Beginning in January 2025, the BWR Short Story Award will open the competition soliciting stories of 2,500 words or fewer on the theme of Speculative Fiction (tales of science fiction and fantasy, broadly interpreted).
The winners receive cash and publication, with the first-place winner being considered for their upcoming anthology, Illusive Worlds: Sweet, Funny and Strange Tales of Science Fiction and Fantasy, forthcoming in 2026.
Contest will open January 1, 2025 and the deadline will be March 31, 2025. The 2025 contest judge will be science-fiction and fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky.
For more information on the 2025 Short Story Award, click here. You can read an interview with Mr. Tchaikovsky here.
And we’re not even talking about the summer weather. What’s so hot right now?
This month, the Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC, announced the winners of its 2024 Short Story Award competition for works of 2000 words or fewer on the theme of “Holiday Tales.” For this competition, “holiday” was defined as anything from U.S. Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day. The talented authors whose stories are honored are:
First Place: Rhonda Zangwill, New York, NY, for “Oh! Christmas Tree”
Second Place: Bettie Nebergall, Mt. Dora, FL, for “Just Ask Santa”
Third Place: Mary Adler, Forestville, CA, for “Nellie the Narragansett and the Transferware Platter”
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order by author’s last name):
Many thanks to Marlo Berliner, our Guest Judge, who selected this year’s winners.
For the first time in the history of the Short Story Award, BWG decided to offer print publication to the second- and third-place winners instead of only to the one who won first-place. This means that you’ll get to read all three of these terrific stories in one volume.
The book in which these stories will appear, Season’s Readings: More Sweet, Funny, and Strange® Holiday Tales will be published this fall in print (ISBN: 978-1-954675-04-9) and ebook (ISBN: 978-1-954675-05-6). In addition to this year’s contest winners, the 2023 contest first-place winner, Sally Milliken’s “First Thanksgiving,” will also be included. And, of course, you’ll also get stories from the authors of the Bethlehem Writers Group. Some of the stories are heart-warming, others quirky, and still others with a hint of magic. Watch for the book to be available on October 1.
As if the book coming out on October 1 weren’t enough excitement, we’ll also be unveiling the 2025 Short Story Award competition that day in the fall issue of Bethlehem Writers Roundtable (https://bwgwritersroundtable.com). For next year’s contest, which will open on January 1, 2025, we’ll be looking for stories of science fiction and/or fantasy, and this year we’ll allow the stories to be a bit longer with a 2500 word maximum. The top three winners will receive cash and offers of publication (in print or online in Roundtable). We’ll have all the info for you in October, but until then, sharpen your pencils, grab a cool drink, find a place in the shade, and fire up your sci-fi/fantasy muse. Your story could be the next hot topic!
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More info →A Slice of Orange is an affiliate with some of the booksellers listed on this website, including Barnes & Nobel, Books A Million, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. This means A Slice of Orange may earn a small advertising fee from sales made through the links used on this website. There are reminders of these affiliate links on the pages for individual books.
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