers. His essays can be found in Best American Essays 2020, NPR Code Switch, The New York Times Motherlode, The Guardian, Time, VICE.com, and other venues. His short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, PEN/Guernica, Witness, and elsewhere. He has received awards and fellowships from, among others, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Dublin Literary Award, Bread Loaf, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, and [PANK] Books.

Matthew is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University. He earned a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston and an MFA in Fiction from Emerson College. He serves on the editorial boards of Green Mountains Review and Machete (an imprint of The Ohio State University Press), and has held editorial positions at Pleiades, The Good Men Project, Gulf Coast, and Redivider. He has read and lectured widely at conferences and universities and on TV and radio, including PBS, NPR, Al Jazeera America, various MFA programs, and the Tin House, Kundiman, and One Story writing conferences.

That’s right: not one, but two judge announcements in one week. This announcement comes with a second announcement, which is that this year’s Novel Excerpt Contest will be opening one month earlier than in past years. The dates for this year’s contest are September 1 through November 12. No more worrying about getting your manuscripts together when you should be sitting down with your family enjoying your time off over Thanksgiving weekend! Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, and The Hundred-Year Flood will select the finalists for the 2023 Novel Excerpt Contest from a shortlist provided by our editorial team. The winner receives a $3,000 cash prize, online publication, and an hour-long agency consultation with a literary agent! Find all the details below or on our contest page.

Submissions Open September 1!

Add to Calendar

About the Judge

MATTHEW SALESSES is the author of eight books, most recently The Sense of Wonder (Little, Brown, 2023), the national bestseller Craft in the Real World (a Best Book of 2021 at NPR, Esquire, Library Journal, Independent Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Electric Literature, and others), and the PEN/Faulkner Finalist and Dublin Literary Award longlisted novel Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear. He also wrote The Hundred-Year Flood; I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying; Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity; The Last Repatriate; and Our Island of Epidemics (out of print). Forthcoming is a memoir, To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time (Little, Brown).

Matthew was adopted from Korea. In 2015 Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers. His essays can be found in Best American Essays 2020, NPR Code Switch, The New York Times Motherlode, The Guardian, Time, VICE.com, and other venues. His short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, PEN/Guernica, Witness, and elsewhere. He has received awards and fellowships from, among others, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Dublin Literary Award, Bread Loaf, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, and [PANK] Books.

Matthew is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University. He earned a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston and an MFA in Fiction from Emerson College. He serves on the editorial boards of Green Mountains Review and Machete (an imprint of The Ohio State University Press), and has held editorial positions at Pleiades, The Good Men Project, Gulf Coast, and Redivider. He has read and lectured widely at conferences and universities and on TV and radio, including PBS, NPR, Al Jazeera America, various MFA programs, and the Tin House, Kundiman, and One Story writing conferences.

Each fall, The Masters Review hosts a call for novel excerpts! Writing a novel can be an arduous and lonely process, but we’re here to champion the great work being produced. Whether your book is not quite finished or ready to pitch, we want to read your words. For this contest, we’re looking for self-contained excerpts that display a strong voice, compelling characters, and carefully constructed narrative arcs. You may submit an excerpt from any section of your completed or in-progress novel, but choose wisely: a synopsis should not be required for understanding the excerpt. As always, we have no limitations on genre, though we are primarily interested in literary fiction.

Submission Guidelines:

• Submitted excerpts must be under 6,000 words.
• Submitted work must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs, social media accounts, and other websites. Previously published excerpts will be immediately disqualified.
• The entry fee is $20.
• Simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $20 entry fee.
• The winner receives $3,000; online publication; and a consultation with Halley Dunne Perry, a literary agent with The Hamilburg Agency.
• The second- and third-place finalists receive cash prizes ($300/$200), online publication, and agent feedback.
• If your submission is accepted or contracted 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 judge will review 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 and self-published authors are welcome to submit unpublished work.
• International submissions are allowed, provided the work is written primarily in English.
• All submissions must be double-spaced with one-inch page margins and use Times New Roman or Garamond 12 (or larger, if necessary).
• Excerpts from novels under contract for 2023 or 2024 are ineligible, but novels under contract from 2025 and beyond are eligible.
• The contest’s deadline is 11:59 p.m. PST on Sunday, November 12, 2023.
• All entries will be considered for publication in New Voices.
• Every submission will receive a response by the end of March 2024. The winners will be announced by the end of April 2024.
• Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for this award, nor are past winners of the Novel Excerpt Contest.
• A significant portion of the editorial letter fees go to our feedback editor.

