WestWord Flash Prize Longlist
Plus new judges announced for our prizes!
Many thanks to everyone who sent in a dream inspired flash story for this year’s flash prize. We enjoyed reading them all and have been in a dreamy state all month!
Congratulations to the writers who have made the longlist. We are reading anonymously though so please don’t say which is your story if it is listed here.
We will be announcing the shortlist soon then it’s over to our judge to choose the winners! The winning and shortlisted stories will be published in the anthology edition in September.
Good luck for the next round everyone. We have some amazing titles on this list!
Longlist
A Dream Collector's Treasure
At Night I Dream of Van Gogh Skies
Coffee with Harry Styles
Every Thirty Seconds
Infinity Pool
Landing
Marie Antoinette Comes To Marilyn Monroe In A Dream
On Learning That, While Some Birds Have Night Terrors While Sleeping, Most Birds Dream of the Songs They’ve Sung
Quantum Anthropology and its relationship to the re-emergence of ‘dog eat dog’ Corporate Business Practices in the 21st century
The Dreams We Have as Children
The Function of Dream Sleep
The Picture of Dori Gray
To Sleep, Perchance to Dance
Unmoored
Visions of Summer
Windshield Wipers
New Judges Confirmed
We are delighted to have Avitus B. Carle judging the Hermit Crab Prize, which closes in February 2025.
Avitus B. Carle (she/her) lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her stories have been published in a variety of places including SoFloPoJo, Necessary Fiction, The Commuter (Electric Lit.), Moon City Review, and elsewhere. Her debut flash fiction collection, "These Worn Bodies," will be published by Moon City Press in November 2024. She can be found online at avitusbcarle.com or online everywhere @avitusbcarle.
And that Sara Hills is judging the 2025 WestWord Prize, which closes in March.
Sara Hills is the author of The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for best story collection. Her work has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, SmokeLong Quarterly's Grand Micro Competition, Manchester Writing School’s QuietManDave flash non-fiction prize, National Flash Fiction Day’smicrofiction competition, and the Retreat West quarterly prize. She’s on the editorial staff at NFFD’s FlashFlood Journaland The Write-In, and her stories have been selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50, The Best Small Fictions, The Welkin Prize, and elsewhere. Originally from the Sonoran Desert, Sara lives in Warwickshire, UK and tweets from @sarahillswrites.
Open Submissions
This month is the deadline for the first Past Times Prize for historical flash fiction. The historical era the story should be set in is the 1970s and you have until 31st August to send your stories.
The new Unpublished Writer Edition has not got very many submissions at all! But the deadline is still almost a month away. If you’ve not yet had a story published anywhere, you’re eligible to send a story.
The deadline for sending stories for the December themed edition is 30th September. Send your micros, flashes and short stories on the theme of IDENTITY.
And submissions are open ongoing for our new feature spots: the weekly Story Sunday for stories up to 1000 words; the monthly Short Story Spotlight for stories up to 5,000 words with author interview; and Flash Focus for stories up to 750 words that will publish twice a month and include an author interview too.
Become a member of WestWord
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