Channel your inner raven and bring us your cleverest short stories! The Raven Short Story Contest is open until October 15th, and we want to see what inventive short stories you have hidden in your nests.
Our Judge
CC Humphreys, prolific author of The Jack Absolute Series, Shakespeare’s Rebel, Plague, and Fire, along with the newly released Chasing the Wind, returns to judge the 2018 Raven Short Story Contest. Past winners include ‘The Tape’ by Elaine McDivitt (Issue 18), ‘The Handler’ by Pat Flewwelling (Issue 14), ‘Black Blizzard’ by Emily Linstrom (Issue 10), and ‘The Inner Light’ by Krista Wallace (Issue 6).
First prize in the Raven Short Story Contest is $300 and print and e-publication to a loyal international readership. The 2018 winner will be announced November 15th! Previously unpublished short stories of up to 2500 words will be considered–enter before midnight, October 15th!
Ten days and ten entries remain. We are pleased to release the Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize shortlist. Listed below are the authors whose stories will be considered, by flash-master Bob Thurber, in alphabetical order.
Amy Neufeld Jen Knox Kate Felix Kate Felix Liz Cox Liza Potvin Nicholas Christian Rob Taylor Robert Runté Ron. Lavalette
The list is shorter, and the stakes are higher. Best of luck to these ten flashes of fiction!
A hummingbird sighting always feels a little bit magical, and with the many entries for this year’s Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize, we are feeling awe-struck! We’re pleased to announce the longlist: the top 27 entries listed alphabetically by author last name. Authors listed twice have two entries in the longlist.
Alex Reece Abbott Ariel Basom Lauren Bentley Nicholas Christian Liz Cox Kate Felix Kate Felix Marissa Fischer Aleisha Hendry Terrence Huntington Jen Knox Jen Knox Ron. Lavalette Kim Martins Jenn Marx William P. Masters Gabriella Morrison Sadi Muktadir Amy Neufeld Liza Potvin Robert Runté Megan Rodgers Rob Taylor Annis Teller Annis Teller Hannah van Didden KT Wagner
Thank you to everyone who entered! The shortlist will be revealed in July, and the winners, picked by Bob Thurber, will be announced July 15th.
Looking for inspiration? Peruse these snippets from past Hummingbird Contest winners. All that furious fluttering should get the juices flowing.
2017 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize Winner, Issue 17 ‘Just Down the Hall’ by Jeanette Topar
Truth was, Mrs Cole had become a little afraid of 902. Late in the evenings she’d hear 902’s footsteps slide across the tiled hallway, hesitating outside her door. “Is this my place?” her neighbour would ask. Mrs Cole would mute the volume on her TV and hold her breath as she sat quietly in her tidy living room waiting for the woman to shuffle away. The last few times Mrs Cole had encountered her, 902 was wearing nothing but a gray slip that blended with the colour of her skin and matched her hair — she appeared little more substantial than a shadow or dust mote hovering in the hall.
2016 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize Winner, Issue 13 ‘Xuefei and his heart’ by Rebecca Wurz
Xuefei sat on a metal stool in the corner of the operating theatre. He’d been awake all night, and now, sitting in the quiet of the deserted room, he felt drowsy. He had transported the heart of the criminal executed at dawn from the prison infirmary to the university hospital’s surgical suite, built especially for this demonstration. American transplant surgeons, collaborating with Chinese colleagues, were scheduled to do the first heart transplant on Chinese soil.
2015 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize Winner, Issue 9 ‘The Last Neanderthals’ by Christina Crocker Escribano
You say, No one is going to eat us, but I know better. The path of the forest is necklaced in footprints. The surface of the snow is scuffed and bloodied. They left no remains of skin or bone, just a fistful of hair that looks like our own. We stop and watch, for a long time, as if the blood was an outline, a shadow, a spirit blooming in the ice. You say the soul lifts from the body, but I see that it doesn’t.