While you’re anxiously awaiting the release of Naomi Telushkin’s Coats, the 2022 Chapbook Open winner, wrap your head around this bit of news: Michael Martone will serve as the guest judge for the 2023 Chapbook Open! Submissions this year will be open from September 1 through December 17. One winner will receive a $3,000 cash prize along with the print publication of their manuscript and 75 contributor copies. Find out all the details below or on our contest page.

Submissions Open September 1!

Add to Calendar

About the Judge

MICHAEL MARTONE’s recent books include Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana; The Complete Writings of Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone; The Moon Over Wapakoneta; Brooding; and Memoranda. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, Story, Epoch, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Bomb, StoryQuarterly, American Short Fiction, and many other magazines.

Martone has won two fellowships from the NEA and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. His stories and essays have won numerous awards and have appeared and been cited in the Pushcart Prize, The Best American Stories, and The Best American Essays anthologies. In 2013 he received the national Indiana Authors Award; in 2016, the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to Midwestern Literature; and in 2023, the Truman Capote Prize for Distinguished Work in the Short Story or Literary Non-Fiction.

For the fourth year, The Masters Review is open for submissions of literary prose chapbooks! We’re interested in collections of flash fiction, creative nonfiction essays, short stories, and anything in-between. We encourage you to be bold, to experiment with style and form, as long as you stay under 45 pages. One chapbook will be selected as our winner by our guest judge, Michael Martone! The winner receives a $3,000 cash prize, along with manuscript publication and 75 contributor copies. Our chapbooks are distributed internationally and are available through Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. A digital version of the chapbook will be made available to our newsletter subscribers six months to a year after the print publication.

Submissions will be accepted between September 1 and December 17, 2023. The Masters Review staff will select a shortlist of five to ten chapbooks to pass along to Michael Martone, who will pick the winner and write an introduction for the manuscript. The winning chapbook will be published in Spring 2025. Last year’s winner, Coats by Naomi Telushkin, selected by Kim Fu, will be published next spring. Masterplans by Nick Almeida, our inaugural winner, was chosen by Steve Almond, and Matt Bell selected Love at the End of the World by Lindy Biller as the winner of our second contest.

All submissions must be single-author prose manuscripts of 25 to 45 pages. We are not interested in poetry. All manuscripts must be complete: no excerpts, no chapters of a novel, no works-in-progress, or any other incomplete work. Individual pieces may be previously published, but submitted manuscripts should contain some unpublished material. If you have questions or concerns about whether your manuscript would qualify, please email us at contact [at] mastersreview [dot] com.

Submission Guidelines:

• Manuscripts should include a Table of Contents (if necessary) and an acknowledgements page listing any previously published material within the manuscript.
• Submitted manuscripts must be between 25-45 double-spaced pages, at 12-point font (not including front/back matter, i.e., title page, dedication, table of contents, etc.). For collections, each piece should begin on a new page.
• Manuscripts must contain some unpublished material. Previously published material cannot have been published in any other chapbook or full-length collection. (Work that was included in a multiauthor anthology is permissible.)
• Self-published chapbooks are previously published and are therefore ineligible.
• We are not interested in poetry chapbooks. (We will consider chapbooks that contain some prose poetry.)
• Only single-author manuscripts will be considered.
• Simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $25 entry fee.
• The winner receives $3,000, manuscript publication, and 75 contributor copies.
• The second- and third-place finalists will be acknowledged on our website, alongside any honorable mentions.
• 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.
• 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 and self-published authors are welcome to submit unpublished work.
• International submissions are allowed, provided the work is written primarily in English.
• Submissions are accepted through Submittable only.
• The contest’s deadline is 11:59pm PST on December 17, 2023.
• Individual stories or essays within the manuscript may be considered for publication in our New Voices series.
• Every submission will receive a response by the end of April 2024. The winners will be announced by the end of May 2024.
• Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for this award, nor are past Chapbook Open winners.
• Editorial letters for up to three individual pieces within the manuscript may be requested. A significant portion of the editorial letter fee goes directly to your feedback editor. Scaling fees are in place to appropriately compensate your feedback editor.
• Please email us at contact [at] mastersreview [dot] com with any questions, or if you need to edit your manuscript after submission.

