stories that teach - The Masters Review

Announcement Anthology Opportunities Posts Submissions

The Masters Review Anthology Vol. XII Available Now!

April 4, 2024

Volume XII of our annual anthology is now available for purchase at Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon! Be sure to order your copy of this new anthology, with stories and essays selected by Toni Jensen, and then submit your own work to our Best Emerging Writers anthology—volume XIII of our favorite project. You can find all the details for the contest here or order Volume XII at the links here. As a bonus, we’re...

Craft Posts Writers on Not Writing

Writers on Not Writing: Mimi Manyin and Melanie Brooks

March 31, 2024

Writers pour so much energy into their craft that sometimes we forget that creative pursuits other than writing can fill us up in other important ways. Here, we’ll look at how two writers—Mimi Manyin and Melanie Brooks—turn to music and cookies when they aren’t writing, and how those pursuits affect the return to the page. I love music. I listen to all types of music, from Classical and Broadway to dance, pop, R&B, rock/metal,...

Posts Publications Short Story Award Winning Work

Summer Short Story Award Honorable Mention: “That Chookaloski Mare” by Ashley Thorup

March 11, 2024

“It was the summer of breaking,” begins Ashley Thorup’s “That Chookaloski Mare,” chosen by The Masters Review editors as one of two honorable mentions in our 2023 Summer Short Story Award for New Writers. Thorup’s story was an early favorite for our readers, immaculately crafted, with a devastating but well-earned ending. Stay tuned for the rest of our Summer Short Story Award finalists! It was the summer of breaking: the AC, the tractor’s ram...

Craft Posts Writers on Not Writing

Writers on Not Writing: The Masters Review Readers

February 29, 2024

Writers pour so much energy into their craft that sometimes we forget that creative pursuits other than writing can fill us up in other important ways. Here, we’ll look at what writers do when they aren’t writing, and how those pursuits affect the return to the page. This month, we hear from three TMR readers—Joanna Acevedo, Rebecca Paredes, and Abbie Lahmers—on what keeps them creative when they aren’t writing. I wish I had time...

Deadlines Opportunities Posts Submissions Writing Resources

March Deadlines: 12 Contests and Prizes Available This Month

February 23, 2024

The world is getting a little brighter, and every day is now longer than the last! Put that extra time to good use, and get your submissions ready to send out to one of these contests. FEATURED The Masters Review Featured Flash Contest In 2024, we want to continue to feature your remarkable flash prose in our magazine! Submissions can be Flash (less than 1,000 words) or Sudden (between 1,000 and 1,500 words), and the...

Book Review Posts

Book Review: The Book of Love by Kelly Link

February 13, 2024

A deliciously rebellious take on the classic romance novel form, The Book of Love plunges into adored (and despised) tropes of the genre and guts them, often with humor, sometimes with gore, and always with, well, love—for as much as our protagonists’ future in the mortal world is entangled in the baffling affairs of immortals, that doesn’t stop them from dipping their toes in new relationships, revisiting old ones, or remembering what it’s like to...

The Masters Review Guest Editors

February 9, 2024

Posts Publications Reprint Prize Winning Work

Reprint Prize Winner: “The Dowsing of Linus Spalding” by Craig M. Foster

February 5, 2024

Whenever I read a story for The Masters Review, I’m of course looking for excellence in craft—engaging, well-developed characters; a unique voice; expertly controlled pacing; sharply rendered setting—but usually, I’m homing in on the ending: Does this story stick the landing? Does it manage to both fulfill the promises it sets out at the start and surprise me? It should be a given, then, when I report that “The Dowsing of Linus Spalding” Craig M....

Posts Publications Reprint Prize Winning Work

Reprint Prize Runner-Up: “Don’t Stop Now” by Seth Fischer

February 5, 2024

“Don’t Stop Now” by Seth Fischer was chosen by The Masters Review‘s editorial team as a runner-up in the first Reprint Prize. Fischer’s essay unpacks all the messiness and the complicated emotions that emerge with aging parents, facing the uncomfortable uncertainties head on. “Don’t Stop Now” was first published in COG. I’m sitting on my dad’s cat-hair-covered couch and interviewing him in his living room. We’re doing our best not to talk about the...

Announcement Contest Featured Flash Contest Posts Submissions

2024 Featured Flash Contest Now Open!

February 1, 2024

Submissions Open Through March 31 Add to Calendar The Masters Review has long been a home for excellence in flash prose, and we’re especially proud to have published many Best Small Fictions selections over the past few years. In 2024, we want to continue to feature your remarkable flash in our magazine! The Featured Flash Contest will honor two grand-prize winners chosen by our editorial staff—one in Flash and one in Sudden—by awarding $1,500...

New Voices Posts Publications

New Voices: “Stability” by Jennifer Hildebrandt

January 22, 2024

“Stability” by Jennifer Hildebrandt is our first essay of 2024! Hildebrandt, a writer and movement coach, uses this essay to explore grief and the body in the aftermath of her husband’s passing. “When I’m not moving, or teaching movement classes,” Hildebrandt writes, “I spend hours hunched over my laptop, immersed in anatomy books, poring over my husband’s medical records, collecting yet another teaching certification, thinking too much, writing too much, searching for words to define,...

Interview Judge Posts Short Story Award

A Conversation with Kelly Link, Short Story Award Guest Judge

January 5, 2024

We’re excited to kick off 2024 with this interview with Winter Short Story Award for New Writers guest judge Kelly Link. Link’s first novel (!) The Book of Love comes out in early February, and we are eager for its release. In the meantime, be sure to submit your own work to the 2023-2024 Winter Short Story Award for New Writers for the chance to win a $3,000 cash prize along with publication and agency...

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