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Wilda Hearne Flash Fiction Contest
Deadline: Entries must be postmarked by October 1, annually.
 
Fee: $15 check/money order/cash, made payable to Southeast Missouri State University Press, must accompany each entry. Fee includes a copy of Big Muddy in which the winning story appears.
 
Award: $500 and publication in an issue of Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley.

Manuscripts submitted to the contest will be read and judged anonymously.

Submission Guidelines:
 
Submissions must not be previously published.
 
Submit a maximum of 500 words, double-spaced, with the following information on a separate cover page:
Contest title
Manuscript title
Author name
Address
Telephone number
Email (if available)
This information must not appear anywhere else on the manuscript.
 
Send a SASE for notification of results. Manuscripts will not be returned.
 
Failure to follow these guidelines may disqualify entry.

Mail entries with $15 reading fee to: 

Southeast Missouri State University Press
Wilda Hearne Flash Fiction Contest
One University Plaza, MS 2650
Cape Girardeau, MO 63701

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September 30th, deadline

Spry Literary Journal features undiscovered and established writers' concise, experimental, hybrid, modern, vintage or just-plain-vulnerable writing. It's a journal for people who excel at taking risks, who thrive under pressure--for people whose words and rhythms are spry. We are currently open for submissions for our fifth issue.

We accept all short forms of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We also challenge you to write sparsely (under 750 words) and submit to our Flash category. Submissions are requested in all genres, and simultaneous submissions are welcome—though we ask that you make mention of any simultaneous submissions in your cover letter. We have a strict blind submissions policy, and only accept writing through our submissions manager. 

Our fourth issue is live at our website. Please head over to see what we've published, check out our archives and Briefs sections, and to start conversations with our authors, poets, and staff members. We’re proud to feature interviews from renowned writers such as Erica Dawson, Porochista Khakpour, and Michelle Disler.

Artists, too, are encouraged to submit unpublished pieces. We currently feature a variety of artistic works in our Briefs section. For an example of our art features, we invite you to review Ramiro Davaro-Comas’ interview and corresponding piece, entitled "9."

Please visit our submissions manager to submit your work to us.

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The Golden Key is delighted to announce our first-ever flash fiction contest, judged by Karin Tidbeck. The winner will receive $200 and publication in our 6th issue (Spring/Summer 2015). As each of our issues are themed to be inspired by an “object” that might come out of the little iron chest, the subject of the winning story will also determine the theme for Issue 6.

The deadline is September 15, and the limit is 500 words. The fee for entry is $5 for one piece, or $7 for two. Entry fee donations go directly into the fund we are raising to pay writers. The winner will be announced November 1!

Judge: Karin Tidbeck is the author of the collection Jagganath, recipient of the 2013 Crawford Memorial Award. She is a graduate of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop, and her work has been published in both Swedish and English, in journals such as Unstuck, Weird Tales, Tor.com, and Lightspeed.
Prize: $200 and publication in Issue 6
Deadline: September 15, 2014

Contest Details.

Web 
Twitter 
Facebook

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Painted Cave Literary Magazine is accepting submissions from community college students nationwide for its second issue November 2014. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis.
Painted Cave is the online student-run, faculty-guided literary journal of Santa Barbara City College. We publish the work of community college student writers in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. Painted Cave reserves First North American Serial Rights. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
Paste your submission in the body of the email to:

 paintedcavesubmissionsATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

Also include a short biography and the community college attending.
In the subject line include the genre of the submission, title(s) and your name (Fiction, “Born Too Late,” Mary Mullins)
We accept the following genres:
Flash Fiction: 1-3 pieces, no more than 750 words each.
Fiction: 1 piece, no more than 5000 words.
Poetry: 3-5 poems, no more then 50 lines each.
Creative Nonfiction: 1 piece, no more than 5000 words.
Flash Creative Nonfiction: 1-3 pieces, no more than 750 words each.
Dr. Chella Courington, Literary Adviser
Santa Barbara City College

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Submissions for Lunch Ticket’s Summer/Fall 2014 issue are now being accepted!

Lunch Ticket is accepting submissions for its Summer/Fall 214 issue.The following genres are encouraged to apply: Fiction, Flash Fiction, Poetry, Writing for Young People, & Visual Art. 

The deadline is set for October 31, 2014. Send us your best work! For guidelines and submission manager, visit our website.

