Our annual Sudden Fiction Contest is now open for 2022! As always, submissions must be previously unpublished, 1000 words or less, and simultaneous submissions are encouraged.

The stakes

We offer the top three finalists and honorable mentions the chance to be published in our journal and receive prize money.

First place wins $150, second place wins $100, and third place wins $50. Honorable mentions are given the standard $25 offer given to all our authors.

Entering the contest

We only accept electronic submissions by email and entries are $5 each. More details on submitting to the contest can be found at our guidelines here.

Our judges

ANNE NESBET teaches classes on silent films and Russian novels at UC Berkeley. The author of The Cabinet of Earths and A Box of Gargoyles, she lives near San Francisco with her husband, three daughters, and one irrepressible dog.

Beth Piatote is a scholar of Native American/Indigenous literature and law; a creative writer of fiction, poetry, plays, and essays; and an Indigenous language revitalization activist/healer, specializing in Nez Perce language and literature. She is the author of two books: Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature (Yale 2013), which won an MLA award; and The Beadworkers: Stories (Counterpoint 2019), which was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and shortlisted for the California Independent Booksellers Association “Golden Poppy” Award.

Ben Loory is the author of the collections Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, both from Penguin Books. His fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, Fairy Tale Review, BOMB Magazine, and A Public Space, and been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts. A graduate of Harvard University and the American Film Institute, Loory lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles. He can be found at benloory.com, or on Twitter at @benloory.

Send us your best, weirdest, and the ones close to your heart. We look forward to reading your works.