2012 Contests
Update! We are excited to announce the new contest season as we congratulate last year’s winners. Please find information regarding all of our exciting 2012 CONTESTS below.World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest
In 1986, Jerome Stern, the then-director of Florida State University’s Creative Writing Program and renowned author of Making Shapely Fiction among other books, founded this contest to celebrate what he called “micro fiction” (submissions at that time were required to be under 250 words, and the winner received a crate of oranges as well as a check). Stern passed away from cancer in 1996 and though the guidelines and prize have changed since then, we are grateful to have a modern master of the short-short story judge the entries annually, and continue to hold the contest in memory of Stern.
Send up to three short-short stories per submission, accompanied by a $16 reading fee for mailed or online submissions. Each short-short story should be no more than 500 words. Include your name, contact information (email address preferred), and the title of each of your short-short stories in a very brief cover letter. Do not include personal identification information on the short-shorts themselves. Robert Olen Butler will judge. One winner will be chosen and awarded $500. The winner and nine finalists will be published in spring/summer 2013. For mailed submissions, label envelope: WBSSSC.
The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Contest
This contest was developed in 1996 to honor Michael Wm. Gearhart, a Ph.D. student in creative writing at FSU who died suddenly at the age of 39 as he was completing the final steps of his degree. The contest continues to support the production of SER (known by the name Sundog: The Southeast Review during Michael’s tenure) in his memory.Send up to three poems, no more than 10 pages total, accompanied by a $16 reading fee for mailed or online submissions. Include no more than one poem per page. Include your name, contact information (email address preferred), and the title of each of your poems in a very brief cover letter. Do not include personal identification information on the poems themselves. James Kimbrell will judge. One winner will be chosen and awarded $500. The winning poem and nine finalists will be published in spring/summer 2013. For mailed submissions label envelope: Gearhart Poetry Contest.
The Southeast Review Narrative Nonfiction Contest
Send one piece of nonfiction, no more than 6,000 words total, accompanied by a $16 reading fee for mailed or online submissions. Include your name, contact information (email address preferred), and the title of your submission in a very brief cover letter. Do not include personal identification information on the submission itself. Jennine Capó Crucet will judge. One winner will be chosen and awarded $500. The winning essay and two finalists will be published in spring/summer 2013. For mailed submissions, label envelope: SER Nonfiction Contest.
General Contest Guidelines
Now there are two ways to submit. You may either send your typed entry via snail mail to the address listed below, OR take advantage of our online contest submission option (please note all submissions are subject to an entry fee of $16). For mailed submissions, make checks or money orders out to: The Southeast Review. Electronic and postmark deadline: March 15th, 2012.
Friends and current or former students of the judge and those who have been affiliated with Florida State University within the last five years are ineligible.
For mailed submissions, please do not send an SASE. Winners will be announced on the website in June. All contestants will receive the issue in which the winning submissions appear.
Send mailed submissions to: OR Upload your entry via:
The Southeast Review SUBMISHMASH
Department of English
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306
About Our 2012 Contest Judges
Robert Olen Butler has published twelve novels and six volumes of short fiction, including two collections of short short stories. His newest book is the novel A Small Hotel. In 1993 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He is the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University.
James Kimbrell is the author of two volumes of poems, The Gatehouse Heaven (Sarabande, 1998) and My Psychic (Sarabande, 2006). He has been the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a “Discovery” / The Nation Award, Poetry magazine’s Bess Hokin Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Recently, he served as the Renee and John Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. He lives in Tallahassee where he teaches in the creative writing program at Florida State University.
Jennine Capó Crucet is a Miami-born Cuban writer. Her debut story collection, How to Leave Hialeah, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the John Gardner Book Prize, and the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award in Prose, and was a finalist for the Chicano/Latino Literary Award. The book went on to be named a best book of the year by the Miami Herald, the New Times, and the Latinidad List. The collection's title story won a PEN/O. Henry Prize and appears in the 2011 O. Henry Prize Anthology. She served as the fiction editor for the most recent edition of the PEN Center USA's Handbook for Writers, which is used in their Emerging Voices and Writers in the Schools programs. A former sketch comedienne and scriptwriter for NPR's The Writer's Almanac, Crucet has also worked in the non-profit sector as an advisor to first-generation college students from low-income families living in the South Central Los Angeles area. Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Epoch, The Rumpus, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, and other magazines. The recipient of the John Winthrop Prize & Residency for Emerging Writers and scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, she is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Florida State University.