2024-2025 Winter Short Story Award for New Writers — Judged by Bret Anthony Johnston | $3,000 Prize! (Free for Marginalized or Historically Underrepresented Writers)

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2024-2025 Winter Short Story Award for New Writers

Note: This submission category is for marginalized or historically underrepresented writers ONLY.

Bundle up indoors and keep yourself warm this winter by polishing your manuscript for The Masters Review’s Winter Short Story Award for New Writers! This contest is your chance to take the next step in your writing career. Since 2016, our award has paired emerging writers with some of the industry’s top literary agents. Past winners of this award include Nana Nkweti, Nick Fuller Googins, Katie M. Flynn, Reena Shah, Rachel Cochran, and Claire Boyles, several of whom earned representation from one of our partnered agents as a result of this contest.

We welcome submissions of previously unpublished fiction or creative nonfiction up to 6,000 words. Bret Anthony Johnston, author of the new novel We Burn Daylight, will select this year’s winners. Our contest runs from December 1, 2024, to February 2, 2025, and is open to any writer who has not published a novel or memoir with a major press. The first-place winner will receive a $3,000 grand prize, while the second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200 respectively. We publish all winning pieces online.

All winners will also receive agency review from our six partnered agencies. Participating agents include Nat Sobel from Sobel Weber, Victoria Cappello from The Bent Agency, Andrea Morrison from Writers House, Sarah Fuentes from United Talent Agency, Heather Schroder from Compass Talent,and Marin Takikawa from The Friedrich Agency.

Submission Guidelines

The first-place winner receives $3,000, online publication, and agency review.
The second- and third-place finalists receive cash prizes ($300/$200), online publication, and agency review.
Submissions of fiction or creative nonfiction must be under 6,000 words.
Submitted work must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs, social media accounts, and other websites. Previously published work will be automatically disqualified.
If your submission is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw your submission on Submittable, or contact us otherwise to let us know the piece is no longer available.
We do not require anonymous submissions for this contest, but the guest judge will read the shortlist anonymously.
This contest is for emerging writers only. Writers with single-author book-length work published or under contract with a major press are ineligible. We are interested in providing a platform to new writers; authors with books published by indie presses are welcome to submit unpublished work, as are self-published authors.
International submissions are allowed, provided the work is written primarily in English. Some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
No translations, please.
All submissions must be double-spaced with one-inch page margins and use Times New Roman or Garamond 12.
The contest’s deadline is 11:59pm PDT on February 2, 2025.
All entries are also considered for publication in New Voices.
Every submission will receive a response by the end of May 2025. The winners will be announced by the end of June 2025.
AI-generated submissions will be automatically disqualified.
Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for this award. Consider submitting to the summer contest instead!

About the Judge

Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of We Burn Daylight, Remember Me Like This, and Corpus Christi: Stories. His work appears in The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, TheBest American Short Stories 2011, and elsewhere. He's the Director of the Michener Center for Writers.

Editorial Letter Option

If you’re interested in getting feedback on your writing, utilize our editorial letter add-on option. Our response to your submission will be accompanied by a one- to two-page letter from an experienced guest editor, who will offer observations on the strengths of the piece as well as opportunities for revision. Your editor may also offer further submission and reading suggestions, or other comments on craft. A significant portion of the additional fee is paid directly to your feedback editor.See a sample editorial letter.

2024-2025 Winter Short Story Award for New Writers — Judged by Bret Anthony Johnston | $3,000 Prize! (Free for Marginalized or Historically Underrepresented Writers)