Summer is for short stories.
Welcome to our Summer Short Story Award for New Writers, a prize that recognizes the best fiction from today’s emerging writers. 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, Sarah Fuentes from Fletcher & Company, Heather Schroder from Compass Talent, and Siohban McBride from Carnicelli Literary Management. 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.
Guest judged by Kristen Arnett!
Guidelines:
- Winner receives $3000, publication, and agency review
- Second and third place prizes ($300 / $200, publication, and agency review)
- Stories under 6000 words
- Previously unpublished stories only
- Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed
- Emerging writers only (We are interested in offering a larger platform to new writers. Self-published writers and writers with story collections are welcome to submit. Writers with novels published with small circulations (around 5000 copies) can also submit.)
- International English submissions allowed
- $20 entry fee
- Deadline: August 30th, 2021
- Please, no identifying information on your story
- All stories are considered for publication
- If requesting an editorial letter, please indicate on your cover letter if the submissions is fiction or creative nonfiction
- A significant portion of the editorial letter fees go to our feedback editor, according to the rates established by the EFA
- To view a list of our most commonly asked questions regarding submitting to The Masters Review, please see our FAQ page.
Kristen Arnett is the NYT bestselling author of the debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction. She is a queer fiction and essay writer. She was awarded Ninth Letter‘s Literary Award in Fiction and her work has appeared at The New York Times, The Cut, Guernica, Buzzfeed, Electric Literature, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, and elsewhere. Her story collection, Felt in the Jaw, was published by Split Lip Press and was awarded the 2017 Coil Book Award. She was a Spring 2020 Shearing Fellow at Black Mountain Institute. Her next two books (With Teeth: A Novel and an untitled collection of short stories) will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House). She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and currently lives in Miami, Florida.
INCLUDED UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES AND DISCOUNTS:
To thank you for your continued support of The Masters Review, we’re excited to offer you the following opportunities with your submission:
WritingWorkshops.com is offering 15% off any of their classes this year, and the discount code will be included in the confirmation e-mail when you submit.
Literature & Latte is offering a 20% discount on their incredibly helpful Scrivener writing software for macOS and Windows users. There will be a discount code in the confirmation e-mail when you submit.
Benjamin Woodard’s class on Skillshare, “Crafting Complex Characters (Quickly) for Short Fiction,” is available with a free 14-day trial (through a link in your confirmation e-mail).
The Writing Salon is offering every submitter a 10% off discount code on a writing class with a discount code included in your confirmation e-mail!
We don’t have any preferences topically or in terms of style. We’re simply looking for the best. We don’t define, nor are we interested in, stories identified by their genre. We do, however, consider ourselves a publication that focuses on literary fiction. Dazzle us, take chances, and be bold.
PREVIOUS WINNER UPDATES:
Joe Bond earned representation from Sarah Fuentes of Fletcher & Company, and Caitlin O’Neil earned representation from Victoria Marini and our 2016 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.
“Thanks for providing a place for emerging talents to thrive!” — Amy Williams, The Williams Agency
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” — Haruki Murakami
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