CRAFT 2025 Flash Prose Prize — Guest Judge Grant Faulkner (FREE for Writers from Historically Marginalized Groups)

CRAFT 2025 Flash Prose Prize

$3,600 Awarded

Guest Judge: Grant Faulkner

September 1 – November 2, 2025

Note: This submission category is for writers from historically marginalized groups ONLY. 

Small, but mighty: CRAFT’s Flash Prose Prize returns! In only a matter of moments, flash prose can harness the tension and energy of a short story, while wielding the emotional resonance of poetry. For the CRAFT 2025 Flash Prose Prize, Guest Judge Grant Faulkner offers flash writers some heartfelt advice:

It is so difficult to write about what I'm looking for because the best stories somehow speak to what you didn't know you were looking for. Perhaps that's why I like stories that are about the questions, not the answers, the best. I tend to gravitate to stories that take some sort of risk, reside in a state of contradiction, offer nuances and layers and counterpoints. I always say that vulnerability is a writer's most important craft tool, so I love when I feel an intimate and heartfelt connection to a story. Open your heart.

Submissions are open for both flash fiction and flash creative nonfiction from September 1 to November 2, 2025. 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. CRAFT is a market for adult literary fiction.
• International submissions are welcome. Work must be written primarily 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.
• Submit previously unpublished work only—we do not review reprints, or even partial reprints, for contests (including any form of self-publishing, blogs, personal websites, social media, et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.
• 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. 
• 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 or -assisted submissions will be automatically disqualified.
• Unless you’ve already secured the necessary permissions, please do not include quoted song lyrics in your submitted work.
• 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.
• Check out our 2024 winners for examples of the type of work we seek.
• The winning pieces will be published in April 2026.

GUEST JUDGE:

GRANT FAULKNER is the cofounder of Memoir Nation, the cofounder of 100 Word Story, and an executive producer on America’s Next Great Author. He has published three books on writing: The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story; Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo; and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide. He’s also published All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, a collection of short stories, Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. His “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, a collaboration with the photographer Gail Butensky, is coming out in 2026 with the University of New Mexico Press. 

His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s Flash Fiction America; New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction; and in several editions of the annual Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies.

His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project Writers Council, Litquake’s Board of Directors, the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Words’ Creative Council, and Left Margin LIT’s Advisory Board. 

Find Grant online on Facebook and Instagram. Listen to his podcast Memoir Nation and subscribe to his newsletter Intimations: A Writer's Discourse.

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.