Writing Competition: Meridian Editors' Prizes

The 2015 Meridian Editors' Prizes are accepting entries through our Submittable account. 

The contest deadline is January 7, 2015.

The winning story and the winning poem will both appear in our May 2015 issue, and all submissions will be considered for publication.

Please make sure you are submitting your work to our Editors's Prize Contest reading pools ($8.50 fee) and not our regular year-round submission pools.

Contest Details: 

--We will be selecting a winner in poetry and in fiction, each of which will receive $1000.
--Our entry fee is $8.50
--Entrants receive an electronic version of the journal (.pdf and ePub) rather than a print subscription
--We are only allowing two submissions per entrant
--We believe this lower cost contest model is better for you, and better for us. Rather than having you pay substantial entry fees to cover the cost of a print subscription (and mailing fees), we’re have a lower entry fee and will e-mail you an electronic version of the upcoming January and May issues. Fewer trees, less cost ... and we’ll still have print versions of Meridian available at modest cost for those who like to keep things tangible.
--We expect to announce winners toward the end of March, and all submissions will be considered for publication in Meridian.
--Fiction writers may submit one story of 10,000 words or fewer. Poets may submit up to 4 poems totaling 10 pages or fewer.
--You may only submit two entries per genre–-no more than two fiction submissions and/or two poetry submissions.
--Please submit your work through our Submittable account only. Please leave your name off the manuscript. The Submittable system keeps your contact info linked to your submission (but hides it from our readers, which allows for blind judging). 

Contest Eligibility Rules: 

We try our very best to run as fair and impartial a contest as we can. To that end,
UVA undergraduate alumni who graduated after June 2010 are NOT eligible.
UVA MFA students and alumni are NOT eligible.
Current UVA students, staff, and faculty are NOT eligible.
Former Meridian staff are not eligible. (If you’ve ever been on our masthead, please don’t enter.)
Friends, relatives, and former teachers and students of current Meridian staff or its advisor are not eligible.
Our former Meridian Editors’ Prize winners are not eligible to enter, even if their win was in another genre.
These prizes are not intended for well-established authors. Authors with two or more published books in a genre are not eligible to enter the contest for that genre. This rule does not include chapbook publications. This rule does include self-published books (If it’s been for sale and it was not a chapbook, it counts). You may enter our fiction contest if your published books were in poetry, and vice versa.