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2017 Flash Fiction Contest

Contest Judge: Rebecca Schiff

Prize: $300, online publication,

publication as a limited-run broadside or micro-chap,

and a copy of the judge’s book

About the Contest

The winning flash fiction piece will be published on The Conium Review Online Compenium site.  The story will also be made into a limited-run broadside or micro-chap.  The winning author receives $300 and a copy of the judge’s book.

This year’s contest judge is Rebecca Schiff, author of The Bed Moved (Knopf, 2016). If you are a family member, coworker, or student of the judge, you are ineligible for this contest.

Contest Deadlines

Submissions must be received between October 15th, 2017 and December 15th, 2017.  All submissions must include a $10.00 entry fee. The winner will be announced in December.

Submission Guidelines

All manuscripts must be submitted through our Submittable page between October 15th, 2017 and December 15th, 2017. Your submission may include up to three flash fictions; each individual piece should be under 1,000 words. Upload your submission as a single manuscript file.  Your name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript.  The judge reads blind, and she will recuse herself from considering any manuscript where the writer is identifiable. In the unlikely event that the judge is unable to select a winner, The Conium Review editorial staff will make the final decision.

In the “Biography Statement” field, please include a two or three sentence third-person bio.  This bio will not be viewable by the contest judge.  If you win the contest, your bio appears alongside the published story in The Conium Review Online Compendium.

Submissions must be unpublished, original work. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but you must withdraw your story immediately if it is accepted elsewhere.

This contest abides by the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses code of ethics.  Thank you for submitting!

About the 2017 Contest Judge

Rebecca Schiff is the author of The Bed Moved (Knopf, 2016). She graduated from Columbia University’s MFA program, where she received a Henfield Prize. Her stories have appeared in n+1, Electric Literature, The American Reader, Guernica, The Guardian, and Lenny Letter. She lives in Brooklyn.

Praise for The Bed Moved

  • “In The Bed Moved, this brilliant young writer serves up stories that are tough, funny, fearless, weird, and loaded with heartache and desire.” –Ben Marcus, author of Leaving the Sea
  • “Rebecca Schiff is a human spotlight and I will look wherever she points from now on.” –Sloane Crosley, author of The Clasp
  • “Rebecca Schiff’s silky prose white-knuckles your heart while making you laugh. And that’s not easy. A remarkable debut.” –Patrick Volk, author of Shocked
  • “Rebecca Schiff is one of the best young writers out there. Her stories are sharp, subtle, funny, and incredibly moving.” –Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask
  • “The stories in The Bed Moved are tart, sexy, powerful, and very, very funny. Under Schiff’s unsparing eye, uncofrtable, hilarious truths are laid bare. A terrific debut.” –Kristin Valdez Quade, author of Night at the Fiestas
  • “Wry and ambitious. . . . [Schiff’s] sparse, poetic paragraphs are packed with forceful wit.” —The Atlantic
  • “Riveting. . . . Magic. . . . In [Schiff’s] work, you see the grace in human frailty.” —The Nation
  • “[Schiff’s] dark wit gives her stories genuine tensile strength. . . . She dips into her own braininess as if it were a bottomless trust fund.” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times
  • “Riveting. . . . Magic. . . . In [Schiff’s] work, you see the grace in human frailty.” —The Nation
  • “[A] stellar collection. . . . Schiff writes slim, ice-pick stories about sex and death and nighttime cab rides, sharpened by humor and extreme candor.” —The New York Times Book Review

Archived Contest Pages