Glimmer Train Short Story Contest for New Writers

Glimmer Train Stories awards thousands of dollars in prizes throughout the year in its long-running series of writing contests.  Many writers have begun successful careers as winners or finalists in these contests, and at the very least these contests provide an opportunity to publish your work in a highly visible, widely read magazine.

The current contest is The Short Story Award for New Writers, the guidelines of which are below:

We are interested in reading your original, unpublished stories!

• We don't publish stories for children, I'm sorry.
• Multiple submissions are fine. You can send more than one submission per competition, if you like, or submit the same story for different categories, if it qualifies.
• When we accept a story for publication, we are purchasing first-publication rights. (Once we've published your story, you are free to, for instance, include it in your own collection.)

To make a submission: Please send your work via our new online submission procedure.
It's easy, will save you postage and paper, and is much easier on the environment.
Just click here to go to the Online Submissions page to get started.



Dates: The category will be open to submissions for one full month, from the first day through 
midnight (Pacific time) of the last day of the month. Results will be posted at www.glimmertrain.org.

• February. Results will be posted on April 30.
• May. Results will be posted on July 31.
• August. Results will be posted on October 30.
• November. Results will be posted on January 31.

Reading fee:

• $15 per story.

Prizes:

• 1st place wins $1,200, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies of that issue.
• 2nd-place: $500
• 3rd-place:$300

Other considerations: 

• Open only to writers whose fiction has not been presented in a print publication with a circulation over 5,000. (Entries, of course, must be unpublished.)
• Most submissions to this category run 3,000 to 6,000 words, but can go up to 12,000 words.

I suspect that more than a few editors fail to read beyond the first paragraph of stories sent them by unknown writers. Not so with the editors of Glimmer Train--they seek out new voices in fiction and provide them with valuable exposure. Shortly after my work appeared in Glimmer Train, a collection of my short stories was accepted for publication.  --George Makana Clark