WRITING CONTESTS
Our 2026 contests will open on September 1
and close on December 20!
The Southeast Review offers three annual contests with cash awards: the World's Best Short-Short Story Contest, the Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest, and the Gearhart Poetry Contest.
The winner in each category receives $750!
Winners and finalists will be notified in February 2027 and published in our biannual issue in Fall 2027.
2026 JUDGES
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World's Best Short-Short Story Contest
Amina Lolita Gautier
is the author of four award-winning short story collections, most recently The Best That You Can Do (2024), which won the Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize, three International Latino Book Awards, the Midwest MLA Award, a Florida Book Award Silver Medal, and a Silver Medal “IPPY” Award for Short Story Fiction. Gautier has published more than one hundred fifty short stories. Her fiction appears in AGNI, American Short Fiction, Boston Review, Callaloo, Cincinnati Review, Latino Book Review, Los Angeles Review, Oxford American, Southeast Review, Southern Review, and TriQuarterly, among other places. Awards for individual stories include the Able Muse Prize in Fiction, the Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction, the Craft Flash Fiction Prize, the Crazyhorse Prize, the Danahy Fiction Prize, the Rick DeMarinis Prize, the Jack Dyer Prize, the Lamar York Prize in Fiction, the New Millennium Writings Flash Fiction Prize, the Raleigh Review Flash Fiction Prize, the River Styx Schlafly Microfiction Award, and the William Richey Prize.
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Gearhart Poetry Contest
Li-Young Lee
is the author of several books of poetry, most recently, The Invention of the Darling. With poet Yun Wang he has also co-translated the Chinese spiritual classic The Dao De Jing.
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Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest
Rose McLarney’s
collections of poems are Colorfast, Forage, and Its Day Being Gone, from Penguin Poets, as well as The Always Broken Plates of Mountains, published by Four Way Books. A book of lyric essays, Rubble Masonry, from LSU Press, is her newest release. She is co-editor of A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, from University of Georgia Press, and the journal Southern Humanities Review. Rose has been awarded fellowships by MacDowell and Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences; served as Dartmouth Poet in Residence at the Frost Place; and is winner of the National Poetry Series, the Chaffin Award for Achievement in Appalachian Writing, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers’ New Writing Award for Poetry, among other prizes. Her work has appeared in publications including American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Orion, and The Oxford American. Currently, she is Lanier Endowed Professor of Creative Writing at Auburn University.
Contest Guidelines
World's Best Short-Short Story Contest
In 1986, Jerome Stern, the then-director of Florida State University’s creative writing program, founded this contest to celebrate micro fiction. Submissions had 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, we continue holding the contest in Stern’s memory, with a modern master of the short-short story judging the entries annually.
Please send up to three short-short stories per submission. Each short-short should be no more than 500 words. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
Only withdraw your entire submission if none of your submitted short-shorts remain available. To withdraw a single short-short, please add a note to your submission with the title you would like to remove from consideration. (Please notify us via Submittable only.)
Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest
Our nonfiction contest was established in honor of Dr. Ned Stuckey-French, whose legacy will last as one of service to the literary community, his students, hospital workers’ unions, and beyond. His spirit of selfless service is a model we aspire to, and his unflinching dedication to truth and its telling inspires the nonfiction we publish and produce.
We seek submissions in this vein: nonfiction that prods and pressures expectations; that speaks to the personal against the powerful; and that prioritizes soul, heart, and service. Please send essays of up to 10 pages. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
Gearhart Poetry Contest
Our poetry contest began in 1996 to honor Michael Wm. Gearhart, a Ph.D. student in creative writing at Florida State University who died suddenly at the age of 39 as he was completing the final steps of his degree. The contest continues today in his memory.
Please send up to three poems, no more than 10 pages total. Include no more than one poem per page. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
Only withdraw your entire submission if none of your submitted poems remain available. To withdraw a single poem, please add a note to your submission with the title you would like to remove from consideration. (Please notify us via Submittable only.)
Submissions for Currently or Formerly Incarcerated Writers
If you are a currently or formerly incarcerated writer, or if you are submitting on behalf of one, you may submit to the contest for free via mail (see address below), or by contacting the Editor at southeastreview@gmail.com.
Address
Southeast Review
Department of English
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306