Collect Your Shorties

Do you have micros and flashes that might like to live together? Make a chapbook and send them out! I’m seeing more interest in fiction chapbooks all the time, so I expect this list to grow.

.
.

A few tips…

• Don’t rely on my information. ALWAYS check the linked website for updated guidelines.
• Often you’ll find guidelines both at the website and at the submissions page (typically at Submittable) where you’ll upload your work. Usually it’s the same information (often exactly the same text) but occasionally there’s additional submissions information you need to know. So: Assume nothing and read everything.
• Triple-check the file containing your collected shorties before you upload it, to ensure you followed directions. Almost all contests ask you to strip identifying information from the file, and you’ll eliminate yourself if you forget to do that.

.

Deadline 02/28. Vine Leaves Vignette Collection Award

50 – 60 pages; prose may blend with poetry; for prose, 800 words max per piece, 20,000 words max for total ms.
.

Deadline 02/28. Wundor Short Fiction Contest

Remarkable flexibility: “Whether you have a single piece of work, a collection of pieces or a brilliant novella on your hands, we would like to read it. The only stipulation is that the sum total word count of your submission should fall between 5,000 and 45,000 words.”
.

Deadline 03/31. The Cutbank Chapbook Contest

25 – 40 pages; ms can be either a collection of shorties OR a novella.
“We’re interested in both prose and poetry – and particularly work that straddles the lines between genres. Manuscripts should be cohesive and coherent; in other words, your manuscript should resonate and make sense as a book.”
.

Deadline 04/28. Diagram Chapbook Contest

18 – 44 pages; may blend prose with poetry or straddle genres.
“We recommend that your manuscript be as coherent–as much a project–as possible. Not to say everything needs to be thematic or narratively related, but most of our winning chapbooks have a feeling of aesthetic unity or resonance: we think books should make sense as books.”
.

Deadline 05/31. Spring Black River Chapbook Competition

16 – 36 pages.
.

Deadline 10/31. Fall Black River Chapbook Competition

16 – 36 pages.
.

Deadline 11/30. Arcadia Press Chapbook Prizes

On contest page (linked above), 15 – 40 pages; on Fiction page, 15 – 45.
.

Deadline 12/01. Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook

25 – 40 pages; fiction or nonfiction, max 1000 words per piece.
I found this interview with RMP about what they look for in contest submissions. Even if you don’t wish to submit, if you’re interested in flash fiction it’s worth a read.
.
.
.
*Photo from Rose Metal Press’s site—shows a selection of chapbooks chosen as winners of their annual contest.
.
.
.