WRITINGCONTESTS
ROBERTOLENBUTLER
NABILALOVELACE
Nabila Lovelace is a first-generation Queens native; her people hail from Trinidad & Nigeria. She is the author of Sons of Achilles (YesYes Books, 2018), her debut book of poetry, and has work published or forthcoming in Narrative Northeast, Washington Square Review, Day One, ESPNW, & Vinyl. You can currently find her kicking it in Tuscaloosa.
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels and six volumes of short stories, one of which, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and three of which—Severence, Intercourse, and Weegee Stories—are comprised entirely of short-short stories (225 in all). He was the guest editor for The Best Small Fictions 2015, the inaugural volume for this annual series. He has also published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream. He was the 2013 recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.
2019 JUDGES
The Southeast Review offers two annual contests with cash awards: The World's Best Short-Short Story Contest and The Gearhart Poetry Contest. The winner in each category receives $500 and publication!
This year's judges are Robert Olen Butler, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and Nabila Lovelace, co-founder of The Conversation Literary Festival.
Our 2019 contest window is Jan 15th to March 15th.
General Guidelines
There are two ways to submit! You may either send your typed entry via snail mail to the address listed below, OR take advantage of our online contest submission option (please note all submissions are subject to an entry fee of $16). For mailed submissions, make checks or money orders out to: The Southeast Review. Electronic and postmark deadline: March 15, 2019.
Friends and current or former students of the judge and those who have been affiliated with Florida State University within the last five years are ineligible.
For mailed submissions, please do not send an SASE. Winners will be announced on the website in June. All contestants will receive the issue in which the winning submissions appear.
Only previously unpublished work will be considered. If you want to withdraw any individual pieces from consideration (in the case of our poetry or short-short story contests), please log in to Submittable and add a note to your submission telling us which pieces you wish to withdraw. In the case of mailed submissions, please contact the appropriate genre editor.
Genre Guidelines
The Southeast Review Gearhart Poetry Contest
This contest was developed in 1996 to honor Michael Wm. Gearhart, a Ph.D. student in creative writing at FSU who died suddenly at the age of 39 as he was completing the final steps of his degree. The contest continues to support the production of SER (known by the name Sundog: The Southeast Review during Michael’s tenure) in his memory.
Send up to three poems, no more than 10 pages total, accompanied by a $16 reading fee for mailed or online submissions. Include no more than one poem per page. Include your name, contact information (email address preferred), and the title of each of your poems in a very brief cover letter. Do not include personal identification information on the poems themselves. One winner (awarded $500) and up to five finalists will be announced in Summer 2019 and will appear in Volume 38.1 (Spring 2020). For mailed submissions label envelope: Gearhart Poetry Contest. Do not address your submission directly to the judge.
The World's Best Short-Short Story Contest
In 1986, Jerome Stern, the then-director of Florida State University’s Creative Writing Program and renowned author of Making Shapely Fiction among other books, founded this contest to celebrate what he called “micro fiction” (submissions at that time were required to be under 250 words, and the winner received a crate of oranges as well as a check). Stern passed away from cancer in 1996 and though the guidelines and prize have changed since then, we are grateful to have a modern master of the short-short story judge the entries annually, and continue to hold the contest in memory of Stern.
Send up to three short-short stories per submission, accompanied by a $16 reading fee for mailed or online submissions. Each short-short story should be no more than 500 words. Include your name, contact information (email address preferred), and the title of each of your short-short stories in a very brief cover letter. Do not include personal identification information on the short-shorts themselves. One winner (awarded $500) and up to five finalists will be announced in Summer 2019 and will appear in Volume 38.1 (Spring 2020). For mailed submissions, label envelope: WBSSSC. Do not address your submission directly to the judge.
Address
The Southeast Review
Department of English
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306