We did it! We finally found our shortlist for this contest. They have been submitted to Laird Barron for his judging, and we can’t wait to find out which excerpts are the winners! Congrats to the writers of these 20 shortlisted excerpts!

This has been one of our most entertaining and well-written batches of submissions for a Novel Excerpt Prize since we started in 2021. We have finally narrowed the longlist down to 45 thrilling excerpts! We’re still discussing which stories will make the longlist, so we apologize for the delay! The better the submissions, the harder […]

And the winner is: Chameleon by Mackenzie Hurlbert Our shortlist:

It was so difficult narrowing down to this shortlist of 15 stories! We’re so close to announcing our winner! Thank you to everyone who submitted, who made our job so difficult for this challenge!

And the winners are: 1st place: Train Through the Actinic Mountains by Leigh Loveday Judge Matt Bell said: I loved the image-driven worldbuilding in this speculative story, which started off reminding me of Snowpiercer and then went somewhere maybe even stranger. (Also, what is more cinematic than a train?) More than any other story in this year’s […]

The winners are: 1st Place: We Undark Night With Our Tongues by Claudia Monpere 2nd Place: Compassionate Release by Quinn Green 3rd Place: Machines, bodies, machines by Anna Quercia-Thomas We’re also publishing: The Secret Language of Touch by Rachel Delaney Craft The shortlist:

We’re excited to reveal the titles of our shortlist for this flash fiction contest! We will announce the winners early next week! We can’t wait to get these stories into the eyes, minds, and hearts of our readers!

These twenty stories from our shortlist are now in the hands of Judge Matt Bell! We’re very excited to see who he picks for the winners! Coming soon!