Please Note: The 2021 Short(er) Fiction Prize is now closed for submissions.
*We’re extending the deadline until February 15, 2021! Good Luck!*
We are thrilled to announce that Susan Steinberg, author of three remarkable story collections—The End of Free Love, Hydroplane, and Spectacle—and Machine: A Novel (read a beautiful ASF-published excerpt, “Killers,” here), will judge our 2021 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. 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.
General Guidelines
• Submit your entry online between November 23, 2020 – February 15, 2021.
• The first-place winner will receive a $1,000 prize and publication in a future issue of ASF. 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 We accept only previously unpublished work.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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Susan Steinberg is the author of four books of fiction, most recently Machine and Spectacle from Graywolf Press. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, McSweeney’s, The Gettysburg Review, Conjunctions, Zyzzyva, Bomb online, The Believer online, and other literary journals. She was awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and has been the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received fellowships from several artist residencies, including Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Civitella Ranieri Center. She earned a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She teaches at the University of San Francisco and will be the 2021 Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
About experimental writing, Steinberg has said, “in art, I often want my expectations, which are generally low, to be shattered.” She adds, “Each story presents me with a new set of concerns. Each book is another set. Then it’s up to me to find a way through it. And I’m willing to fail.” With those words of encouragement and wisdom, good luck!
We can’t wait for your submissions!