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flash fiction contest

2023 QSF Flash Fiction Theme Announced: “Rise”

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Rise - Deposit Photos

Every year, QSF holds a flash fiction contest to create an amazing new anthology of queer speculative fiction stories. We ask authors to do the nearly-impossible – to submit a sci fi, fantasy, paranormal or horror LGBTIQA story that has no more than 300 words. It’s Our Tenth Anniversary! Our 2023 contest launches on March 1st, and closes on May 1st, but we will soon be open for early entries. The theme for 2023 is “Rise”: Rise (noun) 1) An upward slope or movement2) A beginning or origin3) An increase in amount or numberttaining certainty about something4) An angry reaction … Read more

Time to Announce the “Clarity” Winners

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We are thrilled to announce this year’s QSF flash fiction winners – the authors and stories that took home the top prizes. We’re also including a teaser from each one. Like what you read? Preorder a copy now: Amazon | Apple | B&N | Kobo | SmashwordsAll Buy Links We also wanted to say that even if your story didn’t win )(and there are 309 that didn’t), this year’s batch was some of the most creative and well-written that we’ve received. We’re thrilled you took the time to be a part of it, and hope you will try again next … Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT: Ink Anthology Stories

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Ink 2021

We’re thrilled to have completed the judging and story selection rounds for the Queer Sci Fi 2021 Flash Fiction Contest and Anthology. This was the most stiff cometition yet, with 384 stories covering the gamut of spec fic and the LGBTQ+ community. Before we get to the stories we’re including in the antho, a few stats: Stories by Genre Each year, the theme helps steer the kind of stories we receive in this case, “Ink”, chosen by Ryane, seemed to skew more toward fantasy than anything else (some stories crossed multiple genres, so the numbers below won’t add up to … Read more

Angel’s Bits Redux – Flash Fiction Roundup

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Renewal

Hey, QSF’ers! A special return of Angel’s Bits this week to recap and take a sift through what we saw in this year’s competition. When we started the Flash Fiction contest, it was on a lark. Oh, hey! This will be fun! We received 15 entries and gave out some prizes. Yay! The second year, we decided it would be cool to do a book. What were we thinking? But we received 115 entries that year, enough for a respectable book, and with the help of the MCB folks, there was indeed one. Discovery. The third year? We thought – … Read more

Renewal – QSF’s 2017 Flash Fiction Contest

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Renewal

Every year, QSF holds a flash fiction contest to create an amazing new anthology of queer speculative fiction stories. We ask authors to do the nearly-impossible – to submit a sci fi, fantasy, paranormal or horror LGBTIQA story that has no more than 300 words. Our 2017 contest launches on March 10th, and closes it April 10th. The theme for 2017 is “Renewal”: Take that however you will – a new beginning after a nuclear war, a birth of a werewolf baby, the reforging of a fantasy sword, etc. It’s up to you. We’ll be accepting stories from across the … Read more

Queer Sci Fi Flash Fiction Contest “Flight” – Third Place Winner

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We’ve wrapped up the judging of the Third Annual QSF Flash Fiction Contest, so we’ll be sharing the top stories over the next 9 days – first the top three, then the individual Judge’s Choice stories – something new we are doing this year. We had some fantastic submissions this year – congrats to everyone! All stories were limited to 300 words max, with the theme “flight”. Our third place winner is Nina Packebush with an FF Fantasy tale – congrats, Nina! Here’s the story – enjoy. The Secret Lives of Octopuses By Nina Packebush She sat at the kitchen … Read more

Angel’s Bits: How Did They Pick That One?

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Or a little bit about writing contests… If you count the annual contests when I worked for the university literary magazine, I’ve been judging writing contests for over thirty years. Not continually, thank goodness. I have no idea what the process looks like for big, fancy awards but for flash fiction? Yeah, done a few of those. The ideal situation is several judges, who all bring something different to the table, doing blind judging. That last bit is crucial. No matter how impartial a judge intends to be, knowing some of the authors will color decisions. Flash fiction is a … Read more

Announcing the Theme For Our 2016 Flash Fiction Contest

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In about two and a half months, on April 1st, we’ll be launching the Third Annual QSF Flash Fiction Contest. It doesn’t matter if you have been published before or not – if you love to write, we invite you to submit a 300 word speculative fiction story – sci fi, fantasy, paranormal or horror – when the contest opens up on April 1st. As a bonus, we’ll be selecting the best of the submitted stories to be included in the book from Mischief Corner Books! Now it’s time to announce our theme for 2016. For 2014, it was “Endings”; … Read more