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CRAFT Short Fiction Prize 2025

CRAFT 2025 Short Fiction Prize

Guest Judge: Halle Hill

March 18, 2025 – May 18, 2025

$2,800 Awarded + Tech Bonus

This contest is now closed.

Thank you to all who sent work!

The short story is a literary staple, one with its own hallmarks of structure and paragons of form. However, the short story can also employ an infinite array of guises, settings, and perspectives. For the CRAFT 2025 Short Fiction Prize, we’re once again looking for the most compelling short stories that have yet to be published. Here’s what Guest Judge Halle Hill would like to see:

When I am reading short fiction, I am looking for bravery and something wrestled with on the page. I like texture, family, space, land, and bodies interacting in a strong key. I like humor and oddity. I like stories that “open” for me. When I teach, I encourage students to consider what they can offer up for the work; that is, greater sensitivity, a strong sense of sound, attention to the senses, or exquisite detail work. I am looking for tight sentences that string along into the next sentence and the next—I want to be pulled through. I want to read both the heart and the mind. And I like to see a sense of intention in a story. No lessons or polemics, but rather a connection to something human and urgent. I love prose that sings like poetry. I want stories that make me linger after I am finished with them. Send me your best and brightest!

The first-place winner will receive a $2,000 award, online publication, and our writerly Tech Bonus worth up to $500! The second- and third-place finalists will receive $500 and $300, respectively, along with online publication. The CRAFT 2025 Short Fiction Prize opens on March 18 and closes on May 18.

GUIDELINES:

  • CRAFT submissions are open to all writers.
  • International submissions are allowed.
  • Please submit work primarily written in English, but some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
  • We seek short fiction only for this contest: 1,000 to 5,000 words in length. Please do not send flash prose or poetry to this contest.
  • We review literary fiction but are open to a variety of genres and styles—our only requirement is that you show excellence in your craft.
  • Submit previously unpublished work only—we do NOT review reprints for contests (including work posted on blogs, personal websites, social media, et cetera). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
  • We allow simultaneous submissions—writers, please notify us and withdraw your piece if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
  • We allow multiple submissions—please submit each piece as a separate submission accompanied by an entry fee.
  • This contest requires a $20 entry fee per submission.
  • All entries will also be considered for publication in CRAFT.
  • Please double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12.
  • Include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable).
  • We do not require anonymous submissions. However, we do anonymize the fifteen shortlisted stories before sending them to the guest judge.
  • Writers from historically marginalized groups will be able to submit for free until we reach fifty free submissions. (This category is now closed.)
  • AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
  • Entries that do not adhere to these guidelines will be automatically disqualified.
  • We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason.
  • Additionally, we do not tolerate discrimination in the writing we consider for publication: work we find discriminatory on any of the bases stated here will be declined without complete review.
  • We are always happy to answer any questions. Email us: contact@craftliterary.com.

AWARDS:

  • Winner receives a $2,000 cash award and our Tech Bonus: their choice of an iPAD, reMarkable, or Freewrite (up to $500 value before tax).
  • Second- and third-place finalists receive $500 and $300, respectively.
  • The top three stories will be published in CRAFT, each with an introduction by the guest judge.
  • Each publication will also include an author’s note (craft essay) by the writer.

FINE PRINT:

  • Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for consideration for the award.
  • Our collaboration with editorial professionals in the judging of our contests and the awarding of our prizes does not imply an endorsement or recognition from their agencies, houses, presses, universities, et cetera.
  • Read our 2024 contest winners for examples of work chosen in the past.
  • As we only consider unpublished writing and will publish the winning pieces in October 2025, anything under contract to publish prior to January 2026 should not be entered.

OUR GUEST JUDGE:

Photo Credit: Nedra Hill

HALLE HILL is the author of Good Women (Hub City Press), which was named a 2023 Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, O Magazine, Electric Literature, Book Riot, and Southwest Review. A finalist for the 2023 Weatherford Award for Appalachian writing, she is the winner of the 2020 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize for Emerging Black Writers and the 2020 Oxford American Debut Fiction Prize. Her short stories have been translated into French and published in journals including Joyland, New Limestone Review, Atlanta Magazine, and the Oxford American, among others, as well as featured on the Ursa Short Fiction podcast. A born-and-raised East Tennessean, she currently lives, works, and teaches in North Carolina. Find her on Twitter @hallehillwrites.

