JANUARY, 2017—BULLETIN #120

Upcoming deadline:

New Writer Award: 1st place $2,500 and publication. Deadline: Feb 28. (The annual Family Matters grace period has been extended to Jan 12.)

This category is open only to emerging writers whose fiction has not appeared in any print publication with a circulation over 5,000. (Previous online publication is fine.)

Our 2017 submission calendar

The 1st-place winner will be published in Glimmer Train and will receive 10 copies of that issue. Second- and 3rd-place win $500/$300, respectively, or, if accepted for publication, $700.

Winners and finalists will be announced in the May 1 bulletin, and contacted directly the previous week.

Most submissions run 1,000 - 5,000 words, but stories as long as 12,000 words are fine.
Writing Guidelines

Note: Over the last four years, 88% of our first-place New Writers winning stories have been their authors' first print publications!

The stories occurred to me the way all stories do: gradually, as I wrote. I never plan ahead.—Michael Cunningham

Essays in this bulletin:

Toby Wallis: But what if the ending isn't designed to satisfy? What if it is trying to do something else? What if the story doesn't want to let you leave quietly? What if the whole point is to pull the rug out from under you? (more)

Karen Malley: I feel the familiar pulse of that mixture of dread and elation, embedded, like blood vessels in muscle, in the experience of conceiving of and writing a short story, accompanied by the same old questions, which zig zag between hope and doubt. (more)

Stefanie Freele: The internet is a great resource and a monstrous blood-sucking time-waster. Stories will not get finished and submitted by someone else. Only you. But let's not wallow in the muck of blunders. There were also so many wonderful encounters to howl about along the way. (more)

Results of the September/October Short Story Award for New Writers

Winners have been contacted, as have the Top 25 and Honorable Mentions.

• 1st place goes to Toby Wallis for "The Sudden End of Everything." (His first publication!)
• 2nd place goes to L.E. Rodia for "Always Arriving."
• 3rd place goes to Josh Randall for "Pump Head."

Our thanks to all of you for letting us read your work!

Feel free to forward this bulletin to your writer friends. As you know, the bulletin is free and meant to inform and to promote writers. (We never share your info.) People can sign up for bulletins themselves here. Missed a bulletin? They're archived here.

Best regards,

Discovering, publishing, and paying emerging writers since 1990.

One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train continues to actively champion emerging writers. The magazine is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, New Stories from the Midwest, the O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South, Best of the West, New Stories from the Southwest, Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.