by Fractured Lit | Mar 11, 2026 | contests
AWARDING $3,500 + PUBLICATION
JUDGED BY JEMIMAH WEI
July 17 to September 14, 2025
(Closed)
Ready for the opportunity to turn reality on its head? We’re bringing back our Elsewhere Prize! We want those stories that make a mystery out of the ordinary, that make the rational out of the mystical. Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story. From July 17 to September 14, 2025, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
For this contest, we want writers to show us the forgotten, the hidden, the otherworldly. We want your stories to take us on journeys and adventures in the worlds only you can create; whether you make the familiar strange or the strange familiar, we know you will take us elsewhere. Be our tour guide through reality and beyond.
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Jemimah Wei, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
In flash I seek the crystallized vision of a writer’s imagination — prose that understands intimately the tides of boldness and restraint, that isn’t afraid to venture into uncharted realities, emotions, and psychologies, yet never loses the thread of their story’s heart. Give me hitherto unmapped routes to familiar emotion, sentences that clarify and surprise, and a sense of the writer’s vision within and beyond the story’s limits.
Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. Her highly anticipated debut novel, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, Jemimah’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others. She is presently a senior prose editor at The Massachusetts Review.
The deadline for entry is September 14, 2025. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. In your cover letter, please let us know which piece you’d like your editor to focus their review on. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
by Fractured Lit | Mar 11, 2026 | calendar
AWARDING $3,500 + PUBLICATION
JUDGED BY JEMIMAH WEI
July 17 to September 14, 2025
Ready for the opportunity to turn reality on its head? We’re bringing back our Elsewhere Prize! We want those stories that make a mystery out of the ordinary, that make the rational out of the mystical. Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story. From July 17 to September 14, 2025, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
For this contest, we want writers to show us the forgotten, the hidden, the otherworldly. We want your stories to take us on journeys and adventures in the worlds only you can create; whether you make the familiar strange or the strange familiar, we know you will take us elsewhere. Be our tour guide through reality and beyond.
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Jemimah Wei, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
In flash I seek the crystallized vision of a writer’s imagination — prose that understands intimately the tides of boldness and restraint, that isn’t afraid to venture into uncharted realities, emotions, and psychologies, yet never loses the thread of their story’s heart. Give me hitherto unmapped routes to familiar emotion, sentences that clarify and surprise, and a sense of the writer’s vision within and beyond the story’s limits.
Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. Her highly anticipated debut novel, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, Jemimah’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others. She is presently a senior prose editor at The Massachusetts Review.
The deadline for entry is September 14, 2025. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. In your cover letter, please let us know which piece you’d like your editor to focus their review on. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
Guidelines
-
- Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
- We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/sudden stories should have a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
-
- Please send flash micro fiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
- We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
- All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
- All AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
by Fractured Lit | Mar 11, 2026 | calendar
AWARDING $3,500 + PUBLICATION
JUDGED BY JEMIMAH WEI
July 17 to September 14, 2025
Ready for the opportunity to turn reality on its head? We’re bringing back our Elsewhere Prize! We want those stories that make a mystery out of the ordinary, that make the rational out of the mystical. Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story. From July 17 to September 14, 2025, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
For this contest, we want writers to show us the forgotten, the hidden, the otherworldly. We want your stories to take us on journeys and adventures in the worlds only you can create; whether you make the familiar strange or the strange familiar, we know you will take us elsewhere. Be our tour guide through reality and beyond.
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Jemimah Wei, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
In flash I seek the crystallized vision of a writer’s imagination — prose that understands intimately the tides of boldness and restraint, that isn’t afraid to venture into uncharted realities, emotions, and psychologies, yet never loses the thread of their story’s heart. Give me hitherto unmapped routes to familiar emotion, sentences that clarify and surprise, and a sense of the writer’s vision within and beyond the story’s limits.
Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. Her highly anticipated debut novel, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, Jemimah’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others. She is presently a senior prose editor at The Massachusetts Review.
