Last year, I decided to do a contest because it seemed like the thing to do. It’s why I still do them, to be honest. I usually pick a theme based on what I want to read about (summer, home, etc), but I’m making it a yearly tradition to celebrate our lightning-fast response times that Duotrope credits us with.
(If you’ve not using Duotrope, you’ve either never heard of it or you’re a cheap bastard. It’s only $5, and an incredibly valuable resource for writers. Just check them out).
Anyway, we’re ranked 18th for fiction at 2.8 days from submission to response (contest entries are ranked 9th at 2.1), and for poetry we’re ranked 7th (contests are 18th at 2.8). So…pretty goddamn fast. Along with a bunch of other goals for the magazine, I want to get all of those back to the top 10. It would help if I wasn’t such a slacker and let things slide for far too long (like announcing this contest, for starters). Here’s the specifics:
Prizes: $20 to the winner of the flash fiction category, and $20 to the winner of the poetry category.
Rules: For fiction, we’ll use Duotrope’s definition of flash fiction as “less than 1,000 words.” For poetry, we’ll use my made-up rule of 50 words or less. Plus, do everything that the usual submission guidelines say. Everything submitted until April 1 that follows these guidelines will be considered for the contest. And of course, even if your work isn’t within these parameters, we’ll still consider it for publication as usual.
Bop Dead City 