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Call for Bizarro
Closes September 15, 2014

Please send up to three unpublished 500-word or shorter pieces of bizarro or one that is over 500 words. Please send bizarro (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, genreless, unpublishable, etc.) as a doc, docx, rtf, jpeg, or pdf file. When sending a pdf file, please accompany it by a doc, docx, or rtf file when possible. All submissions should include a 100-word bio in third person and an author image for consideration. A single document is preferable. With no particular aesthetic, we are looking for interesting, engaging, challenging work, work that will make us laugh, cry, dance, discuss, or swear.

All authors are responsible for editing their own work before submitting. Unedited or sloppy work will not be considered.

We acquire first rights or one-time rights. Copyright reverts back to the author/artist after publication. We ask that whenever an author or artist republishes work that first appeared here at Festival Writer that we be given acknowledgement for that specific work or version of that work. If your work appears on your own website or blog, it is considered published.

Email submissions to:

festivaloflanguageATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

with bizarro, Yourlastname" as the subject line.


Authors will be notified by the end of October. Selected works will be published in a special issue.

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Wild Age Press is starting a new daily e-zine, but Restless isn’t going to be just any lit mag. We’re going to focus on the edgiest work being written today, the things more conservative journals are too scared to touch. We want your best, scariest (but not in a Stephen King kind of way), most experimental work. We want work that’s going to keep us up at night.

Send us:

prose under 750 words
poems one page or less
visual art, color or b&w
photography, color or b&w
comics, color or b&w
audio less than 2 minutes
video less than 2 minutes

postcard lit — send us your handmade postcards, with or without a poem or story written on the back, or mail us a postcard from an interesting place in the world with a poem or story inspired by the image(s) featured on the front
mini reviews (under 750 words) of books published in the past six months
short interviews with authors, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, or other cool people
See our full guidelines here.

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Helen: A Literary Magazine is still accepting submissions for our inaugural issue. We're based in Las Vegas, Nevada and are looking for work that honors our city and state.  

We are seeking short literary fiction between 500-5,000 words, flash fiction between 50-1,500 words, poems (12 pages MAX), creative nonfiction between 1,500-5,000 words. Please send us work that honors our theme: "Strong Female Lead."  

Our guest fiction editor for our inaugural issue is Michael Czyzniejewski and our guest poetry editor is Karen Craigo.  

For more information on guidelines, please visit here our website.  

To submit your work, please use our Submittable page.  

We are a semi-pro market and pay $20 upon acceptance.

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NonBinary Review, the quarterly literary publication of Zoetic Press, wants art and literature that tiptoes the tightrope between now and then. Art that makes us see our literary offerings in new ways. We want language that makes us reach for a dictionary, a tissue, or both. Words in combinations and patterns that leave the faint of heart a little dizzy. We want insight, deep diving, broad connections, literary conspiracies, personal revelations, or anything you want to tell us about the themes we’ve chosen. Literary forms are changing as we use technology and typography to find new ways to tell stories—for work that doesn’t fit neatly into any one genre, we’ve created a separate category to properly evaluate submissions of a hybrid or experimental nature.

Each issue will focus on a single theme.
 
Issue #1 (June 2014): Grimm’s Fairy Tales is available for free download from the Apple store.


Upcoming themes:
 
Issue #3 (reading period closes Oct. 31, publication December 2014): L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz
 
Issue #4 (reading period closes Jan. 31, 2015; publication March 2015): Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable 

We are a paying market--1 cent per word for prose/hybrid work, $10 flat fee per poem, and $25 flat fee for art.

Please note that at present, the Zoetic app is accessible through iPad only, with future updates to include iPhone and Android versions. When submitting your work, please note that if selected for publication, your work will appear in electronic form only.

For more detailed guidelines, please expand the guidelines box of the genre you’re submitting to on our Submittable page.

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I've spent the better part of a month obsessing over a 1,000 word flash story, not one I was reading, one I was writing. I thought I was going to knock it off fast because I had a goal for my character, and I actually had an ending for the story. Or so I thought.

Flash Draft and Flash Revision

I wrote six or seven drafts before I got almost to the end of one. I'm at a point where I can put it away for a while. While I was going through this ordeal, I wondered if writing flash fiction could be a way to train to write other forms. Because flash is so short, you go through drafts faster and you can try different things faster, the way scientists use mice because their life cycles are shorter than humans so they can work faster. Over the course of my drafts, I worked on eliminating build-up and focusing specifically on the climactic moment.