The deadline for entry is September 14, 2025. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. In your cover letter, please let us know which piece you’d like your editor to focus their review on. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
Guidelines
-
- Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
- We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/sudden stories should have a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
-
- Please send flash micro fiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
- We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
- All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
- All AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
by Fractured Lit | Mar 11, 2026 | calendar
AWARDING $3,500 + PUBLICATION
JUDGED BY JEMIMAH WEI
July 17 to September 14, 2025
Ready for the opportunity to turn reality on its head? We’re bringing back our Elsewhere Prize! We want those stories that make a mystery out of the ordinary, that make the rational out of the mystical. Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story. From July 17 to September 14, 2025, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
For this contest, we want writers to show us the forgotten, the hidden, the otherworldly. We want your stories to take us on journeys and adventures in the worlds only you can create; whether you make the familiar strange or the strange familiar, we know you will take us elsewhere. Be our tour guide through reality and beyond.
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Jemimah Wei, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
In flash I seek the crystallized vision of a writer’s imagination — prose that understands intimately the tides of boldness and restraint, that isn’t afraid to venture into uncharted realities, emotions, and psychologies, yet never loses the thread of their story’s heart. Give me hitherto unmapped routes to familiar emotion, sentences that clarify and surprise, and a sense of the writer’s vision within and beyond the story’s limits.
Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. Her highly anticipated debut novel, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, Jemimah’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others. She is presently a senior prose editor at The Massachusetts Review.
The deadline for entry is September 14, 2025. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. In your cover letter, please let us know which piece you’d like your editor to focus their review on. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
Guidelines
-
- Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
- We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/sudden stories should have a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
-
- Please send flash micro fiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
- We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
- All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
- All AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
by Fractured Lit | Mar 11, 2026 | calendar
AWARDING $3,500 + PUBLICATION
JUDGED BY JEMIMAH WEI
July 17 to September 14, 2025
Ready for the opportunity to turn reality on its head? We’re bringing back our Elsewhere Prize! We want those stories that make a mystery out of the ordinary, that make the rational out of the mystical. Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story. From July 17 to September 14, 2025, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
For this contest, we want writers to show us the forgotten, the hidden, the otherworldly. We want your stories to take us on journeys and adventures in the worlds only you can create; whether you make the familiar strange or the strange familiar, we know you will take us elsewhere. Be our tour guide through reality and beyond.
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Jemimah Wei, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
In flash I seek the crystallized vision of a writer’s imagination — prose that understands intimately the tides of boldness and restraint, that isn’t afraid to venture into uncharted realities, emotions, and psychologies, yet never loses the thread of their story’s heart. Give me hitherto unmapped routes to familiar emotion, sentences that clarify and surprise, and a sense of the writer’s vision within and beyond the story’s limits.
Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. Her highly anticipated debut novel, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, Jemimah’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others. She is presently a senior prose editor at The Massachusetts Review.
The deadline for entry is September 14, 2025. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. In your cover letter, please let us know which piece you’d like your editor to focus their review on. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
Guidelines
-
- Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
- We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/sudden stories should have a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
-
- Please send flash micro fiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
- We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
- All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
- All AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
by Fractured Lit | Mar 11, 2026 | calendar
AWARDING $3,500 + PUBLICATION
JUDGED BY JEMIMAH WEI
July 17 to September 14, 2025
Ready for the opportunity to turn reality on its head? We’re bringing back our Elsewhere Prize! We want those stories that make a mystery out of the ordinary, that make the rational out of the mystical. Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story. From July 17 to September 14, 2025, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
For this contest, we want writers to show us the forgotten, the hidden, the otherworldly. We want your stories to take us on journeys and adventures in the worlds only you can create; whether you make the familiar strange or the strange familiar, we know you will take us elsewhere. Be our tour guide through reality and beyond.
