MARCH, 2018—BULLETIN #134

NOTE: The New Writer grace period ends March 10.

Henry in 1946, after the war. (more)

Now open: Two contests, $7,400 in prizes.
Deadline: April 30

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 and every story is read and considered for publication.)

Both categories are open to all writers. Winners and finalists will be announced in the July bulletin, and contacted directly the previous week. First-place winners will be published in Glimmer Train.

The writing is sort of 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

Agents keep a sharp eye out for promising emerging writers, and book publishers need to be pretty confident that the books they choose to publish will be well received by readers. When we accept a story for publication in Glimmer Train, we are committing to paying the writer well and to providing professional copy editing and proofreading, so your story is at its very best. Agents and publishers know that when we present a story, we think the story's a knockout, and deserves all that goes into its publication. Our authors think so, too.

Essays in this bulletin:

Peter Nathaniel Malae: One of the many problems I'm having with this particular book is that it's emotionally charged with the terrible suffering of people I love. (more)

Corey Flintoff: The sting of rejection was always assuaged by the fact that I had a parallel writing career as a reporter, newscaster and foreign correspondent. My stuff got published, and many of the events I covered had all the strangeness, beauty and pain of good fiction. (more)

Jane Delury: You must write through the wait for the call from the doctor about the biopsy, through the fight with the car insurance company, through the baby crying (no, pick up the baby!), through the misery of the news, through floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, blizzards… (more)

Results of the November/December Family Matters contest

Winners have been contacted, as have the Top 25 and Honorable Mentions. (A note about who wins.)

• 1st place goes to Peter Nathaniel Malae for "El Camino."
• 2nd place goes to Gregory J. Wolos for "Boy Strangling Goose."
• 3rd place goes to Chloe Higgins for "Things We Cannot Say."

Results of the November/December Very Short Fiction contest

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

• 1st place goes to Corey Flintoff for "Early Stages."
• 2nd place goes to Irene Doukas Behrman for "Permission."
• 3rd place goes to Itoro Udofia for "To the Children Growing Up in the Aftermath of Their Parents' War."

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.