The Jezebel (Very) Short Fiction Contest

Want to show off your storytelling chops, and win some great books? Now’s your chance to do both by entering our (very) short fiction contest. It’s easy!

All you have to do is write a story that’s under 500 words, featuring a female protagonist, and send it to [email protected] (not the tips line please!) with “Fiction Contest” in the subject line. ~~Do it by Friday, May 27, and~~ you could win a stack of awesome lady-authored books from Little, Brown, including Bossypants by Tina Fey, Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore, and When Everything Changed by Gail Collins. Also, the winner will be published here on Jezebel (anonymously if you prefer).

Guest judging the contest is the awesome Emma Straub, the author of the story collection Other People We Married. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Dossier Journal, Tin House, and many other journals. Her novel, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books. More information can be found at www.emmastraub.net, and more goofiness can be found on Twitter @emmastraub.

A bit more on her story collection: Other People We Married is a collection of twelve stories about love, and loss, and transplantation. With humor and compassion, Straub observes characters in flux, and the rest of us laugh and wince along with them. A review of the book on The Rumpus says, “These quiet epiphanies in Straub’s stories place her in the company of Beattie and Moore, and the voices she creates are contemporary. When I finished reading this exquisite collection, I flipped back to the beginning of the book and stared at the table of contents. The book was suddenly heavier in my hands — suddenly filled with the weight of all these character’s silent fantasies, side-thoughts and careful revelations.”

Also judging this contest will be me, Anna North. I am the author of America Pacifica, which is about eighteen-year-old Darcy’s search for her mother on a corrupt island colony after a second Ice Age. You can read an excerpt of it over at io9. But your stories do not have to be about transplantation or Ice Ages. They can be funny or sad! They can be silly or serious! You have one week to show us what you can do — get writing!

Update: Due to overwhelming early response, the contest is no longer open for submissions. Check back soon for winners! For those of you who didn’t get to submit, never fear — there will be further contests in future.