CRAFT 2024 Flash Prose Prize — Guest Judge Meg Pokrass

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CRAFT 2024 Flash Prose Prize

$3,600 Awarded

Guest Judge: Meg Pokrass

September 1 – October 27, 2024

Flash prose, in all its invigorating variety, demonstrates an uncanny ability to speak to the core of the matter. Whether flash fiction or flash creative nonfiction, the heart and heat of the work must make themselves undeniably known. For the CRAFT 2024 Flash Prose Prize, Guest Judge Meg Pokrass offers flash writers some lively advice:

The key to making a reader care is in allowing the work to reflect our own human experience. A flash prose piece must contain dramatic urgency with which we, the reader, can connect with on a deep level. We care about characters who love messily, dream uneasily, and refuse to see their lives as hopeless. I will stand and cheer when a writer’s obsessions, worries, and dreams poke through every word. A piece may be technically brilliant—but what matters more is that it moves me. The successful flash prose writer must offer a personal vision, yet in doing so, illuminate the world we all share.

Submissions are open September 1 to October 27, 2024. Entries cost $20. Three winners will receive $1,000 each. Three additional editors’ choice selections will receive $200 each. Please carefully review our guidelines below—then send us your best flash prose!

GUIDELINES:

  • Submissions are open to all writers, emerging and experienced. CRAFT is a market for adult literary fiction.
  • International submissions are allowed.
  • Please submit prose work primarily written in English, but some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
  • Please submit flash prose ONLY! We’ll review both fiction and creative nonfiction for this prize.
  • Please adhere to the 1,000 word count maximum per piece (you may send up to two flash prose pieces per submission).
  • We review literary work but are open to a variety of genres and styles. Our only requirement is that you show excellence in your craft.
  • Please send previously unpublished work only—we do NOT review reprints, or even partial reprints, for contests (including any form of self-publishing, blogs, personal websites, social media, et cetera). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
  • We allow simultaneous submissions—writers, please notify us immediately and withdraw your entry if your work is accepted to be published elsewhere.
  • The $20 reading fee per entry allows up to two 1,000-word flash prose pieces—if submitting two works, please send them in a SINGLE document.
  • We allow multiple submissions—please submit each flash piece (or set of two pieces) as a separate submission accompanied by a separate entry fee.
  • All entries will be considered for general publication in CRAFT.
  • Please double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12.
  • Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history and any content warnings, if applicable.
  • We do not require anonymous submissions, but the guest judge will review the fifteen shortlisted pieces anonymously.
  • Writers from historically marginalized groups will be able to submit for free until we reach fifty free submissions. This free category will close when we reach capacity. No additional fee waivers will be granted—please submit early if you qualify. 
  • We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason.
  • Additionally, we do not tolerate discrimination in the writing we consider for publication: work we find discriminatory on any of the bases stated here will be declined without complete review.
  • AI-generated submissions will be automatically disqualified.
  • Unless you’ve already secured the necessary permissions, please do not include quoted song lyrics in your submitted work. Paraphrased lyrics are allowed, however, as are older lyrics that have already passed into the public domain.
  • Any work that does not adhere to these guidelines will be automatically disqualified.
  • We are always happy to help if you have questions. Email us: contact@craftliterary.com.

AWARDS:

The writers of the three winning pieces will receive:

  • $1,000 each;
  • a bundle of the Rose Metal Press Field Guides;
  • and publication in CRAFT, with an introduction by the guest judge as well as an author’s note (short craft essay) to accompany the piece.

The writers of the three editors’ choice selections will receive:

  • $200 each;
  • and publication in CRAFT, with an introduction by our editorial team as well as an author’s note (short craft essay) to accompany the piece.

FINE PRINT:

  • Friends, family, and close associates of the guest judge are not eligible for consideration for the award.
  • Our collaboration with editorial professionals in the judging and awarding of our contests does not imply an endorsement or recognition from their agencies, houses, presses, universities, et cetera.
  • As we only consider unpublished writing for contests, and will publish the winning pieces in April 2025, anything under contract to publish prior to July 2025 should not be entered.

GUEST JUDGE:

MEG POKRASS is the author of The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories (Dzanc Books, 2024) and eight previous collections of flash fiction and two novellas-in-flash. Her work has been published in three Norton anthologies, including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023; Wigleaf Top 50; and hundreds of literary magazines including Electric Literature, New England Review, McSweeney’s, Five Points, Split Lip, Washington Square Review, and Passages North. Meg is the founding editor of New Flash Fiction Review, festival curator of Flash Fiction Festival UK, and founding/managing editor of the Best Microfiction anthology series. She lives in Scotland, where she serves as chief judge for the Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award. Find her on Facebook @MegPokrass.

CONTEST PARTNER:

Founded in 2006, ROSE METAL PRESS is a not-for-profit publisher specializing in the publication of literary work in hybrid genres, including flash fiction and nonfiction; prose poetry; novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; novellas-in-flash; lyric essays; text and image works; and other literary works that move beyond the traditional genres of poetry, fiction, and essay to find new forms of expression.

OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:

You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your flash prose. We will provide marginal notes, as well as a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. While editorial feedback is inherently subjective, our suggestions are always actionable and encouraging. We aim to have feedback completed within twelve weeks from the close of the contest. Work that we critique is not eligible for submission to future CRAFT contests, but can be revised and resubmitted in our general categories for further consideration. Should your submission be offered publication, no feedback will be provided and your fee will be refunded.

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