 

OUR CONTEST PARTNER:

STORYSTUDIO CHICAGO is a nonprofit literary arts organization focused on building a writing community. We offer more than 200 online and in-person creative writing classes and events each year, which include everything from single-session classes focused on one aspect of craft to multi-session weekly classes to full year-long programs. We nurture writers of all ages and all skill levels and our programming covers all genres, from short stories and novels, to creative nonfiction like memoirs and essays, to poetry, screenwriting, satire, and just about anything you can imagine. For the CRAFT 2025 Short Fiction Prize, StoryStudio Chicago is offering a 10% discount code, which will be provided upon submission.

OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:

You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece directly through the contest submission form. We will provide line-level marginal notes, as well as a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. While editorial feedback is inherently subjective, our suggestions are always actionable and encouraging. We aim to have feedback completed within twelve weeks from the close of the contest. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered and your fee will be refunded. Please note that work we critique is not eligible for future CRAFT contests.

Editorial Feedback Team:

JOANNA ACEVEDO (she/they) is the Pushcart-nominated author of three books and two chapbooks. Her work has been seen across the web and in print, including Free State Review, The Rumpus, and The Adroit Journal. She received her MFA in fiction from New York University in 2021 and also holds degrees from Bard College and The New School. Find her on Twitter @jo_avocado.

MELISSA BENTON BARKER is a former flash fiction section editor at CRAFT. A graduate of the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles, her writing appears in Longleaf Review, Moon City Review, Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Best Small Fictions 2021. She has received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

KATE BLAKINGER is a writer and editor. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Epiphany, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Offing, and other journals. She is a Tin House Workshop alumna and holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. The Elizabeth George Foundation, MacDowell, Jentel, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center have supported her writing with fellowships. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

ALYSE BURNSIDE is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The Believer, and elsewhere. She’s working on a book.

ALEXA DORAN recently completed her PhD in poetry at Florida State University. Her full-length collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). Look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Witness, Salt Hill Journal, and Gigantic Sequins, among others.

BRANDON DUDLEY is the author of Hazards of Nature: Stories, selected by Sigrid Nunez as the winner of the 2020 Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Chapbook Contest. His writing, interviews, and criticism have appeared in New South, The Millions, The Forge, Fiction Writers Review, North by Northeast 2, and others. He holds an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. He lives in Maine with his wife and two sons. Find him on Twitter @brandondudley8.

ROSS FEELER’s fiction has appeared in Electric Literature’s “Recommended Reading,” The Common, New South, Potomac Review, Story | Houston, Hypertext, and others. His novel-in-progress received the Marianne Russo Award from the Key West Literary Seminar and was a finalist for James Jones First Novel Award. He teaches English at Texas State University.

B. B. GARIN is a writer living in Buffalo, New York. Her echapbook, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. Her work has appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Palooka, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, and more. She is currently a prose reader and blog contributor for The Masters Review. She continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels. Connect with her online @bb_garin.

ELIANA GRUVMAN is a passionate reader, editor, and writer. She graduated from Fordham University with a degree in English and Spanish language and literature. She is currently a flash fiction editorial assistant at CRAFT and previously interned for Gallery Books at Simon & Schuster and for Ladderbird Literary Agency. Her work has been published on Fordham’s platforms—the Ampersand, MODE Magazine, Bricolage, and RELISH—and has been performed by Free Pizza Sketch Comedy.

COURTNEY HARLER (she/her) is a queer writer, editor, and educator based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (fiction) from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe (2017) and an MA in English (literature) from Eastern Washington University (2013). Courtney is currently editor in chief of CRAFT and editorial director for Discover New Art, and has read and written for UNT’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize, The Masters Review, Funicular Magazine, Reflex Fiction, and Chicago Literati in recent years. She cohosted the literary podcast PWN’s Debut Review, and teaches and edits for Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio in New Jersey. For her creative work, Courtney has been honored by support from Key West Literary Seminar, Writing By Writers, Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Nevada Arts Council. Courtney’s work has been published in multiple genres in literary magazines around the world. Find her on Instagram @CourtneyHarler.