2014 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize Winner, Issue 5 Here I Lay Down My Heart by Rob Taylor
Hayim lifted Mima toward the dhow. The captain knelt, grabbed her by her armpits and lifted her up, then lowered her into the hull. Hayim tossed in his duffle bag and for a moment, in the thin skim of ocean and sand that skirts Bagamoyo, stood apart from all that mattered in his world. Then he hoisted himself on board. Mima was already playing with the livestock and making friends with the other children. In the weeks since their arrival in Tanzania she had learned a mouthful of Swahili and was now in full song. Samaki! Kuku! Mbuzi! she pointed and guessed, and the children laughed and nodded and were impressed. Hayim climbed atop a mound of rice bags, maybe seven or eight deep, and pressed his duffle bag into the curve of the hull, punching it here and there with his fists, pounding out their shape. Between punches images of Tel Aviv flashed in his mind — their old apartment, the table and chairs, dishes and books he’d filled it with. Those few weeks when Mima had gone to preschool and life had felt normal and the word normal had plumped with meaning. Then Hayim lay down and his mind cleared.
Last week we promised a surprise you would not want to miss, and today’s the day. Of our shortlist, three poems caught Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s eye for the fifth annual Magpie Award for Poetry. Without further delay, here are her picks and comments.
2nd Runner-up – $50 prize
‘My desk’ by Angela Caravan “An ambitious poem, which needs some attention to line breaks and form. That being said, the language intrigues. The possibility of what the language is attempting here: admirable.”
First Runner-up – $50 prize
‘All I Need is a Chair, My Red Piano, and’ by Christine Leviczky Riek “I Enjoyed the dense construction, which leads reader into the world of the poem, telling a story of loss and longing, using repetition of key phrases and a great evocation of a particular time and place.”
Winner – $500 prize
‘Leather wraps both our shoulders, and I will call you my lungs, my falconer, guidepost’ by Kelli Allen “I read this lovely poem as a sonnet with its fourteen line construction and those interesting, rhymic two line couplets cascading a series of stories in image. Wonderful!”
These poems will appear in Pulp Literature Issue 20, Autumn 2018. Congratulations to our winners, and a huge thank you to Renée Sarojini Saklikar for serving as this year’s judge. Thank you as well to all our contestants for your participation and suppourt!
Spring is in full swing, feathers are flying, and bees are buzzing. The winners of the Magpie Award for Poetry will be announced on May 15th, the same day that the earlybird rate for the Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize ends (enter soon!). And our Magpie, Judge Renée Sarojini Saklikar, who has just as much an affinity for flying creatures as we do, will be launching her new book, Listening to the Bees, tomorrow …
Listening to the Bees
Can poetry matter? In an age where information is rarely parsed into verse and 120 character limits reign supreme, it’s a valid question at many a poet’s roundtable discussion. However, for Renée Sarojini Saklikar, the answer is simple: Yes.
Listening to the Bees (Nightwood Editions, 2018) is a book of essays and bee poems in collaboration with Dr. Mark Winston. The recent and alarming decline of honey bee populations deserves attention, and Renée’s poetry has risen to the occasion. This joint artistic and scientific venture moves between the deeply personal connection humans have with bees and meticulously gathered facts for a written experience of what it means to listen to bees.
Renée Sarojini Saklikar is Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey, British Columbia. Trained as a lawyer and with a degree in English Literature, Renée is currently teaching creative writing for SFU and Vancouver Community College. Renée’s first book, children of air india, (Nightwood Editions, 2013) won the 2014 Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry and was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Renée’s poetry, essays, and short fiction has been published in many literary journals and anthologies. Her work has also been adapted into other art forms, including musical and visual installations. Pulp Literature Press thanks Renée for serving as the judge for 2017 and 2018 Magpie Award for Poetry.
What’s that old magpie nursery rhyme? One for sorrow, two for joy … ten a surprise you won’t want to miss! The Magpie shortlist has been selected by our poetry editorial team Daniel Cowper and Emily Osborne, and we tip our hats to these ten entries. Names appear in alphabetical order (by last name) and those with multiple entries under consideration are listed more than once.
