AUGUST, 2016 BULLETIN #115

We're at the mid-point of the Fiction Open and the Very Short Fiction Award contests, prizes totaling $7,400. Deadline: 8/31/16

George Jr. and Grandma Blanche Howland on hilltop, August 1948

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.
(All 1st place stories will be 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. (Last year 42% of all winning stories were their authors' first 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:

Bret Anthony Johnston: On the other hand, if characters are revealed instead of built, if, say, we start with a complicated knot of a character on page one and we get closer and closer to her as the story progresses, then I'm hooked. (more)

Abby Geni: I did not realize I was brainstorming a new story until I went home and wrote five pages about an octopus specialist. My best stories come out of research like this. I tend to find my characters through their passions. (more)

Nellie Hermann: When I write a piece of fiction, there is an added bonus, for I can make myself feel connected to the larger human family by giving other people pieces of my own reality, thereby getting outside of my own limited view. (more)

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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.

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