Short Fiction Competition: Flannery O'Connor Award

Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction

About the Flannery O'Connor Award

More than fifty short-story collections have appeared in the Flannery O'Connor Award series, which was established to encourage gifted emerging writers by bringing their work to a national readership. The first prize-winning book was published in 1983; the award has since become an important proving ground for writers and a showcase for the talent and promise that have brought about a resurgence in the short story as a genre. Winners are selected through an annual competition that attracts as many as three hundred manuscripts.

Winners of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction include such widely read authors as Ha Jin, Antonya Nelson, Rita Ciresi, and Mary Hood.


Submission Guidelines: 2011 Competition

New in 2011: We will be accepting electronic submissions to the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction this year alongside hard copy submissions. See details below. For the 2012 competition, we plan to move to all online submissions. Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award news and updates are available on our Facebook page.

Dates for submission: Manuscripts may be submitted between April 1 and May 31. (For hard copy submissions, postmark must be no later than May 31.) Winners will be announced by the end of August.

Our online submissions manager is available here.

Tech support for using the submissions manager is available at 1-406-480-6274. The $25 entry fee can be paid online via credit card or PayPal.

Selection process: Each of three contest judges reads approximately one third of the manuscripts submitted to the competition, with a fourth judge available if needed based on the total number of submissions. Judges select 7-10 finalists each; the pool of finalist manuscripts is read by series editor Nancy Zafris, who makes the final selection of two winning manuscripts. Authors of winning manuscripts receive a cash award of $1,000, and their collections are subsequently published by the University of Georgia Press under a standard book contract.

Eligibility: The competition is open to writers in English, whether published or unpublished. Writers must be residents of North America.

Manuscript Guidelines

Manuscripts must be available as electronic files on request (even if submitted in hard copy) and should be between 40,000-75,000 words in length.
The award recognizes outstanding collections of short fiction. Collections may include long stories or novellas (est. length of a novella is 50-150 pages). However, novels or single novellas will not be considered.
Stories included in the submission may have appeared previously in magazines or anthologies but may not have been previously published in a book-length collection of the author's own work.
Authors may submit more than one manuscript to the competition for consideration as long as no material is duplicated between submissions. Each submission will require a separate entry fee.
Manuscripts under consideration for this competition may be submitted elsewhere at the same time. Please notify us immediately (via e-mail at press[at]ugapress.uga.edu) if your manuscript is accepted by another publisher and should be withdrawn from the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award competition (entry fees are not refundable).
Blind review: The intent of this contest is that manuscripts will be considered on the merits of the fiction and that judges will not be aware of the names or publication records of the authors. To this end:

Please do not include a list of acknowledgments crediting where stories have been published.
Please do not include your name on the pages of the manuscript only on a cover sheet (for hardcopy submissions) or in the form boxes of the electronic submission manager. The first page of the manuscript should include the title of the collection only.
Judges who recognize work will recuse themselves and the submission will be reassigned to a different judge.
Additional guidelines for hard copy submissions

Please be sure manuscript pages are numbered.
Use a standard, easy-to-read font such as Times New Roman in 12 point size.
Include a cover sheet with author's name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and the title of the manuscript.
All manuscripts must be accompanied by a $25 submission fee. Please make checks payable to the University of Georgia Press. Only checks drawn on a U.S. bank or international money orders are acceptable.
Please do not send manuscripts in binder notebooks or bulky containers. Use two rubber bands and mail in a padded envelope. Note that manuscripts submitted to the contest will not be returned.
Send manuscripts to:

The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction
The University of Georgia Press
330 Research Drive Athens, GA 30602-4901

Confirmation of receipt and notification: For both electronic and hard copy submissions, receipt of the submission will be confirmed via e-mail. You should receive confirmation immediately for electronic submissions and within four weeks for hard copy submissions.

An announcement of winners and finalists will be sent to all entrants via e-mail by the end of August.

To update your contact information, withdraw your manuscript from the competition, or query if we have not acknowledged your hard copy submission after four weeks, please contact us via e-mail at press(at)ugapress(dot)uga(dot)edu (replace (at) with @ and (dot) with . )
The press will not accept phone calls regarding the Flannery O'Connor Award.

Statement of Integrity: The University of Georgia is thoroughly committed to academic integrity in all of its endeavors, and the University of Georgia Press adheres to all University of Georgia policies and procedures. To help ensure the integrity of the competition, manuscripts are judged through a blind review process. Judges in the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction competition are instructed to avoid conflicts of interest of all kinds.