Deb is the author of the novels Barn 8 and Vacation, the memoir Revolution, finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, two story collections, and the graphic novel I, Parrot. Her work has appeared in over fifty magazines and journals, including Harper’s, the New York Times, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Capital Fellowship for Innovative Literature, fellowships from the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ucross residencies.
She’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center, the New Writers’ Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary.

Our contest closes March 17. You can enter on Submittable.

First prize ($500) is awarded to Joshua Bell for “A Retired Witch.” Joshua is a poet with two published collections, No Planets Strike and Alamo Theory. His fiction has appeared in Bennington Review, Story, Ninth Letter, The Fabulist, and Black Telephone. His first novel, The Houseboat Veronica, is forthcoming next spring.

First runner-up is Ashley Whitaker for “Naked Man, Billboard, Fort Worth.” Ashley’s fiction has appeared in Tin House. She lives in Austin and is at work on a novel.

Our second runner-up is Jessie Li for “Mouth and Heart.” Jessie was born in Hong Kong. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.

All of our prize winners will be published in StoryQuarterly 56, which will be out in late spring/early summer of 2024.

Many thanks to Emma Copley Eisenberg for judging. Emma is the author of The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia. Her debut novel, Housemates, will be out in 2024 and her short story collection, Fat Swim, is forthcoming in 2025.

First: We are currently open for both fiction and nonfiction submissions for Issue 56. We’ll also be running our 2024 fiction contest starting in December. Our submissions windows are:

This issue features new work by Kim Chinquee, Pamela Painter, Stephen O’Connor, Michelle Huneven, and Jung Hae Chae, and many more fantastic writers. Print copies will be available for purchase later this year.

Emma’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Esquire, The Washington Post Magazine, and others. She has received fellowships, grants and residencies from Bread Loaf, the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Millay Colony, Jentel Foundation, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is the author of The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia which was named a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice of 2020 as well as nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Bouchercon Award among other honors. Her debut novel, Housemates, will be published by Hogarth in 2024, as will her short story collection, Fat Swim, in 2025. She lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.

The contest is open until July 9 and you can enter on Submittable.

First place ($500) is awarded to Bruce McKay for “Anchorite.” Bruce teaches at the University of California, Irvine. Recent work appears in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, the Southwest Review, and The Chicago Quarterly Review. His story “The Wheel at the Cistern,” in ZYZZYVA, was listed as a Notable in the Best American Non-Required Reading anthology.

First Runner-up goes to Jessica Barksdale for “What Glory Chose.” Jessica’s second poetry collection Grim Honey and her fifteenth novel The Play’s the Thing were both published in 2021. Recently retired, she taught composition, literature, and creative writing at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California for thirty-two years and continues to teach novel writing online for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University.

Second Runner-up is awarded to Summer Hammond for “Carpet Cleaner’s Daughter.” Summer grew up in a yellow double-wide trailer in an eastern Iowa farm town of 300. She worked alongside her Dad in his carpet cleaning business, and at night, wrote stories she sent to magazines. She home-schooled through high school and went on to teach 9th grade Reading in Austin, TX. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Haunted Waters Press, Broad River Review, and The Texas Review. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Rash Award in Fiction.

These winning submissions will be published later this year in StoryQuarterly 54. This year’s contest was judged by Edward Carey, author of the novels The Swallowed Man, Little, Observatory Mansions, Alva and Irvin: The Twins Who Saved a City, and the YA Iremonger Trilogy.