Our Winter Award. Send your best work under 7000 words.

Guest judged by AIMEE BENDER!

$3000 + Publication + Agency Review

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED!

Thank you to all of our lovely submitters. We received an incredible number of submissions for this contest, and we couldn’t be more excited to read through them. We will be sending out responses in waves, so hold tight if you haven’t heard back from us yet.

The winning story will be awarded $3000 and publication online. Second and third place stories will be awarded publication and $300 and $200 respectively. All winning stories and any notable Honorable Mentions will receive agency review by the following: Nat Sobel from Sobel Weber, Victoria Cappello from The Bent Agency, Andrea Morrison from Writers House, Mark Gottlieb from Trident Media, and Sarah Fuentes from Fletcher & Company. We want you to succeed, and we want your writing to be read. It’s been our mission to support emerging writers since day one.

Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and many more places, as well as heard on PRI’s This American Life and Selected Shorts. She’s received two Pushcart prizes, and was nominated for the TipTree award in 2005, and the Shirley Jackson short story award in 2010. Her fiction has been translated into ten languages.

She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing at USC.

Winner update: Caitlin O’Neil earned representation from Victoria Marini and our Fall Fiction winner, Ruth Joffre, selected by Kelly Link sold her story collection to Grove Atlantic with our winning piece as the title story. Awesome.

// PAST AWARD WINNERS //

Summer Award Winners 2018:

First Place Story:
“Confirmation“ by Alina Grabowski

Second Place Story:
“Portrait of a Virgin“ by Rachel Cochran

Third Place Story:
“A Country Where I Am Beautiful“ by Patricia Smith

Honorable Mentions:

“Headshot” by Charles Ullmann
“We Are The Horizon” by Laura Fletcher

Winter Award Winners 2017:

First Place Story:
“Drop Zone Summer” by Nick Fuller Googins

Second Place Story:
“A History That Brings Me To You” by Katie M. Flynn

Third Place Story:
“Birth Stories” by Sarah Harris Wallman

Winter Short Story Award Winners 2016:

First Place Story:
“Operation” by Scott Gloden

Second Place Story:
“White Out” by Caitlin O’Neil

Third Place Story:
“Malheur Refuge” by Rick Attig

Fall Fiction Contest Winners 2016:

Judged by Kelly Link. Details on our Fall Fiction Contest page.

First Place Story:
“Night Beast” by Ruth Joffre

Second Place Story:
“Family, Family” by Jeannine Ouellette

Third Place Story:
“Good Creatures, Small Things” by Cate Fricke

Summer Short Story Award 2016:

First Place Story:
“Red” by Katie Knoll

Second Place Story:
“Ledgers” by Claire Boyles

Third Place Story:
“The First Location” by Molly Reid

Fall Fiction Winners 2015

Judged by Jeff Vandermeer

First Place Story:
“Linger Longer” by Vincent Masterson

Second Place Story:
“Pool People” by Jen Neale

Third Place Story:
“Animalizing” by Marisela Navarro