Thanks for your interest in the 2019 American Short(er) Fiction Prize. The contest is now closed.
We are thrilled to announce that Danielle Dutton, author of three remarkable books and editor of Dorothy, a publishing project, will judge this year’s American Short(er) Fiction Prize. The prize recognizes extraordinary short fiction under 1,000 words. The first-place winner will receive a $1,000 prize and publication, and the second-place winner will receive $250 and publication. Previous winners of the Short(er) Fiction Prize have gone on to be anthologized in places such as The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. All entries will be considered for publication. The deadline to submit was February 15, 2019.
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General Guidelines
• Submit your entry online between November 8, 2018 – February 15, 2019.
• The first-place winner will receive a $1,000 prize and publication in a future issue of ASF. One runner-up will receive $250 and publication. All entries will be considered for publication.
• Please submit your $17 entry fee and your work through Submittable. We no longer accept submissions by post. International submissions in English are eligible.
• Stories must be 1,000 words or fewer. You are allowed to include up to three stories per entry. Please submit all stories in one document. Each story must begin on a new page and be clearly titled. For the title of your submission list the story titles, separated by a comma. Please DO NOT include any identifying information on the manuscript itself.
• You may submit multiple entries. We accept only previously unpublished work. We do allow simultaneous submissions, but we ask that you notify us promptly of publication elsewhere.
Conflicts of Interest
Staff and volunteers currently affiliated with American Short Fiction are ineligible for consideration or publication. Additionally, students, former students, and colleagues of the judge are not eligible to enter. We ask that previous winners wait three years after their winning entry is published before entering again.
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Danielle Dutton is the author of Margaret the First, SPRAWL, and Attempts at a Life. Her work has also appeared in Harper’s, BOMB, Fence, Noon
When asked by Kirkus Reviews about her taste in fiction and what she’s tired of reading about, Danielle Dutton has said:
“My first instinct is to say something like: I don’t really need to see any more query letters that begin with, ‘My book is about X, a young woman in her 20s dealing with tough relationships.’ But the trouble with saying that is that one of our fall titles, Nell Zink’s The Wallcreeper, is about Tiffany, a young woman in her 20s dealing with tough relationships, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Of course, it’s also about birds and sex and eco-terrorism. The truth is I rarely think in terms of topic. What matters to me is always going to be how the thing is written—its particular voice and energy and form—so I guess what my instinct is really saying to me is that I don’t want to see anything that doesn’t feel original and full of energy.”
And in another interview she talked about how she knows when she wants to publish a book and she said this:
“In the case of Jen George’s The Babysitter at Rest what happened was fairly straightforward: I read her story ‘The Babysitter at Rest’ in BOMB (it had been selected by Sheila Heti for BOMB’s 2015 Fiction Contest), and I thought it was incredible. Totally unlike anything I’d read. After about three paragraphs I could feel my hands getting shaky. And this is very often the case, that it’ll take only moments for me to sense that I’ve found the right next book — when this is happening, in those rare and wonderful moments, I actually feel somewhat physically unwell. It’s like I’m literally being overwhelmed by what I’m reading. So, that’s one way I know I want to publish a book: vague nausea.”
We can’t wait for your submissions. Good luck!