We don’t have any preferences topically or in terms of style. We’re simply looking for the best. We don’t define, nor are we interested in, stories identified by their genre. We do, however, consider ourselves a publication that focuses on literary fiction. Dazzle us, take chances, and be bold.

Congratulations to the following authors whose stories and essays were selected for our shortlist. Our guest judge Kevin Brockmeier will select ten for publication, which will be announced in May, and later published in volume IV of our anthology. Also, an enormous thanks to everyone who submitted. We received the most submissions in our anthology’s history, and this year’s writing was extremely impressive. Our staff is thankful for the opportunity to read such quality work, and is looking forward to Mr. Brockmeier’s final selections.

Shortlist Authors

CB Anderson, “Ghost”

Chris Arp, “To The Snail”

Courtney Bird, “The Tenshi Project”

Eric Boyd, “Then Comes Disgrace”

Daniel Bullard-Bates, “Rituals”

Ezra Carlsen, “False Fronts”

Megan Clark, “Berserker”

Stephanie Devine, “Pas de Trois”

Joe Dornich, “The Continuing Controversy of the Snuggle Shack”

Michael Erickson, “Walking Woman”

Kate Finlinson, “The Lion House Near Temple Square”

Camellia Freeman, “Real Americans”

Adam Gardner, “Theft”

Robert Glick, “Instar”

Nick Greer, “With It, He Goes on All Fours”

Ah-Reum Han, “River Home”

Hillery Hugg, “Ghosts Doing Ordinary Things”

Brianne Kohl, “Places Still on Fire”

Kristin Leclaire, “Inside the Labyrinth”

Christina Milletti, “The Erratic”

HL Nelson, “A Creature Comes Home”

Rebecca Nison, “#theorderofyouth”

Frances Phillips, “Bay Rhum Christmas”

Matthew Pitt, “The Uncanny Valley”

Erin Kate Ryan, “Fourth Grade Boyfriend in a Coffee Can”

Sarah Smith, “Someday Soon, You’ll Be On Fire”

Jennifer Stern, “Part and Counterpart”

Lindsay Tigue, “Rockhounds”

Ricky Tucker, “Constant Erasure”

Emily Wortman-Wunder, “Trespassing”

Honorable Mentions

Sarah Curry, “Forever in the Mall of America”

Christopher Fox, “A Light-Year is a Measure of Distance Not Time”

Jo Hsu, “Forest for the Trees”

Brent van Staallduinen, “Declination”

Today marks the deadline of our scary story contest. Lucky (or unlucky) $13 earns you a chance at $500 and publication in The Masters Review, which will post on Halloween Day.

Got something in mind? We want to see it. Here are the details:

To put it simply, creep us out. Make our palms sweat. Scare us with the unsettling, the horrible, the surprising, and the terrible. Make the hair on the back of our necks stand up. We want to think twice before turning out the lights. Whether your writing invokes Mary Shelley, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Karen Russell, or Edgar Allen Poe we want to read it. We’re open to all styles and ideas, but your story must be well-constructed. We will show a particular interest in those pieces with some literary merit; stories that push themselves beyond the strangeness of their premise.

– Up to 5,000 words
– Previously unpublished work only
– Simultaneous submissions okay but please inform us if your story is picked up elsewhere
– $13 to enter
– Wow us. Scare us.

SUBMIT HERE

There’s only one week left to submit to our scary story contest. Lucky (or unlucky) $13 earns you the chance at a $500 prize and publication in The Masters Review. The winning story will be published on Halloween Day. Send us your best disturbing, freaky, chilling, and scary fiction under 5000 words by October 15, 2014.

SUBMIT HERE

Goodbye summer school, hello normal school. Fall means a wealth of huge literary contests. There might be money; there will almost definitely be publication. But you don’t do it for any of those things, I know. You do it for the mail. So enter some of these here contests. Digital or snail, there will certainly be mail involved.

