Writing Competition: The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Contest

Each fall, The Masters Review hosts a call for novel excerpts! Writing a novel can be an arduous and lonely process, but we’re here to champion the great work being produced. Whether your book is not quite finished or ready to pitch, we want to read your words. For this contest, we’re looking for self-contained excerpts that display a strong voice, compelling characters, and carefully constructed narrative arcs. You may submit an excerpt from any section of your completed or in-progress novel, but choose wisely: a synopsis should not be required for understanding the excerpt. As always, we have no limitations on genre, though we are primarily interested in literary fiction.

This year, our guest judge is Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, and The Hundred-Year Flood. Salesses will select the finalists from a shortlist provided by The Masters Review’s editorial team.

The winning excerpt will be awarded $3,000; online publication; and an hour-long consultation with Halley Dunne Perry, a literary agent with The Hamilburg Agency. Second- and third-place excerpts will be awarded online publication and $300 and $200 respectively, in addition to written feedback from Dunne Perry.

Submission Guidelines:

• Submitted excerpts must be under 6,000 words.

• Submitted work must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs, social media accounts, and other websites. Previously published excerpts will be immediately disqualified.

• The entry fee is $20.

• Simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $20 entry fee.

• The winner receives $3,000; online publication; and a consultation with Halley Dunne Perry, a literary agent with The Hamilburg Agency.

• The second- and third-place finalists receive cash prizes ($300/$200), online publication, and agent feedback.

• If your submission is accepted or contracted elsewhere, please withdraw your submission on Submittable, or contact us otherwise to let us know the piece is no longer available.

• We do not require anonymous submissions for this contest, but the judge will review the shortlist anonymously.

• This contest is for emerging writers only. Writers with single-author book-length work published or under contract with a major press are ineligible. We are interested in providing a platform to new writers; authors with books published by indie presses and self-published authors are welcome to submit unpublished work.

• International submissions are allowed, provided the work is written primarily in English.

• All submissions must be double-spaced with one-inch page margins and use Times New Roman or Garamond 12 (or larger, if necessary).

• Excerpts from novels under contract for 2023 or 2024 are ineligible, but novels under contract from 2025 and beyond are eligible.

• The contest’s deadline is 11:59 p.m. PST on Sunday, November 12, 2023.

• All entries will be considered for publication in New Voices.

• Every submission will receive a response by the end of March 2024. The winners will be announced by the end of April 2024.

• Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for this award, nor are past winners of the Novel Excerpt Contest.

• A significant portion of the editorial letter fees go to our feedback editor.

Enter here.