Toasted Cheese General Writing Contest

General Writing Contest Rules

Read these first. These rules apply to all Toasted Cheese writing contests.
NOTE: THESE GUIDELINES ARE FOR CONTEST ENTRIES ONLY.
Your entry must be previously unpublished.
There are no entry fees for any Toasted Cheese contest.
Anyone (except for the TC editors) may enter; there are no geographic or other restrictions.
Limit of one entry per person per contest.
Don’t forget to give your story a title and include a word count.
Grammar, punctuation or spelling errors will count against your entry, so proofread thoroughly.
Contest entries must be emailed to the address designated for the contest you are entering (see individual contest rules below). Replace [at] with @.
Paste your entry into the body of the email. Attachments will not be read.
Place your contact information (name, address, phone number, email address) and a brief biography (100 words maximum)after your story. All identifying information will be removed before judging.
Late entries, entries that do not conform to contest guidelines, and entries sent to any address other than the designated contest address will be disqualified. Toasted Cheese and its staff are not responsible for any electronic transmission problems.

First, second,* and third* place stories are published in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal. Honorable mentions may also be awarded. (*Toasted Cheese reserves the right to not award second and third place if the quality of the entries does not meet the journal’s standards.)

Feedback on submissions will be limited to a few lines and may include some judges’ comments. After the contest is closed, we invite all entrants to post their stories on our critique forums.

By entering a contest, you grant TC exclusive electronic rights for a period of 90 days, should your work be chosen as a winner, as well as a non-exclusive right to maintain a copy of published work in the literary journal archives indefinitely. Effective January 2008, you also grant Toasted Cheese the right to post an audio version (podcast) of your work on the site (authors of work published 2001–2007 will be contacted to obtain permission for this use). You retain all other rights, including the right to re-publish the work in non-electronic form at any time. Any subsequent publication should include the credit “originally published in Toasted Cheese.””Exclusive electronic rights” means that you agree not to re-publish your work elsewhere online while the issue featuring your work is current. “Publish” means any public display of your work, and includes your personal website and posting to message boards. You are welcome to link to the page featuring your work instead. Once the issue has been archived, you are free to re-publish your work online.