Upcoming deadline:

August and Frieda Albrecht, c 1940
  • Very Short Fiction Award: 1st place $1,500 and publication in Issue 98. Deadline: October 31. (Note: The grace period for Family Matters continues through 10/7.)
  • SIGNIFICANT changes (good ones!) just ahead

  • Second- and 3rd-place Very Short Fiction winners will win, respectively, $500 and $300 (or, if published, $700.) Writing Guidelines
  • Winners and finalists will be announced in the January bulletin, and contacted directly the previous week.
  • Open to all! Any story—up to 3,000 words—that has not been accepted for print publication is welcome.
  • Do not be afraid to tell the truth. The reader will understand the risk you've taken, and be appreciative. And you will grow as a writer and a person.—Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, interviewed by Teresa Burns Gunther
Essays in this bulletin:
David James Poissant: Write between diapers. Write between bottles. Write between the assignments you have to take to keep the job you have to work to give you the time you'll never have enough of to write the things you want to write. (read more)
Matthew Salesses: Eleven years ago, I started a novel about expatriates in Prague. I was an expatriate in Prague, a Korean adoptee teaching English as a Foreign Language to executives at Czech companies. It was my first year out of college. (read more)

Results of the July Very Short Fiction Award

Winners and finalists have been notified, the Top 25 list is posted, and here are the Honorable Mentions. (A note about who wins.) Our thanks to all of you for letting us read your stories!

  • 1st place goes to David James Poissant for "Tornado."
  • 2nd place goes to Adam O'Fallon Price for "Our Celebrity."
  • 3rd place goes to Mary Kuryla for "Not in Nottingham."

Feel free to forward this bulletin to your writer friends. As you know, the bulletin is free and meant to inform and to promote writers. (We never share your info.) People can sign up for bulletins themselves here.

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Sisters and Editors
Discovering, publishing, and paying emerging writers since 1990.
  • One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, New Stories from the Midwest, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South, Best American Mystery Stories, Best of the West, and Best American Short Stories
  • Every story published in Glimmer Train is unsolicited. And every year, we pay out over $50,000 to fiction writers.