American Academy In Berlin – Whoa, hit the ground running, eh? How ambitious of you. Though are you sure you want to take time out of your life that could be spent applying to literary journals and contests that might be a better fit for . . . what’s that? They give the Berlin Prize Fellowship recipients a $5000 monthly stipend, airfare, and lodging in beautiful Berlin?! Go ahead, submit. NO ENTRY FEE Due: September 29

California State University – Perhaps this is more our speed: a domestic contest, with prizes that include payment and publication. CSU’s Anhinga Press awards the Phillip Levine Prize in Poetry annually to the best poetry collection. Check it. Entry fee: $25. Due: September 30

Glimmer Train Press – What would a deadlines post be without the Train gang? This month, their Family Matters contest seeks the best stories about “families of all configurations.” All they ask, in no uncertain terms, is that you don’t throw anyone under the bus too flagrantly. Submit here. Entry: $15. Due: September 30

Puritan Magazine – The Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in Literary Excellence is awarded to the single best submission in the respective categories of poetry and fiction. The judges for this year’s prize are Margaret Atwood (for poetry) and Zsuzsi Gartner (for fiction). Submit now! Entry: $15. Due: September 30

Hackney Literary Awards – Thirty bucks by the thirtieth to get dirty and flirty with the Alabama hurdy gurdy. Oh my god, that makes no sense, I’m so sorry. This contest is for an unpublished novel. Peep the deets. Entry: $30. Due: September 30

American Literary Review – “Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in American Literary Review are given annually for a poem, a short story, and an essay.” I know that deep in the heart of Texas they do everything bigger, but the ALR website states some explicit maximum word lengths for this contest. Check out the details here.  Entry: $15. Due: October 1

Zoetrope: All Story – At this point, Zoetrope is a name that is synonymous with quality short fiction. Winning submissions of their Short Fiction Contest are considered for representation by some of the most prestigious literary agencies in the world. Go for it. Entry: $20. Due: October 1

Harvard University – If you simply must know what all the fuss is about, I suggest you apply for one of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute Fellowships. It’ll net you $75,000 and office space at the Institute. Details are here, in case you’re a world famous writer perusing our lowly deadlines round-up. If that is the case, please also check out the Guggenheim Fellowships, the Cullman Fellowships, or those damn Pulitzers, which are also due at the end of the month in case you have any juice left in your iWatch to send the applications. All of these fall under the category of If You Win, It Goes In Your Obit. NO ENTRY FEE. Due: October 1

The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize  – This is a big one. The Missouri Review awards $5000 to the winning work of fiction, $5000 to the winning poetry submission, and $5000 to the winning essay. This contest is heading into its 24th year and previous champions have gone on to be published in the Best American series, among other publications. Guidelines here. Entry: $20. Due: October 1

Masters Review – “In honor of our favorite month of the year, we’re holding a contest for the best short story that embodies the hair-raising, spine-chilling, disturbing, and scary nature of October.” That’s me quoting the royal We, as in the Masters Review Crew. Which is to say we’re hosting a damned fine writing contest about the damned. There is a $$$ prize and !!! publication for the lucky so-and-so who can bring the pain to our cranial. Enter here. Entry: $13. Due: October 15

by Andrew Wetzel

In honor of our favorite month, we’re holding a contest for the best short story that embodies the hair-raising, spine-chilling, disturbing, and scary nature of October. Whether your writing invokes Mary Shelley, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Karen Russell, or Edgar Allen Poe we want to read it. We’re open to all styles and ideas, but your story must be well-constructed. We will show a particular interest in those pieces with some literary merit; stories that push themselves beyond the strangeness of their premise. Lucky (or unlucky) number $13 earns you a shot at our $500 prize and publication on The Masters Review. The winning story will publish on Halloween Day.

Guidelines (Deadline October 15,2014):

To put it simply, creep us out. Make our palms sweat. Scare us with the unsettling, the horrible, the surprising, and the terrible. Make the hair on the back of our necks stand up. We want to think twice before turning out the lights.

– Up to 5,000 words
– Previously unpublished work only
– Simultaneous submissions okay but please inform us if your story is picked up elsewhere
– $13 to enter
– Wow us. Scare us.

