AUGUST, 2017—BULLETIN #127

We're at the mid-point of the Fiction Open and the Very Short Fiction Award contests, prizes totaling $7,400 in prizes.
Deadline: 8/31

Frank Lester Davies, Sheepshead Bay

VERY SHORT

1st place | $2,000

2nd place | $500*

3rd place | $300*

300-3,000 words

$16 reading fee

Writing Guidelines

FICTION OPEN

1st place | $3,000

2nd place | $1,000

3rd place | $600*

3,000-20,000 words

$21 reading fee

Writing Guidelines

*Or, if accepted for publication, $700.
(1st place stories are always published.)

Winners and finalists will be announced in the November 1 bulletin, and contacted directly the previous week. First-place winners will be published in Glimmer Train. (All stories are considered for publication.)

Both categories are open to all. (Over the last three years, 48% of all winning stories were their authors' first publications.)

My wife said something that was so wonderful. Toward the end of all this, when I finally did find the right way to write the story and I was very happy, I said, "Jessica, I'm just a quirky writer. I'm always going to write quirky books, and I guess that's just the way it's going to be." And she said, "Well, Mark, our quirks are all we have to offer."—Mark Salzman, The Man in the Empty Boat

Essays in this bulletin:

Rowena Macdonald: Don't dump too much information in dialogue. In real life, we don't always helpfully explain what's going on. (more)

Silas Dent Zobal: What bothers me is this: I can't really write about these things, none of them, or what they mean to me, or how I come back to them time and again, at turns thoughtful, or grieving, or angry. (more)

Josh Henkin: Does she sleep on her back, her stomach, or her side? It may seem inconsequential to know (much less describe) how a character sleeps, but not if the gesture is laden with meaning, as all gestures in fiction should be. (more)

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.