F(r)iction Contests

Opens: July 1, 2024
Deadline: November 1, 2024
Results: Announced April 2025
Prizes: Win $1,600 in Prizes!
Guest Judges: Lindz McLeod, KRISTINE ESSER SLENTZ, and Catherine McNamara
Categories: Short Story, Poetry, and Flash Fiction

For full Submission Guidelines, please read the information on our Submittable page carefully. And please visit our formatting guidelines page to properly format your work for submission.

An insider tip for you all: We seek work that actively pushes boundaries, that forces us to question traditions and tastes. If your work takes risks, we want to read it. We like strong narratives that make us feel something and stories we haven’t seen before. To get an idea of the kind of work we look for, please check out this page from our editors detailing what we look for in our submissions.

We also strongly recommend checking out a past issue of F(r)iction before submitting to our contests to get an idea of our general publishing aesthetic. We have several pieces available online, but there’s nothing like holding a glossy, full-color issue in your hands. You can check out all of our issues in our shop.

Short Story Judge
$1,000 Prize

Lindz McLeod

Lindz McLeod is a queer, working-class, Scottish writer and editor who dabbles in the surreal. Her short prose has been published by Apex, Catapult, Pseudopod, and many more. Her longer work includes the short story collection TURDUCKEN (Spaceboy, 2023), as well as her books BEAST (Hear Us Scream, 2023), SUNBATHERS (Hedone Books, 2024), THE UNLIKELY PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET (Harlequin, 2025), WE, THE DROWNING (Android Press, 2026), and the collaborative anthology AN HONOUR AND A PRIVILEGE (Stanchion, 2025). Her work has been taught in schools, universities, and turned into avant-garde opera. She is a full member of the SFWA, the club president of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club, and is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing.

Website: www.lindzmcleod.co.uk
Twitter/bluesky: @lindzmcleod

Poetry Judge
$300 Prize

KRISTINE ESSER SLENTZ

KRISTINE ESSER SLENTZ is a Maltese descendent, queer, cult escapee, and author of woman, depose (FlowerSong Press 2021) and EXHIBIT: an amended woman, depose (FlowerSong Press 2024). She grew up in both northwest Indiana and the Chicagoland area—what her father calls the ‘bottom of the blue-collar.’ After receiving her GED, she completed her undergraduate degree at Purdue University, double-majoring in English Literature and Creative Writing, before earning a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (poetry) from City College of New York (CCNY). She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at CCNY, among other places. KRISTINE is a Pushcart Prize nominee, finalist in the Glass Poetry Chapbook, recipient of a CCNY English Department Teacher-Writer Award, a City Artist Corps Grant, and former Rifkind Fellow and Poets Afloat resident. She has had artwork displayed in exhibits at the 5547 Project and recently in Pride & Joy at the Athenaeum Indy. She is the co-founder and organizer/host of the monthly experimental artist series, Adverse Abstraction, in New York City’s East Village. You can follow KRISTINE’s art on her substack, Carnations & Car Crashes.

Instagram: @keslentz

Flash Fiction Judge
$300 Prize

Catherine McNamara

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write and ended up co-running a bar in Ghana, working in Mogadishu and Milan along the way. She is the author of the short fiction collections The Carnal Fugues, The Cartography of Others, Love Stories for Hectic People and Pelt and Other Stories, and her stories have been widely published. She is Flash Fiction Editor and a Masterclass tutor for Litro Magazine, and was Guest Editor for the Best Small Fictions Anthology 2023. Catherine lives in Italy.

X and Instagram: @catinitaly for X and Instagram
FB: Catherine McNamara
www.catherinemcnamarawriter.com

Please note: We are unable to offer refunds for contest submissions, so please read the options and choose your submission category carefully. For poetry and flash fiction, you can submit ONE ENTRY or a THREE PACK.

F(r)iction reserves the right to not award a winner in any categories if the submissions do not reach a publishable standard. In this case, reading fees will NOT be refunded and a winner will not be announced. Although this has rarely come to pass in our six-year-publishing history, our top priority must remain with the quality of work we publish.

No AI Submissions

We currently do not accept work from artificial intelligence (“AI”) generators or similar. By submitting your entry, you are attesting that your work was not created, in whole or in part, with an AI generator or similar. Should any portion of your work be discovered to be the product of an AI generator or similar, by submitting, you agree to indemnify Brink Literacy Project for all losses, fees, and damages it suffers relating to your submission and/or misrepresentation, including but not limited to, direct and indirect damages, loss of sale, reputational damages, attorney fees, and other expenses. You further agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Brink Literacy Project against any third-party claims relating to the work you submit.