Flash Addresses Writing Problems

Christopher Ramsey in Why I Teach Flash Fiction says, "In my class, flash has been a valuable teaching tool because it addresses all the issues a new writer might have in the context of their own writing." He says "the usual problems with new writers" include "too much backstory, too much filtering, authorial intrusion, and too many adverbs." Limiting yourself to 1,000 words addresses all kinds of "too much" problems.

Getting Started With Flash

 

Writing Flash Fiction at Fiction Factor

Stories In Your Pocket: How To Write Flash Fiction at The Guardian

Flash Fiction What's It All About? at The Review Review

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We believe that great literature inspires empathy by allowing us to see the world through the eyes of our neighbors, whether across the street or across the globe. Our mission is to foster the creation and availability of accessible yet provocative contemporary literature.

We are looking for poetry, flash fiction, and short fiction that is emotionally and intellectually complex without being unnecessarily “difficult.”

Find our submission guidelines at our website.

Please submit by October 31, 2014 for our Spring 2015 issue. We look forward to reading your work!

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Lunch Ticket is now accepting submissions for its Summer/Fall 214 issue. Starting August 1, 2014, the following genres are encouraged to apply: Fiction, Flash Fiction, Poetry, Writing for Young People, & Visual Art. 

The deadline is set for October 31, 2014. 

Send us your best work! For guidelines and submission manager, visit our website.

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The deadline for Gemini Magazine’s Sixth Annual Flash Fiction Contest is September 2, 2014. The grand prize is $1,000. Second place wins $100 and four honorable mentions each win $25. All six finalists will be published online in the October 2014 issue of Gemini. 

Maximum length: 1,000 words. Any style, subject or genre. 

Writers' names are removed from entries before reading, so each entry gets an equal chance. Both new and established writers have won our fiction contests. 

Entry fee: $4 ($3 for each additional entry). Full details at our website.

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Submissions accepted year-round.

Burrow Press Review features one new work of fiction or creative nonfiction on its homepage each week. We publish a wide range of established and emerging writers. Send us your best literary fiction and/or creative nonfiction. Flash fiction and experimental pieces are also welcome. 5,000 words max. 

Visit our website for more information.

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The Quotable, the quarterly publication of quotable writers, is open for Submissions July 1-Sept 1 2014

Issue: 15, Theme: Desire

"Behind all art is an element of desire..." -Adrienne Rich

Submissions open July 1, 2014 – September 1, 2104

General Guidelines:

We seek:

flash fiction (under 1,000 words) - 1 submission per reading period
short fiction (under 3,000 words) - 1 submission per reading period
creative nonfiction (under 3,000 words) - 1 submission per reading period
poetry - 3 submissions per reading period
We are temporarily closed for art submissions
We accept only original unpublished work. We do accept simultaneous submissions, but ask that you notify us immediately should your work be accepted elsewhere.

Please submit only DOUBLE SPACED (except poetry) documents using 12 pt. Times New Roman (or similarly readable font).

To ensure fairness, The Quotable has a blind submissions process. Remove all identifying information - name, email address, etc. - from your manuscripts. We will decline any manuscript that contains the author's information.

Cover letters should include your name and a brief bio to be used in the event of publication.

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Online submission deadline: September 1, 2014

300 Days of Sun, a student-run print literary journal, is seeking prose, poetry, and nonfiction submissions from Southwestern authors. All topics are open, but we will give some preference to writing about the Las Vegas area.

To submit, use our online Submittable form.

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The Animal Becomes Us

Email submission deadline: September 30, 2014

Issue #14 of cahoodaloodaling—The Animal Becomes Us—is open for submissions. We’re leaving this wide open to interpretation. Consider this your open invitation to send anything from light verse about your animal companion to speculative were-animal stories. 

Submissions due 9/30/14. Guest editor TBA. Issue live 10/31/14. See more information on submitting and read past issues here.

