FEBRUARY, 2017—BULLETIN #121

Upcoming deadline:

We're at the mid-point of the Short Story Award for New Writers, 1st place $2,500 and publication in Glimmer Train. Deadline: Feb 28.

Henry J. Burmeister, striding through NYC, 1939.

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.)

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 writing is an organic investigation, which I do in a quasi-unconscious state. Not that I'm zoning out and humming, but I'm really not thinking. I'm letting the physical act of writing lead the way, and I'm trying to collect material. That's all I'm doing. But most of the big leaps and decisions in what I end up having done are made in that unconscious way.—Jennifer Egan, interviewed by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Essays in this bulletin:

Karen Brown: Transplanted to the scene, the cigarette box allowed both Anne and the setting to come alive for me in a way they had not before. How often do we infuse our work with these small tokens of our own lives? (more)

Joshua Henkin: It was Christmastime and there was hubbub that day; Santa Claus was visiting. All the kids were shouting, "Where's Santa Claus? Where's Santa Claus?" And then, in a moment of silence, a voice rang out: "Who's Santa Claus?" That was me. (more)

Danielle Lazarin: At these humbling moments, I remember advice I received from Dan Chaon while studying fiction at Oberlin. At the end of a semester, he wrote to me: "There's a very specific world that only you can write about…" (more)

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.