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Jemimah Wei, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
In flash I seek the crystallized vision of a writer’s imagination — prose that understands intimately the tides of boldness and restraint, that isn’t afraid to venture into uncharted realities, emotions, and psychologies, yet never loses the thread of their story’s heart. Give me hitherto unmapped routes to familiar emotion, sentences that clarify and surprise, and a sense of the writer’s vision within and beyond the story’s limits.
Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. Her highly anticipated debut novel, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, Jemimah’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others. She is presently a senior prose editor at The Massachusetts Review.
The deadline for entry is September 14, 2025. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. In your cover letter, please let us know which piece you’d like your editor to focus their review on. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
Guidelines
-
- Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
- We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/sudden stories should have a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
-
- Please send flash micro fiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
- We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
- All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
- All AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
by Fractured Lit | Mar 11, 2026 | calendar
AWARDING $3,500 + PUBLICATION
JUDGED BY JEMIMAH WEI
July 17 to September 14, 2025
Ready for the opportunity to turn reality on its head? We’re bringing back our Elsewhere Prize! We want those stories that make a mystery out of the ordinary, that make the rational out of the mystical. Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story. From July 17 to September 14, 2025, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
For this contest, we want writers to show us the forgotten, the hidden, the otherworldly. We want your stories to take us on journeys and adventures in the worlds only you can create; whether you make the familiar strange or the strange familiar, we know you will take us elsewhere. Be our tour guide through reality and beyond.
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Jemimah Wei, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
In flash I seek the crystallized vision of a writer’s imagination — prose that understands intimately the tides of boldness and restraint, that isn’t afraid to venture into uncharted realities, emotions, and psychologies, yet never loses the thread of their story’s heart. Give me hitherto unmapped routes to familiar emotion, sentences that clarify and surprise, and a sense of the writer’s vision within and beyond the story’s limits.
Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. Her highly anticipated debut novel, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, Jemimah’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others. She is presently a senior prose editor at The Massachusetts Review.
The deadline for entry is September 14, 2025. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. In your cover letter, please let us know which piece you’d like your editor to focus their review on. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
Guidelines
-
- Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
- We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/sudden stories should have a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
-
- Please send flash micro fiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
- We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
- All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
- All AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
by Elizabeth Lee | Mar 10, 2026 | flash fiction
I grew up in a store called Boise. I was born between the tomatoes-on-a-vine, $2.50 for 4, and the green curves of watermelons, whose viridescent rinds bled into one another like tie-dye, and which, when in season, were buy-one-get-one.
I was produced among produce, a product of production. I swelled my mother’s belly into a watermelon, fed on vine-ripe tomatoes and fresh pasta, and on the day of my birth she squatted down in aisle 4 so I could slide out like a clementine loosed from its biodegradable bag, clutching at tile flooring and squalling as I tasted my first whiff of egg-carton air ripe with the sensation of green bananas just starting to yellow.
I knew vegetables intimately. I knew the thirst of lettuce leaves, their frail, frilled edges quavering beneath the touch of misted droplets, never quite quenched. I knew the nervous tumble of potatoes as they burrowed into their shallow trench. I knew the secrets of papayas, that intensely private fruit, which—though eventually they, too, betrayed me—I will never tell.
My mother manned the register from noon to night, but in my memory it was always night, just before closing, when the overtime stragglers, the desperate and the hungry, plodded through the automatic doors, a narcotic parade collecting late-night cravings. Puffed bags of popcorn seasoned with rosemary and sea salt, bunny-shaped gummies Made With Real Fruit!, loaves of sourdough bread with spongy innards and crackling crusts. Dropping items on the stuttering conveyor belt, soothed by the sporadic beep of the scanner against which my mother expertly shuffled barcodes, the stragglers’ eyes drooped before bursting open like summer-plumpened cherries between the teeth of the total flashing onscreen.
$$$? they asked incredulously, handing over their credit card. Is that right?
It’s not right, my mother informed them. Nothing ever is. She swiped the card with a practiced flick of her wrist.