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Gulf Coast Prize in Translation

To celebrate translation and translators, Gulf Coast has created a new translation prize and we're pleased as punch about it! In 2014, the inaugural Gulf Coast Prize in Translation is open to poetry and will be judged by Jen Hofer, a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, social justice interpreter, teacher, urban cyclist, and co-founder with John Pluecker of the language justice and literary activism collaborative Antena. The winner of the prize will receive $1,000 and publication in the journal. To share the love, two honorable mentions will also appear in issue 27.2, due out in April 2015. Pretty fierce way to start a translation prize, non? Share this good news with your translator friends and colleagues!

2014 Barthelme Prize

Think good things come in small packages? So do we! Gulf Coast is now accepting entries for the 2014 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose, judged by Amy Hempel. This annual contest is open to pieces of prose poetry, flash fiction, and micro-essays of 500 words or fewer. Established in 2008, the contest awards its winner $1,000 and publication in the journal. Two honorable mentions will also appear in issue 27.2, due out in April 2015. So dust off those keyboards, sharpen those pencils, put in a new typewriter ribbon, and write something fabulous in its brevity.

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Online submission deadline: August 15, 2014

The Boiler is accepting submissions in poetry, short stories, and short memoir/essays (prose under 3,500 words) for its Fall 2014 issue. Submissions close Aug. 15, 2014. We look forward to reading your work. For submission guidelines visit our website.

About The Boiler: The Boiler was started online in 2011 by a group of MFA students from Sarah Lawrence College. Now publishing quarterly. Recently published authors include: Rigoberto González, Tara Betts, Lisa Marie Basile, Kristen Keckler, Leah Griesmann, Tomaž Šalamun, and others.

--
The Boiler Journal

Follow us on: Twitter
Like our page on: Facebook

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The editors of Prairie Wolf Press Review, an online literary journal, announce our open reading period from July 1 to Sept. 1, for our 8th issue to be published late October 2014.

We are looking for short stories, flash fiction, essays, and poetry. All prose submissions to Prairie Wolf Press Review must be fewer than one thousand words. You may send up to three poems. Please send submissions in .doc or .docx format. In the subject area of your email, identify your submission as prose or poetry and include your name.

Please mail submissions to:

editorsATprairiewolfpressDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

You may view our current issue and archives at our website.

We look forward to reading your work.
Marjorie Carlson Davis and j.d. Daniels, editors

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Barking Sycamores is a literary journal publishing poetry, short fiction (1,000 words or less), and art by neurodivergent (autistic, ADHD, bipolar, dyslexic, etc.) writers. We seek poetry, short fiction, and art for our unthemed Issue 3, Fall/Winter 2014.

Works on nearly any subject will be considered, as well as essays on neurodivergence and the creation of literary works. Artwork submitted may be considered for use as cover art. The philosophy of our journal is unique, so we ask that interested writers consult our submission guidelines before sending any work to us.

Submission period: July 1 – September 15, 2014.

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Submissions are now open!

Prime Number Magazine has just completed its 4th full year of publication! Every quarter we post short stories, essays, suites of poems, reviews, and interviews. In between, monthly, we post single poems, flash fiction, and flash nonfiction. And, annually, we publish a print edition with some of our favorites plus contest winners. 

Please submit! We want to see your work. Our editors are looking for work in all genres. 

See our most recent issue here. 

And check out the submission guidelines here.

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The Crazy-shorts! Contest
Online submission deadline: July 31, 2014
 
Submissions manager opens July 1!

From July 1st to July 31st, Crazyhorse will accept entries for our annual short-short fiction contest. Submit three short-shorts of up to 500 words each through our website.

1st place will win $1,000 and publication; 3 runners-up will be announced. All entries will be considered by our editors for publication, and the $15 entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Crazyhorse.

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Blotterature Literary Magazine's 50 Words for $50 Contest

Submit a piece of fiction, creative nonfiction, or poem with no more than 50 words. Blotterature will judge all entries submitted in a given day and post one winner daily on our Facebook page. The author with the most likes, shares, and positive comments within 24 hours of the daily posting wins the $50 at the end of the month. Please follow the guidelines below.

Submit no more than 50 words of Fiction, CNF, or Poetry
Only one submission per month
No previously published work
You must “like” Blotterature’s Facebook page before we will consider your entry
Must have a PayPal account set up in order to collect $50 cash prize
Daily voting takes place at 9 PM (CST) every evening. If you submit after 9 PM, your submission will be considered for the next day.
Blotterature reserves the right to not accept any submissions for any given day.

Further submission information here.

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