Each year Black Lawrence Press will award the St. Lawrence Book Award for an unpublished collection of poems or short stories. The St. Lawrence Book Award is open to any writer who has not yet published a full-length collection of short stories or poems. The winner of this contest will receive book publication, a $1,000 cash award, and ten copies of the book. Prizes will be awarded on publication. Past winners include Marcel Jolley (fiction), Stefi Weisburd (poetry), Jason Tandon (poetry), Fred McGavran (fiction),  Yelizaveta P. Renfro (fiction), Brad Ricca (poetry), Katie Umans (poetry), and Adrian Van Young (fiction).

Guidelines:

In order to reduce the costs of printing and postage and in the spirit of being a bit greener, Black Lawrence Press now accepts electronic submissions rather than hard copies for our contests. Please submit your manuscript and submission fee via Submittable.

All manuscripts should include a title page, table of contents, and when appropriate, an acknowledgments page. Manuscripts should be paginated and formatted in an easy-to-read font such as Garamond or Times New Roman. Manuscripts should be 45-90 pages in length (poetry) or 120-280 pages in length (fiction), not including front and back matter (table of contents, title page, etc.). Please include a brief bio or something about yourself in your cover note on Submittable.

Details here.

Deadline: August 31, 2014

Hope you had a hearty Fourth. Let us now put these fireworks in our rearview and phoenix our way into the guts of summer. Don’t be the only kid at camp (or Iowa Writers’ Workshop, or wherever) who hasn’t applied for these lit contests! A handful of these are short notice, so look sharp.

New Guard – The New Guard literary review awards $1000 prizes and publication to the winners of their Machigonne Fiction and Knightville Poetry contests, though the submission period ends soon, so by the end of this sentence you should already have planned your next move starting noooooooow. More details here. Entry Fee: $15. DUE DATE: July 14th

Tethered by Letters – Tethered by Letters offers generous prizes and free professional edits for every finalist. PLUS a website positively chockablock with helpful resources. They’re accepting submissions in multiple categories: Short Story ($250 prize), Flash Fiction ($50), and Poetry ($100). But the deadline is hella soon. So don’t knock the hustle. Please don’t knock it. Remember that I asked you not to.  Apply here. Entry Fee: $4-12. DUE DATE: July 15th

Rattle – Listen, if you became a writer in order to make money . . . you should talk to some writers. But maybe just maybe you’re in it for the glory of the written word, the fear of the blank page, the adrenalin-pumping thrill of pressing SEND on your entry to the Rattle Poetry Prize, which just happens to include a $5000 purse. And I mean purse in the pugilist sense, not the haute couture handbag sense. Did I mention there were runner-up prizes too? Entry Fee: $20 (includes subscription). DUE DATE: July 15th

The Cincinnati Review – The Robert and Adele Schiff Prose and Poetry Awards are given to the best poem and prose piece (fiction or creative nonfiction). Another day, another mid-July deadline. Check it. Entry Fee: $20, includes subscription. DUE DATE: July 15th

Sixfold – Sixfold is a writer-voted journal. You pay the criminally low entry fee of $3 to submit your story or poem for their upcoming contest. Then you can read the rest of the entries and vote on what piece should win and who should be included in the next Sixfold publication. Which, natch, is completely free for anyone to read. This is what democracy looks like. Submit here. Entry Fee: $3. DUE DATE: July 24th

Glimmer Train – Okay, you know the deal. This is the beloved triannual publication that is faithfully running contest after contest. Perhaps that is why they are so beloved. This time it is for their Very Short Fiction Award (max length: 3000 words). Entry Fee: $15. DUE DATE: July 31st

Journal Of Experimental Fiction – The Kenneth Patchen Award was reinstated in 2011 after a years-long hiatus. The Journal Of Experimental Fiction (or JEF, perhaps) bestows the prize upon the most innovative novel of the previous calendar year. Please visit their website if you would like to read inventive, boundary-pushing descriptions of inventive, boundary-pushing fiction. Go ahead, apply. Entry Fee: $25. DUE DATE: July 31st

Narrative – Last but not least, the nonprofit organization Narrative is closing their submission period for the Spring 2014 Story Contest at the end of this month. They are looking for stories with “a strong narrative drive, with characters we can respond to, and with effects of language, situation, and insight that are intense and total.” Entry Fee: $22. DUE DATE: July 31st

by Andrew Wetzel