Deadline: August 1, 2023
Entry fee: $16.50
About the competition
We’re looking for stories with powerful beginnings, rising tension, and a climax that resonates, to the theme of DETOUR. Short stories about alternative routes, roads less travelled, unexpected journeys, that examine lessoned learned, cautionary tales, surprising endings, friends made along the way. Play with unconventional storytelling, or tell a story that plays with ‘epic journey’ tropes. What obstacles can keep your characters from reaching their goals? Have they reached their ending yet? Has something lead to a possibility they would have never otherwise imagined?
Sometimes the way forward isn’t simple, and often it’s these detours through life that make for compelling, hopeful, significant, surprising, or comical stories – stories that linger on characterisation, resilience, unorthodox experiences, and new ways of looking at the world. That stick with us after the last sentence is done.
Competition guidelines
- Entries close 6pm EST Monday, 1st August, 2023.
- The word limit is 1,000. This includes titles and any sub-headings. There is no minimum.
- Submit your entry in Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1.5 line spacing with paragraph first line tab indent. Your name must not appear on your story. Word or PDF acceptable. You must address the theme – Detour/s. Maximum 1,000 words.
- Entries can be fiction, or fiction inspired by true events.
- Winner receives $250 Hawkeye Publishing Gift Voucher for professional services (ie. editing or author coaching or cover design) + Anthology front cover design based on winner’s story. Shortlisted (2nd – 4th placed) names published.
- Top 40 stories will be published in an anthology, and all those published receive a free copy of the anthology.
- Read the whole guidelines and enter the competition here.
