APRIL, 2018—BULLETIN #135

We're at the mid-point of the Fiction Open and the Very Short Fiction Award contests, prizes totaling $7,400 in prizes.
Deadline: April 30

Blanche Howland, circa 1960 (more)

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

I'm always thinking, What doesn't the character know? Often, the tension that drives a story comes from the fact that the character is being kept in the dark about something, or is perhaps in denial. That's a very powerful engine.—Andrew Porter

Essays in this bulletin:

Bret Anthony Johnston: What most interests me is surprise, discovering a capacity for something—tenderness, violence, duplicity, hope—within a character that I didn't expect to find. For me, this is profoundly different and infinitely more compelling than a character who "changes." (more)

Laura van den Berg: What has always thrilled and terrified me, in equal measure, about fiction is that if we do it well enough, we can have any kind of world we want. It is all ours to make. (more)

Baird Harper: The true mistake out here is to think that you'll actually be done fishing in time to return for lunch. No one ever returns in time for lunch in Montana. After all, the drive out here is quite long to begin with… (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.