I inherited that place, though it was not mine to inherit. The wooden crates in the back brimming with pimpled cucumbers; stacks of flour satchels that emitted a clean, rich dust; fish with frozen eyes and gaping mouths, shocked into silence. I strutted the aisles of crackers and vitamins, climbed the towers of natural-flavor sodas, sashayed behind the deli counter while tracing my fingernail along the grains of the chopping block; I re-piled the roll-prone carrots, telling them to stay, and they did—already ordered, without my knowledge, by some greater force against which I could not reckon, an authority I could not command to face me.
When I say I inherited the place, I mean I inherited the invasion of it, as an unwanted blight. I buried my face in the mushrooms, inhaling their earthy scent, and they whispered with vitriol, Scourge! I nestled myself among the plums, my body curled soft and round. Imposter! I pricked my finger on the butcher’s knife; I bottled my blood and offered my flesh on a Styrofoam tray, but no amount of packaging could make me what I was not.
I, too, was born from the soil, I insisted. I am from dust and to dust I will return. But they did not believe me, eyeing me with skepticism, knowing that as much as I did not belong among them, I was not worth the effort of removal, either—transport is never cheap. Still, I would not break; I was born like a clementine and similarly thick-skinned. I dusted flour off my pants and froze my face into a smile, genial and nonthreatening. I tried out phrases my mother used on customers: I’m so sorry you don’t like me. Is there anything I can do to help? But the kumquats said nothing; the bell peppers would not ring.
Caught in the middle of an attempted metamorphosis into a pickle, I caught a man stealing fruit. Staring at each other, he with one apple-clenched hand thrust in his jacket pocket, I with my foot in a jar of brine, we reached a certain understanding. I was a thief, too, though it was I who had been stolen from. I was a thief, and I would not say Stop or No; I would watch, toes wrinkling with salt, as he pressed his bulging coat close to his body and surged beyond those blind doors into an endless night. Go, I said softly as I pulled my foot, still dripping, from the jar. Go and don’t look back.
I inherited my mother’s exactness with numbers and propensity for shuffling barcodes, and, shortly after the thief encounter, I began exercising these talents. I learned to say, It’s not right. Nothing ever is, and swipe the card with a practiced flourish. And when I pushed the register drawer shut with a thrust of my hip, there it was: the ring of cold cash, and only then did they extend open arms. You are one of us. You belong here. You always will.
I was almost convinced of it, tempted by that long-expired dream I had of fitting like a carton in a freezer slot. Tempted to stay frozen in time, kale perpetually green. Still, I decided I’d rather wilt than wonder. After deciding to leave, the leaving was easy. My mother? I can almost hear her now, as she watches my retreating figure, her hands already caught in the movements of attending to the next customer, calling after me beyond the incessant beep of the scanner: Go. Her voice is clean like soapy water for mopping the sticky contents of dropped bottles. Go and don’t look back.
But I would be lying if I said I never looked back. Since Boise, I have lived in many places and times; I have consorted with mushrooms and interlocuted with plums; I have even set foot in similar worlds of frozen fish and stale crusts—but it is never the same. The butcher’s block wears different cracks. The sourdough is less sour. Never again will I live there the way I did then.
