We are proud to announce the shortlist for our seventh printed anthology, judged this year by the illustrious Rebecca Makkai. These thirty stories and essays represent outstanding work by emerging writers. Makkai will select ten from this list to appear in the printed anthology. Stay tuned for the finalists announcement next month! Thank you to all of the wonderful writers who submitted to this years’ anthology. It was a pleasure to read your work.

The Masters Review Volume VII Shortlist

“Life-Giving Doubt” by Ian Belknap

“The Process” by Rebekah Bergman

“Signs of Damage” by Stacy Trautwein Burns

“Summers With Dedushka” by Philip Brunst

“Rogue Particles” by Laura Demers

“The Marchioness” by Corey Flintoff

“Ben Franklin” by Kelly Flowers

“These Are My People” by Steve Fox

“Residential Units” by Marcie Friedman

“Questions for Anesthesiologists” by Robert Glick

“Little Room” by Carrie Grinstead

“Pilgrimage” by Rebecca Gummere

“Ships Made of Stone” by Sarah Helen

“We the Mothers” by Kathleen Hansen

“Doctor, Doctor, Doctor” by Blair Lee

“The Mouse and the Elephant” by Nichole LeFebvre

“Waiting” by Donna Marsh

“Why Do Voles Fall in Love?” by Una McDonnell

“Cristeros” by Bonard Molina

“Shrove Tuesday” by Jeanne Panfely

“Humane Dispatch” by Matt Plass

“Ghost Print” by Anna Reeser

“Imperative” by Beth Richards

“The Sand Nests” by Emma Sloley

“It Goes Both Ways” by Kate Simonian

“The Words to Say It” by Rosanna Staffa

“The Dumpling Makers” by Kristina Ten

“Kamikaze Dressed in Light” by Sophia Terazawa

“The Collectors of Anguish” by Andrea Uptmor

“Closer Than They Appear” by Marylin Warner

Every year The Masters Review produces a print anthology that showcases the best emerging writers in the fiction and nonfiction genres. Our goal is to provide a platform for the very best new talent, and to help promising writers on their path to literary success. Ten stories and essays will be selected for our anthology, which will be distributed to agents and editors across the country. Authors will also be awarded a total of $5000. This year, we are honored to be working with the marvelous Rebecca Makkai, who will select the ten anthology finalists from a shortlist of thirty. Read all about the anthology here, and submit by March 31!

Submission Guidelines:

• fiction and narrative nonfiction
• 8000 word count maximum
• international submissions allowed
• simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, but please inform us if your story has been accepted elsewhere
• previously unpublished work only
• emerging writers only: cannot have a novel published at the time of submission (self-published authors and writers with published story collections are free to submit. Authors with a contract for a novel are also free to submit.)
• $20 reading fee per story
• If your work has appeared in our anthology before, we ask that you please not submit again. We warmly welcome your work in any other category.
• Have a question? Check out our FAQ!

JUDGING

REBECCA MAKKAI is the award-winning author of the novels The Hundred-Year House and The Borrower and the short story collection Music for Wartime. She has won a Chicago Writers Association Award, an NEA Fellowship, and a Pushcard Prize, among other honors. She lives in Chicago and has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Tin House, and Northwestern Univeristy. She is currently part of the faculty for the MFA program at Sierra Nevada college. Her next novel, The Great Believers, is forthcoming in June.

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