NOVEMBER, 2018—BULLETIN #142

Upcoming deadline:

Our beautiful big sister, Dabby.

Family Matters: 1st place wins $2,500 and publication. Deadline: 1/2/19.

(Note: The New Writer grace period ends 11/10.)

We welcome new stories about families of all configurations! (Previous online publication is fine.)

The 1st-place winner will be published in Glimmer Train and will receive $2,500 and 10 copies of that issue. Second- and 3rd-place win $500/$300, respectively, or, if accepted for publication, $700.

Most submissions run 500 - 4,000 words, but we are open to stories as long as 12,000 words.
Writing Guidelines

Winners and finalists of both categories will be announced in the March 1 bulletin, and contacted directly the previous week. We look forward to reading your stories!

►Please note: This will be our last Family Matters contest of the year. The next—and final one—will be held in March/April 2019.

I think if you are going to impart some kind of wisdom or truth, and have it resonate with the reader, it has to be very, very specific. When I'm teaching memoir, one of the things people worry a lot about is who is going to care about my story? Ironically, the advice given by a lot of people is that you have to make it universal. But the advice I would give is the exact opposite of that. Make it really, really specific, because that specificity is what makes your story universal. If you try too hard to sound smart and profound, it's just going to be porridge.—Joan Wickersham, interviewed by Amy Yelin

Essays in this bulletin:

Laura Roque: This isn't a claim that writers should stick to their own parts of the world, but that there's a correlation between what we run from and why we've run from it. (more)

Rachel Heng: All those other commitments took time away from the actual writing, but what I'm realizing now is they also gave my subconscious the room to figure out characters and worlds and plot problems. (more)

Peter Sheehy: It is difficult to create anything, to play a god. To start with nothing and end with a story. Where did it come from? Who knows. Yet there it is, as real as a brick, when once it did not exist. (more)

Results of the July/August Fiction Open contest

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

• 1st place goes to Laura Roque for "Lady-Ghost Roles."
• 2nd place goes to Ben Nadler for "Shalom Bayit."
• 3rd place goes to Clark Knowles for "In Dublin."

Results of the July/August Very Short Fiction contest

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

• 1st place goes to Peter Sheehy for "Things Frozen Then."
• 2nd place goes to Ted Mathys for "High Plains."
• 3rd place goes to Cassandra Verhaegen for "California Orange."

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.