2012 Unbound Press Flash Fiction Award
Now Open!
Closing Date: June 30, 2012
We always make an effort to notify winners within 30 days of closing date.
1st Prize – £500, publication in 2012 print anthology, 1 free copy
2nd Prize – £250, publication in 2012 print anthology, 1 free copy
3rd Prize – £125, publication in 2012 print anthology, 1 free copy
Shortlisted – publication in 2012 print anthology, 1 free copy
Honourable Mentions – offer to publish in the quarterly ejournal Spilling Ink Review
Entry fees:
We accept GBP (£), EURO (€) or USD ($)
1 entry £5 / 3 entries £10
1 entry €8 / 3 entries €16
1 entry $10 / 3 entries $20
Guest Judge: Zoë Strachan
Photograph Taken by Ray Deng
Trachan is the author of Negative Space (won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book of the Year Award) and Spin Cycle (both published by Picador). Her most recent novel, Ever Fallen in Love, is published by Sandstone Press and has been shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize and longlisted for London Book Award. Zoë also writes short stories, essays, journalism and drama. Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. She has received two writer’s bursaries from the Scottish Arts Council, a Hawthornden Fellowship and was UNESCO City of Literature writer-in-residence at the National Museum of Scotland. In 2008 she was awarded a Hermann Kesten Stipendium and spent time in Nuremberg, and in 2009 she received a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship which took her to France to write. She lives in Glasgow where she teaches part time on the prestigious Creative Writing programme at the University of Glasgow. Her play Old Girls opened the 2009/10 season of A Play, a Pie and a Pint at Oran Mor in Glasgow, and her short opera Sublimation (with composer Nick Fells) toured in May 2010 with Scottish Opera and will be performed in South Africa by Cape Town Opera in November 2010
Competition Guidelines
500 words max (no minimum).
There is no theme. All styles and genres are welcome.
Simultaneous submissions are accepted but please let us know as soon as possible if your entry has been accepted elsewhere or won/placed in another writing competition. Entry fees will not be refunded in this case.
Entries may be submitted via email or post. Entries submitted via email must be attached in the form of a Word (doc) or Rich Text Format (rtf). Entries submitted via post must be printed on standard-size paper and double-spaced. Entries sent via post will not be returned (please don’t send your only copy).
Please be kind when formatting and adhere to general rules of courtesy (i.e. 12pt standard font, double-spaced, pages numbered).
Your name, email address or any other distinguishing names should not appear in the body of your story. For example, please don’t put your name and email address in the header or footer. It is fine to include the title of your submission.
Submissions must be entrant’s own original work and must be previously unpublished (if your work has appeared in an online workshop or a member’s only writer’s chat – etc – it is eligible for this competition).
International submissions are welcomed but all entries must be written in English.
As a condition of submitting, the author must hold the copyright of the entry. If the entry is successful Unbound Press will have one time publicatiopn rights. Copyright remains with the author.
Entries will be judged anonymously and all decisions are final.
How to Enter
You have two options: Online and Postal
Online Entry
You may submit your entry(ies) via email and pay the entry fee(s) online via PayPal. You do NOT need a PayPal account to use this option. Click the appropriate button below and you’ll be re-directed to a secure PayPal shopping cart. Please notice that you have the option to pay online in GBP (£), EURO (€) and USD ($). If you wish to enter more than one submission you will be given the opportunity to change the quantity on the PayPal shopping cart.
If you do not wish to pay online you may still submit your entry via email and send a cheque via the post. We can only accept cheques for GBP £ from a UK bank. Please make cheques payable to ‘Unbound Press’ and post to: Unbound Press, PO Box 16864, Glasgow, Scotland G11 9DJ.
Once you have a receipt/transaction number submit your entry via email to: [email protected]
Be sure to cut and paste your PayPal receipt/transaction number into the body of the email (or let me know that payment has been sent via post)
State the competition category in the subject line of your email
In the body of the email please include the following:
Name
Postal Address
Title of Entry and Word Count
Don’t forget to attach your story! Atachments must be in the form of a Word(doc) or Rich Text Format (rtf). It would also help if the document name is the title of your story. If you are submitting more than one entry, it is perfectly acceptable to send them in one email.
Postal Entry
Entries submitted via post should be printed on standard-size paper and double-spaced. Please adhere to common formatting (such as 12pt font, Times New Roman – or similar standard font – double-spaced). We do not reject entries based on varied formatting but we do appreciate standard style.
Entries sent via email will not be returned. Please do not send your only copy.
If you do not have an email address or you wish to receive hard-copy confirmation that we received your entry, please include a SASE or postcard.
Postal submissions should be accompanied by a cheque from a UK bank made out to ‘Unbound Press’. We can only accept cheques in GBP (£).
Postal submissions should be accompanied by a coversheet stating the following:
Name
Postal Address
Title of Entry and Word Count
Email address (if available)
If you are more comfortable using a Competition Entry Form, please feel free to click the button below, print and submit with your postal entry.
Announcement of Winners
Winners and runners-up will be notified by email after the closing date and results posted on the Unbound Press website.