Philadelphia Stories Fiction Contest
This is a national short fiction contest that features a first place $1,000 cash award and three $250 runner-up cash awards. The winner stories will be published in the print issue of the Winter/Spring 2025 issue of Philadelphia Stories. We especially encourage writers from underrepresented groups and backgrounds to send their work.
Contest Submission Guidelines:
- -Submit to the 2025 Philadelphia Stories Fiction Contest now until Sunday, December 1, 2024.
- -Previously unpublished works of fiction up to 8,000 words. Please note, “published” includes any work published in print or online, including online magazines, blogs, public social media sites, etc.
- -Multiple submissions will be accepted for the contest only. Simultaneous submissions are also accepted, however, we must be notified immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
- -Only authors currently residing in the United States are eligible.
- -Submissions will only be accepted via the website. Please email PhiladelphiaStoriesContests@gmail.com if you are having any trouble with your submission.
- -There is a $20 reading fee for each story submitted.
- -All entrants will receive a complimentary copy of the Philadelphia Stories contest issue.
Submit Here!
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About the 2025 Judge
Stephanie Feldman is the author of the novels Saturnalia, a Locus Award Finalist, and The Angel of Losses, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, winner of the Crawford Fantasy Award, and finalist for the Mythopoeic Award. She is co-editor of the multi-genre anthology Who Will Speak for America? and her stories and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from Asimov’s Science Fiction, Catapult Magazine, Electric Literature, Flash Fiction Online, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Rumpus, Uncharted Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Weird Horror, and more. She teaches creative writing at Arcadia University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Information About Previous Contests
About the 2023 Judge
Oindrila Mukherjee is Associate Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University. She has a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Florida. Prior to joining Grand Valley, she was the Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction at Emory University. She has been the recipient of fellowships from Inprint Houston and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a regular contributor to the Indian magazine Scroll.in where she created a series called Bottom Shelf about forgotten or little known books with an Indian connection. Her debut novel, The Dream Builders, was published earlier this year by Tin House Books in the US, Scribe Publications in the UK and Australia, and Harper Collins in India. Her shorter work has appeared in Salon, Kenyon Review Online, Colorado Review, Ecotone, and elsewhere. She grew up in India, and now lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more about the 2023 winners here.
About the 2022 Judge
Camille Acker is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection Training School for Negro Girls published by The Feminist Press in 2018. She grew up in Washington, D.C and holds a B.A. in English from Howard University and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. Her writing has received support from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Voices of Our Nations Arts, and Millay Colony for the Arts, among others. As a creative writing teacher, she has advised and mentored students across the United States including at New Mexico State University, Tin House Writers Workshop, Chicago Writers Studio, and Blue Stoop. She was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2020. Her work has been published in The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Electric Literature, and is forthcoming in the anthology On Girlhood: 15 Stories From the Well-Read Black Girl Library. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her partner. Read more about the winning stories here.
About the 2021 Judge
Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collections The World Doesn’t Require You and Insurrections, which was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 and Crab Orchard Review, among others. He was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, and earned an MFA from George Mason University where he won the Mary Roberts Rinehart award, a Completion Fellowship, and an Alumni Exemplar Award. Read more about the winning stories here.
About the 2021 Winner
Robin Lee Lovelace is a mixed race writer (urban black, rural white) who was born and raised in Indiana. She won the Etchings Press annual competition for novellas, for Savonne, Not Vonny, and was the second runner-up in Daisy Pettles writer-in-residence competition in May 2020. Robin was named as an honoree in the Emerging Author category for the Indiana Humanities Author’s Awards in September 2020 and in June, Robin’s story, Savonne, Not Vonny, was named as the Grand Prize Winner for the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) in the category of short stories, novelettes, and novellas. Robin lives in Plainfield, Indiana with her husband Dan and her dog Amy and her cat Evileena.
About the 2020 Judge
Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 international bestselling author of The Marsh King’s Daughter, a psychological suspense novel set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Her next psychological suspense novel, The Wicked Sister, will publish August 4, 2020.Karen has been active in the writing community for over twenty years. She co-founded the online writers community Backspace, and organized the Backspace Writers Conferences in New York and the Salt Cay Writers Retreat held on a private island in the Bahamas. She is a member of the International Thriller Writers, where she served on the board of directors as Vice President, Technology.
About the 2020 Winner
A.C. Koch
A.C. Koch is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has been published in literary journals such as Mississippi Review, Exquisite Corpse, the Columbia Journal, and F(r)iction. A story of his was selected by Robert Olen Butler to win the Raymond Carver Short Story Award at Carve Magazine in 2003. In addition to short fiction, he is an aspiring novelist, and recently completed a draft of a generation-spanning story about a small group of humans leaving a dying Earth to settle a new planet. He lives in Denver, Colorado, where he teaches linguistics at the graduate level and makes music with Firstimers, a power-pop ensemble. Read more about the 2020 contest HERE.