Kelli Allen Angela Caravan Daniela Elza Rula Jurdi Charlene Kwiatkowski Christine Leviczky Riek Scott-Patrick Mitchell Cara Waterfall Cara Waterfall Sarah Zwickle
Thank you to all who submitted! Renée Sarojini Saklikar‘s picks will be revealed May 15th, so stay tuned for that surprise you won’t want to miss!
Did you miss the deadline for the Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest this year? Well, we love flash fiction so much, we have two contests! The Hummingbird Flash Fiction Contest opened May 1st and will close June 15th. Early bird entry fee ends May 15th!
Close your eyes and it might pass you by! The Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize is now open and we’ve got our noses pressed up against the glass, eager to see colourful flashes of fiction whizzing by!
Contest open: 1 May 2018 Deadline: 15 June 2018 Winners notified: 15 July 2018 Winners published in: Pulp Literature Issue 23, Winter 2019 First Prize: $300 and a 1 year subscription to Duotrope Runner up: $75
Judge: Bob Thurber
Entry fee: $15 Editorial Critique: $15 Early Bird fee (before 15 May): $10 Entry fees include a 1-year digital subscription to Pulp Literature.
This contest is for previously unpublished short fiction up to 1000 words in length. Multiple entries welcome. Total entries limited to 300.
Want feedback on your story? Get a professional critique from one of the Pulp Literature editors for only $15 more.
It is our pleasure to welcome back the final judge for this year’s Magpie Award for Poetry, Surrey BC’s Poet Laureate Renée Sarojini Saklikar.
Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Surrey BC’s inaugural Poet Laureate, writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle. Work from the project appears in journals, anthologies and chapbooks. Renée’s first book, children of air india, un/authorized exhibits and interjections, (Nightwood Editions, 2013) won the 2014 Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry and was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award.
Renée is currently a mentor and instructor for Simon Fraser University, and co-founder of the poetry reading series, Lunch Poems at SFU.With Wayde Compton, Renée co-edited The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them (Anvil Press/SFU Public Square, 2015). She is currently at work on the long poem, “Thot-J-Bap”, excerpts of which can be found in Eleven Eleven, The Capilano Review,DUSIE and The Rusty Toque, as well as in chapbooks published by Nous-Zot and above/ground presses.
We are delighted to have Renée onboard once more as the Magpie Award judge. Thank you, Renée!
Anticipation has built to a buzzing frenzy, and we’re happy to announce the winner of the 2018 Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest, sponsored by Duotrope and judged by flash fiction master, Bob Thurber. Like us, he felt the competition was stiff and each story possessed merit.
Do send along my cheers and congratulations to all the finalists. I was impressed by their fine efforts and obvious talent. – Bob Thurber
Coming in as the honourable mention for this year’s contest is Alex Reece Abbott with her flash fiction piece, ‘Alphabet Soup’. Bob Thurber had this to say about the piece:
I found ‘Alphabet Soup’ to be brave and daring, an inverted and upended 2nd POV narrative that is engaging throughout.
The winner of the 2018 Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest is ‘Lullaby, Valentine, Paper Crane’, by R S Wynn. Bob Thurber tips his hat to the author:
Such a neatly crafted package, wicked fun to read. Consisting of five animated portraits with a small cast of quickly drawn characters frozen in familiar and alarming poses, it spills across the page, causes one to blink, and question, and remember. Like any good short work, poetry or prose, it’s a joy to reread just to appreciate the fresh flavor all over again.
We look forward to unveiling ‘Lullaby, Valentine, Paper Crane’ in the Issue 19 of Pulp Literature, and encourage our readers and authors in the Vancouver area to drop by our Spring Launch this evening at the Cottage Bistro, where shortlisted author Jude Neale will give us a reading along with local authors Genni Gunn, Michelle Barker, Angela Rebrec, Susan Pieters, JM Landels, and special guest CC Humphreys.
To everyone who submitted their flash fiction, we thank you for your commitment to the craft and hope to see you next year!
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