Fractured Lit 2026 Elsewhere Prize | $3500 | Judged by Gina Chung | Free for Historically Marginalized Groups

We’re once again asking you to send us stories that play with setting, that reimagine our world, or take us into places we’ve never been! Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story. 

From July 20 to September 20, 2026, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.

“Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess.”

—Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere 

For this contest, we want writers to be our tour guides through the unfamiliar, to engage their imaginations widely, and to write the stories that no bot or AI could write! We love unique, specific characters who are grounded in their story worlds, challenge the rules, and make dynamic choices!

For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.

We're thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Gina Chung, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We're excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.

Good luck and happy writing!

Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a B&N Discover Pick, and the short story collection Green Frog, which was a Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick, an NPR Best Book of the Year, and longlisted for the New American Voices Award. She has received the O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction, a Pushcart Prize, two APALA Adult Fiction Honors, and a Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship. She is a faculty member of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University.

I'm always looking for stories with good sentences, memorable characters who get to make choices and experience consequences, and, most of all, voice. Voice, for me, is what lingers long after any details about plot or setting may have faded from memory; it's that almost undefinable yet utterly recognizable quality of a story that makes you sit up and think, "Now this I have to pay attention to." It's also what makes me, as a reader, trust the writer and that this story is going where they want it to, not where they think I want it to go. 

—Gina Chung, Guest Judge

GUIDELINES:

• Your submission allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
• Writers from historically marginalized groups may submit for free until we reach a cap of 25 submissions in this category. No additional fee waivers will be granted for this contest.
• We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/micro stories requires a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
• Please send flash and microfiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
• We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
• Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
• All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
• Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
• Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
• We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
• We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
• Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.

The deadline for entry is September 20, 2026. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest's close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.

Some Submittable Hot Tips:

• Please be sure to whitelist/add this address to your contacts, so notifications do not get filtered as spam/junk: notifications@email.submittable.com.
• If you realize you sent the wrong version of your piece: It happens. Please DO NOT withdraw the piece and resubmit. Submittable collects a nonrefundable fee each time. Please DO message us from within the submission to request that we open the entry for editing, which will allow you to fix everything from typos in your cover letter to uploading a new draft. The only time we will not allow a change is if the piece is already under review by a reader.