STILLHOUSE PRESS’S SPRING 2024 PROSE CONTEST: HORRIFIC!

Stillhouse Press seeks full-length prose manuscripts for our annual themed contest. All finalists, screened and selected by Stillhouse staff, will receive consideration for publication. The winning author, selected by judge Joe Vallese, will be awarded $500.

Submissions Open January 1 - April 16th, 2024

*Submissions are now closed. Check back in for updates about contest winners!

HORRIFIC!


Stillhouse Press STILL wants to see your musings on the creepy, the unsettling, the unnatural, or the supernatural— which is why we have extended the deadline for our contest to April 16th, 2024.

Please send us book-length prose in any form—reliable narrative, unreliable narrative, flash fiction, short stories, essays, flash essays, lyricism, media and cultural critique, etc. Distortions and blends of genre are welcome as long as they unearth a core of emotional truth about the self and/or the world at large.

We’re especially interested in manuscripts that are able to subvert or play with conventional expectations of the horror genre. Send us your ghost stories, your legends, your unhealthy obsessions, and your thoughts that go bump in the night. Give us your creatures and strangers under the bed.

We seek full-length prose manuscripts between 50,000 and 120,000 words. Multiple submissions require separate contest entries for each manuscript.

Contest Guidelines

  • We accept submissions via Submittable. Paper and email submissions are not accepted. There is a $25 fee for each contest submission.

  • Contest finalists and winner will be announced in early summer 2024. Contest winner will receive $500. Winner and all finalists receive consideration for publication.

  • Only complete, full-length manuscripts will be considered. Please include word count in the top right corner of the first page for all prose submissions and a centered title. As our contests are judged blind, be sure your name appears nowhere on the manuscript.

  • Please attach manuscripts in either Word .doc, .docx, or PDF format.

  • Simultaneous submissions are discouraged but not forbidden. Please notify us immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.

  • Previously published or forthcoming manuscripts will not be considered; previously published single stories, essays, poems, and chapbooks are acceptable, if included in a longer manuscript submission.

  • Stillhouse Press cannot consider work from anyone currently or recently affiliated with guest judges, the press, or George Mason University’s Creative Writing MFA/BFA programs.

  • We take time in evaluating all submissions. Expect 6-9 months from the date of contest opening for an announcement of results.

  • All manuscripts should include a cover letter with

    • a short synopsis of the work 

    • a short bio with information about your writing background, online presence, and involvement with the larger writing community

    • if applicable, any and all relevant content warnings for readers entering your manuscript


    While a call for the horrific will by definition involve troubling subject material, submissions that contain unreflective, unironic bigotry or prejudice will be rejected.

Stillhouse Press’s 2024 Contest: Horrific! will be Judged by:


Joe Vallese

It Came From The Closet (2022), edited by Joe Vallese

Joe Vallese is editor of the LA Times bestseller It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, published in 2022 by Feminist Press and then reissued in expanded form in the UK and Ireland by Saraband Books in 2023. Joe is also co-editor of the anthology What's Your Exit? A Literary Detour Through New Jersey (Word Riot 2010). 

He is currently Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program at New York University.

Diversity & Inclusion

Stillhouse Press is committed to publishing work from voices often excluded from traditional publishing, including writers of color, gender non-conforming and LGBTQ writers, and those living with disabilities. To create an accessible platform for marginalized voices, we offer fee-free submissions to writers who request a fee waiver by emailing submissions@stillhousepress.org.