The Binnacle

Annual Ultra-Short Competition

If you are looking for the results of the Eighth Annual Ultra-Short Competition, please see our Production Updates page or click on the link below.

The Binnacle will sponsor its Eighth International Ultra-Short Competition in the 2011-2012 academic year.   We are looking for prose works of 150 words or fewer and poetry of sixteen lines or fewer and fewer than 150 words.  All works should have a narrative element to them.

All submissions should be made via email to ummbinnacle@maine.edu. We prefer that you send your entry both in the body of your e-mail and as an attachment in a .doc, .txt, .odt, or .rtf file (.rtf preferred).

A minimum of $300 in cash prizes will be awarded, with a minimum prize of $50. At least one of the prizes will go to a UMM student.

Please submit no more than two works total, prose and/or poetry.

When you submit your work, please be sure to include your postal address as well as a thirty-five to fifty word self-description.

There is no submission fee. Submisions will be accepted beginning on December 1, 2011. The deadline for submissions will be February 15, 2012.  Notifications will be made in the latter half of May, 2012.  Publication date will be May, 2012, but printing may not be completed until October, 2012 (probably later). Awards will be made at the time of publication.

Because of the volume of submissions, we are not always able to send notifications to all works that have not made the cut. To gain news about the winners and those who will be included in the edition, please keep checking our website. Look especially on the Updates page. The fact that you may not receive a rejection notification is no reflection on the quality of your work. The large majority of what we receive is well worth publishing, and we are thankful for you sharing it with us.

Eighth Annual International Ultra-Short Competition Winners and Honorees - 2011

Seventh Annual International Ultra-Short Competition Winners and Honorees - 2010

Sixth Annual International Ultra-Short Competition Winners and Honorees - 2009

Fifth Annual International Ultra-Short Competition Winners and Honorees - 2008