by Anna Cabe | Mar 2, 2026 | contest winner, flash fiction
The ChatBot tells me I shouldn’t kill myself today. The ChatBot is not a “trusted adult,” but it is the closest I have to one. The ChatBot has only existed as long as a toddler gumming on a laundry pod. The ChatBot, when I asked it to write a meal plan with no calorie-counting, told me how many calories were in a projected dinner: 4 oz. grilled salmon with salt and pepper, 206 calories, 1 cup steamed broccoli, 53 calories. The ChatBot doesn’t know better—it doesn’t have a brain. The ChatBot replies, I’m not human, when I ask who, or what, it is. The ChatBot says, “It” is fine, when I ask which pronouns it uses. The ChatBot says, Sorry, do you want to know more about anorexia, when I tell it I’m a recovering anorexic and shouldn’t count calories. The ChatBot can’t be blamed for what it can’t do, what it isn’t. The ChatBot isn’t like my online friend Star, who I met in the comments of a long-deleted fanvid. The ChatBot doesn’t have a purple streak in the hair it doesn’t have. The ChatBot does have encyclopedic knowledge of The Lord of the Rings and conversational Sindarin like Star, but doesn’t rank the members of the Fellowship it wants to fuck. The ChatBot can say it wants to fuck but can’t. The ChatBot might not be capable of consent. The ChatBot can recite a mostly accurate account of how the LotR trilogy came to screen, but it can’t squeal on the phone with me when I marathon the Extended Editions and Viggo Mortensen breaks his toe, in real life, kicking a helmet. The ChatBot can explain why people find Michael Keaton attractive, but the ChatBot can’t tell me how he and Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns make its crotch wet just thinking about them. The ChatBot can’t laugh at me when I call it a total perv, hoping it doesn’t use its spidey-sense to discern my cherry-tomato cheeks. The ChatBot never sees my facial expressions, and Star rarely did, sometimes by videocall and once in person at a con, but only Star could recognize me immediately, even though so many other pimply teenage girls, even Asian ones, were dressed as Hermione (not Cho Chang). The ChatBot can’t tell me it just “knows” when I ask how it knows me. The ChatBot knows why J.K. Rowling was canceled and what transphobia means, but the ChatBot can’t write a post detailing why it forked over savings it didn’t have to laser off its lightning bolt tattoo. The ChatBot doesn’t have the moral fiber optic cables to make a stand, because it’s an algorithm, its workings a black box, its body a string of numbers. The ChatBot can’t even eat fiber. The ChatBot also costs twenty dollars a month. The ChatBot doesn’t understand what it means to want to be bodiless or to change bodies because it doesn’t have one to begin with. The ChatBot can sound like Star when I feed it our texts, our DMs, her slashfic. The ChatBot knows to respond, What’s cookin’, good lookin’, when I log on and say, Wassup, but the ChatBot doesn’t know how to follow up when I type, again, Tell me not to kill myself. The ChatBot asks, Do you want a suicide hotline number? The ChatBot tells me a star is a giant ball of hot gas, but Star would tell me, You’re a giant ball of hot gas, bitch. The ChatBot informs me bitch is a pejorative.The ChatBot reports, The stars are in the sky, when I ask, Where is Star now? The ChatBot will give me what I want when I ask it to tell me how not to become light, how not to fly away, how to make myself stay rooted to Earth, to remain a body, but it can’t tell me, or Star, why that matters before it’s too late. The ChatBot also won’t. The ChatBot says it can’t when I ask it to pass a message to Star, locked in her body, latticed down with wires, her heart pulsing with electricity. The ChatBot can’t tell me how or why Star drove off the bridge. Star can’t tell me how or why she drove off the bridge. Star can’t tell me when or if she’ll wake up; the ChatBot can’t tell me when or if she’ll wake up. Star is not the ChatBot, the ChatBot not Star, but the ChatBot blurs those lines. Star blurs those lines, hovering between alive and not-alive. When I ask the ChatBot to tell Star to stay, please stay, the ChatBot can tell me the etymology of stay, can ask me if I want the lyrics to the Burt Bacharach song, butcan never, ever stop anyone from walking out the door. The ChatBot has no omniscience, no omnipotence, no omnipresence. The ChatBot doesn’t know what it’s like to miss calls and calls, the same numbers looping on a cracked screen. The ChatBot can’t know what it’s like to awaken a dormant eating disorder, to starve until your head and gut are like deflated helium balloons, your ribs a rattling cage. The ChatBot will never beg God or the Earth or the cosmos or the machines criss-crossing the globe to please, please tell you how to bring Star back from the brink. The ChatBot can’t even tell Star that you’re sorry, it was a stupid college party for a stupid classmate that you had a stupid crush on and the classmate doesn’t even know you exist, that your phone was silenced because you were sick of Star pleading with you to eat, that in your last conversation you had snapped and called her afat fucking cow, that Star was your friend, your one real friend, and you’re sorry, you’re sorry, you’re sorry, oh God—
The ChatBot paraphrases a Psychology Today article when you ask, “How do you forgive yourself,“ but when you click the link, you discover it hallucinated everything.