KATELYN KEATING (she/her) was the editor in chief of CRAFT from 2018 to 2021 and now serves as editor at large. She was a 2017 fellow of the LA Review of Books Publishing Workshop and has been on their faculty since 2018, overseeing PubLab, leading the magazine track as a program manager, and serving as the publisher coordinator for LITLIT: The Little Literary Fair. She is a production manager with Berrett-Koehler Publishers, and was the production and operations manager at Prospect Park Books until it left California in 2021. Her essays appear in Crab Orchard Review, Flyway, Lunch Ticket, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. Katelyn has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles, where she worked for two years on Lunch Ticket, serving as editor in chief for issues 11 and 12. Find her on Twitter @katelyn_keating.

JILL KOLONGOWSKI writes the Substack Tiny True Stories and is also the author of the essay collection Life Lessons Harry Potter Taught Me (Ulysses Press, 2017). Her work also appears in Electric Lit, Insider, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brevity, River Teeth, and elsewhere. Her essays have won Sundog Lit’s First Annual Contest series and the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Nonfiction at Lunch Ticket, and she earned her MFA from St. Mary’s College of California. Jill teaches writing at the College of San Mateo, and lives in Northern California with her husband and daughter. Find her on Twitter @jillkolongowski.

VAL M. MATHEWS is a big-hearted, fun-loving editor who teaches courses in developmental editing for the University of California Berkeley Extension, Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and the Editorial Freelancers Association in New York City. Val also freelances on the side and works as an editorial consultant for CRAFT and The Masters Review. Previously, she was an editor for The Wild Rose Press, a small traditional publishing house in New York. She earned an MA in professional writing from Kennesaw State University and a BFA from the University of Georgia. Fun fact about Val: She’s been an FAA-certified flight instructor for over twenty-five years, and in the past, she flew Lear jets for a living.

GABRIEL MOSELEY is a writer from Seattle, Washington. He holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and certificates in both editing and literary fiction from the University of Washington. His short story, “A Man Stands Tall,” was awarded The Masters Review Anthology Prize in 2017, selected by Roxane Gay. He received the General Motors’ Future Fiction Scholarship to attend Aspen Summer Words in 2023 and was chosen for the Jack Straw Writers Program in 2024. He has been selected for residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Centrum Artist Residency, and Seattle Public Library’s Writers’ Room Residency. He has also been named as a finalist for the Made at Hugo House Writing Fellowship, LitMag’s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction, and the Haleakalā National Park Residency. He has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Disquiet International, among others. His work appears in The Masters Review, Stratus, and Nordic Kultur Magazine.

JUSTINE PAYTON is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington where she is a recipient of the Philip Gerard Graduate Fellowship and the Bernice Kert Fellowship in Creative Writing. She has been published or has work forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, Isele Magazine, The Masters Review, The Keeping Room, and others. She is currently the managing editor of ONLY POEMS, an editor for Ecotone, and an editorial intern with Tin House. Find her on Instagram @just_a_rose4.

REBECCA REYNOLDS has an MFA in creative writing. Her short fiction has been published in various literary magazines, including Ascent, MudRoom, and The Boiler, and her story collection This Is How We Speak is forthcoming with Cornerstone Press. She lives outside Boston with her husband and three boys, and by day she is a children’s librarian. Find her on Twitter @rsreynolds611.

GAGE SAYLOR is the assistant director of creative writing at Oklahoma State University. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Passages North, Tampa Review, Crab Creek Review, Iron Horse, and elsewhere. He has won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize at Nimrod and is a previous semifinalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize at North American Review. He received his MFA at McNeese State University, where he was awarded the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction.

CHLOE CHUN SEIM is the author of CHURN, an illustrated novel-in-stories, which won the 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize and was named a finalist for Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Texas Review Press published CHURN in late 2023. Chloe’s fiction has appeared in LitMag, where she won the 2021 Anton Chekov Award for Flash Fiction, and in Split Lip Magazine, The McNeese Review, Potomac Review, and more. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

After retiring from full-time work, DAVID K. SLAY completed a two-year program of short fiction writing workshops in the University of California, Los Angeles, Writers’ Program. His short stories, flash fiction, and microfiction can be found in a group of diverse literary journals, including Door Is A Jar, Gold Man Review, ImageOutWrite, The Magnolia Review, Random Sample Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, American Writers Review, and others. Nonfiction craft articles are in CRAFT and Submittable’s “Content for Creatives,” and he has served as a guest editor for Vestal Review. He has been a submissions reader for CRAFT since 2019, and is currently an associate editor for the short fiction section.