🖤 General Submission Window 🖤 

May 1 – July 1, 2025

  🏆 Prizes 🏆 

 1st Place: $1000

 2nd Place: $400

 3rd Place: $200

Winning stories will be published in Write or Die Magazine.
 

💗 Guest Judge 💗

Nora Lange's debut novel Us Fools was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize by the Academy of Arts and Letters, is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, was named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her short writing is forthcoming in the Believer, has appeared in BOMB, Hazlitt, Joyland, American Short Fiction, Denver Quarterly, HTMLGIANT and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC’s Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities. She recently moved to Salt Lake City with her family and desperately misses Los Angeles. 

  👀 What She is Looking For 👀 

Shock yourself. Take a risk. Loosen the reins of plot. Let the idea in your story shine. Get lost and call it found.
 

🎀 Submission Guidelines 🎀 

• Your short story must be no more than 4,000 words.
• Submissions are open internationally to anyone writing in English.
• The story must be unpublished at the time of submission (this includes blogs, newsletters, and personal sites).
• Upload your story as a .doc, .docx, or .pdf.
• Do not include your name or any identifying info in the file or the filename.
• We encourage simultaneous submissions. If your story is accepted elsewhere, congrats! Just withdraw it via Submittable. No need to stress. 
• We do accept multiple submissions, but each story must be submitted separately with a new entry fee. If you’ve got a few stories you’re deciding between, feel free to send them all—we’d love to read them.
• All entries will be considered for publication in Write or Die Magazine, whether or not they win a prize.
• We want to support writers who crave both validation and growth. That’s why we offer an optional editorial feedback package with your entry. This includes personalized margin notes from a member of our editorial team. (Limited slots available — first come, first serve.)

 📞 Winners Announced 📞 

September 2025
 

Good luck!! <3 

We accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know immediately if your story is accepted elsewhere. No previously published works. 

Submission Fees

• Free Submission period: Every first week of the month (1st—7th)
• Regular Submission Period: $3 per submission (8th — end of month) 

This fee helps us cover operational costs and allows us to pay writers and our editors.
 

Please use Times New Roman, 12 point font and double space your work. Send finished drafts of up to 4,000 words in an attached Word doc. The first page of your document should include:

• The title(s) of the piece(s) you are sending, 
• Name
• Phone number
• Email address
• Your brief cover letter with third person bio

What We Are Looking For: Notes from our Editors  

Tamar Mekredijian, Fiction Editor 

Tamar is looking for character-driven stories with a strong central emotion.  Don’t be afraid to break her heart. She is drawn to characters who make mistakes. She wants to read stories that make her look at life closely and see beauty in the shadows. She is looking for attention to details that are usually overlooked, and she isn’t afraid of surprises.  

Suzanne Grove, Fiction Editor

Suzanne is most often drawn to character-driven fiction with a focus on interiority and a penchant for highlighting the surreal elements in everyday life. She most appreciates characters who are haunted in some way—by their pasts, by the hope and uncertainty of the future, by their own conflicting desires, and by the space between what they need and the achievement of those needs. Her favorite stories don’t necessarily adhere to traditional ideas about plot structure, but rather propel themselves forward via constant micro-tensions and questions raised on the page. She is looking for stories that allow us to step into the unknown while simultaneously holding up a mirror and pushing us to go deeper within ourselves. More than anything, she’s seeking stories driven by unique and diverse narrative voices and a strong sense of style at the line level.

Response time 

We aim to get back to writers within 3-6 months. We appreciate your patience.
 

Accepted Work

Published pieces will be accompanied by original artwork, a special interview feature with our fiction editor, Tamar, and a shared feature across our social media platforms. 

Thank you for submitting to Write or Die! We look forward to reading your work! 

What We Are Looking For: Note from our Editor, Shelby Hinte
 

Essays: We are interested in essays that focus on the writing life and especially love work where the personal intersects with the critical. We love essays that examine how publishing, reading, teaching, spirituality, sexuality, identity, obsession, labor, and family shape writing. Unconventional book reviews, insights on niche literary topics, lyric essays on craft, and stories about writing that are also about something seemingly unrelated really excite us. More than anything, we like to be surprised, so if you think you have something that speaks to writing or literature in some way, send it to us!

Please use Times New Roman, 12 point font and double space your work. Send finished drafts of up to 3,000 words in an attached doc. The first page of your document should include:

• The title(s) of the piece(s) you are sending, 
• Name
• Phone number
• Email address
• Your brief cover letter with third person bio

Submission Fees

• Free Submission period: Every first week of the month (1st—7th)
• Regular Submission Period: $3 per submission (8th — end of month) 

This fee helps us cover operational costs and allows us to pay writers and our editors.
 

Response time 

We aim to get back to writers within 3-6 months. We appreciate your patience.
 

Thank you for submitting to Write or Die! We look forward to reading your work! 

What We Are Looking For: Notes from our Editors 

We accept pitches from interviewers interested in covering authors with a forthcoming or recently published book. We are especially interested in featuring books by debut authors and/or books published by indie presses. 

• Always open
• Pays 25 USD
• Editors: Nirica Srinivasan 

We accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know immediately if your story is accepted elsewhere. Submit one piece at a time. No previously published works. No submission fee.
 

Please use Times New Roman, 12 point font and double space your work. Send finished drafts in an attached Word doc. The first page of your document should include:

• The title(s) of the piece(s) you are sending, 
• Name
• Phone number
• Email address
• Your brief cover letter with third person bio

Response time 

We aim to get back to writers within 3-6 months. We appreciate your patience.
 

Thank you for submitting to Write or Die! We look forward to reading your work!