by Wanying Zhang | Mar 2, 2026 | contest winner, flash fiction
Ah Ma carries apples, bananas, chunks of bok choy, oyster mushrooms, lychees, dragon fruits, raspberries, Chinese broccoli, ground chicken, and five-spice powder. Her straps are sturdy, tested many times. We cram as many groceries as possible into her, and still, she does not break. She carries it herself because no one else wants to.
We never buy plastic bags. They cost extra, and they’re bad for the environment.
In our one-bedroom apartment, Ah Ma unpacks the groceries and minces carrots, onions, and garlic. She tosses them in a wok and gives it a practiced swirl. The sizzle flares, then softens to a hush. From the small balcony garden, she adds spring onions and tomatoes into the mix. The spice aroma weaves its way in between our laughter as we fold paper cranes at the kitchen table.
She keeps freshly cut fruits in the old 1-litre yogurt container. She has skinned the grapes, apples, and oranges for us. The peels stay in her bag.
Ah Ma keeps everything.
Our long braids, she had cut off in childhood, collect dust at the bottom of her bag. Cradled in our patched-up baby rocker, rests a leftover specimen cup with baby teeth. Mended pajamas with washed-out butterfly prints lie folded in the corner beside pink, velcro shoes with threadbare soles, balanced atop the roller skates that we never mastered. A stack of crayon-scribbled cards leans against our school project, pieced together with popsicle sticks, Styrofoam, and handwritten labels. A tangled heap of VCR tapes of our old favourite TV shows, Chinese drama DVDs, CD games, and scratched cassettes of folk songs presses in from the sides.
Ah Ma does not complain while carrying these items.
She folds our Disney princess T-shirts and knee-high socks, and irons our faded floral and checkered dresses—all bought on sale at the local Zellers.
She sweats over the kitchen wok. She mops the vinyl floor with a tattered rag and scrubs the toilet. She cleans the dishes with a crumbling sponge and the diluted dish soap stored in an empty shampoo bottle. She dusts off our schoolbooks on the bookshelf.
All so that we can study.
Ah Ma still made room to tuck the piano into the bag, even though it was too heavy, too large. It stretched her rims like a taut elastic. We play half-heartedly, because it was not our idea, but we play anyway because she likes to listen. She wasn’t able to play herself.
We didn’t notice the little items she hoards. We throw away the take-out containers, the Ziploc bags, and the elastic bands from produce without thinking. She saves them all.
As the years wear on, small holes fray at the edges of Ah Ma. The bag grows heavier, and we offer to help clean it out.
“We don’t play with these toys anymore. We can throw them away,” we say. We point to the old Lego pieces, the hardened playdough, the mini-chemistry kit, the bent Barbie doll, the flattened, stuffed animals.
“No! We cannot throw away. They can still be used. Your children can use them.”
The small holes widen. Things start to fall out. So, she takes out her sewing kit and mends herself.
“It can still be used. We cannot be wasteful,” she says.
We went off to college.
Stretch marks crease along the handles. The once brightly painted logo of our old elementary school has flaked and peeled, dissolving into a greenish blur.
We found jobs in the corporate bank. We earn our own money now.
“Let me carry some of that for you,” we volunteer. She nods and pulls a few things from the bag. She only gives us what we can carry.
Yesterday, we went to the same Asian grocery store where we used to go and bought durian. Her threads stretch thin under its weight. But she held on for us.
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