Our 2012 Short Fiction Chapbook Award is now Open!

Update: We have extended our submissions period! We are accepting submissions from Oct. 1, 2011 through March 4, 2012.

A prize of $1,000 plus chapbook publication by Kore Press
will be given for a short story written in English.

Eligibility

This competition is open to any female-identified individual writing in English, regardless of nationality.

How to Submit

The contest is currently open. You can submit your manuscript and the $15 entry fee here. Please read through submission guidelines before submitting.

Comment box should include:

• daytime and evening telephone numbers
• where you heard about the contest
  

All entrants will be notified of results via email.

Manuscripts must be:

• NO DOCX FILES. ONLY DOC, PDF, AND RTF.

• a minimum of 4,000 words and a maximum of 12,000 words
• double-spaced and paginated
• ANONYMOUS (do not include your name anywhere on the manuscript, and please do not include a title page with names).
• original fiction written by the applicant (translations are not eligible)

• unpublished at the time of submission (if the story is accepted elsewhere during our deliberation process, please notify us immediately)

• acknowledgments unnecessary

Ethics Statement

We endorse and agree to comply with the following statement released by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses:

CLMP's community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to:

1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors;

2) provide clear and specific contest guidelines -- defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and

3) make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public.

This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.

The Process

Manuscripts are delivered to about 6 preliminary readers of diverse backgrounds and literary perspectives. Manuscripts selected by these preliminary readers are reviewed by a second reader. A group of approximately 20 semifinalists are then forwarded to our judge, who chooses 2 or 3 finalists and a winner.

For more information e-mail us or call us at 520.327.2127.

Patricia Grace King's The Death of Carrie Bradshaw selected as 2011 winner by judge Antonya Nelson

Patricia Grace King grew up in North Carolina and spent years in Guatemala and Spain.  She now lives in the Printers Row neighborhood of Chicago with her husband and teaches at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.  She holds a PhD from Emory University and is an MFA candidate at the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her stories have appeared in Nimrod and the Santa Fe Writers’ Project and have received awards including Runner-Up in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Competition and Honorable Mentions for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize and the Dana Award for Short Fiction, as well as a grant from the Illinois Arts Council.  These stories, including The Death of Carrie Bradshaw, are part of her linked collection, Gringos in Paradise. Visit her website at patriciagraceking.com. 

2011 Judge Antonya Nelson selected Rachel Yoder's story, The Woodcutter, as Runner-up. Rachel Yoder is the editor of draft: the journal of process, a publication which features stories, first drafts, and interviews with the author (draftjournal.com). She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona and an MFA in nonfiction writing from The University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Sun Magazine, Missouri Review, and Kenyon Review, among others, and has been selected for anthologies including Best of the Web 2010 and Rumpus Women. She currently lives in Iowa City and teaches creative writing in the community. For more info, please visit her website, racheljyoder.com.

2011 Judge

Antonya Nelson

2011 Short Fiction Award Judge Antonya Nelson was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1961. She attended the University of Kansas and the University of Arizona, where she received an MFA in 1986. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harpers, Redbook and other magazines, as wells as in anthologies such as Prize Stories, the O. Henry Awards, and Best American Short Stories. The Expendables won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction in 1990 and Talking in Bed received the 1996 Heartland Award in fiction. Her books have been New York Times notable books in 1992, 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002, and she recently was named by The New Yorker as one of the “twenty young fiction writers for the new millennium. She divides her time between Telluride, Colorado, and Houston Texas, where she shares, with her husband novelist Robert Boswell, the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

2010 Winner: Heather Brittain Bergstrom's

All Sorts of Hunger

28 pages, 5.5 x 8.5" paper, handbound with twine knot through cover

available for purchase here

Heather Brittain Bergstrom has won writing awards from Narrative Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic Monthly, and others. Her fiction has been published in Narrative, The Chicago Tribune, Tampa Review, Willow Springs, The Greensboro Review, and in the anthology Falling Backwards: Stories of Fathers and Daughters. “All Sorts of Hunger” is part of her recently finished story collection entitled Lake with the Dead Indian Chief’s Name. Heather Brittain Bergstrom was born and raised in a small farming town in eastern Washington, but currently lives in northern California with her husband and two children. She holds a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing.

2007 Winner

2007 Winner
The Saving Work

Tiphanie Yanique
Judge: Margot Livesey

Short Story Chapbook, hand assembled with unique burn mark on cover

20 pages, 8.5 x 5.5"
Price: $8

"Filled with images at once beautiful and stark, The Saving Work is a powerful, poetic study of why we do what we do. Tiphanie Yanique opens a new window into the complexities of island life."

-- Chitra Divakaruni