Paper Darts Short Fiction Award - 2018

Award: $500


Entry fee: $6

Judge: Carmen Maria Machado

Word limit: 1,200

Deadline: 3/15/2018








Submission process:

• All entries must be previously unpublished and 1,200 words or less.

• The entry fee is $5.

• Enter as many times as you please. Each entry requires an entry fee of $5. If you include more than one story in your uploaded file without paying an entry fee for each, your submission will not be considered.

• Entrant’s name should not appear anywhere in the uploaded material. Do not submit a cover letter—the readings are blind, so you won’t need to butter us up.

• Previously published stories and stories forthcoming in other publications (print or online) will not be considered.

• Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but the entry fee will not be refunded if the story is accepted elsewhere.

• Notify us immediately to withdraw a story that is accepted elsewhere.

• Entries are first read and evaluated by the Paper Darts team, then five finalists are selected for the judge's consideration.


• All submissions are eligible for publication by Paper Darts in print or online.

• Deadline: 3/15/18 (subject to extend as we see fit).




Carmen Maria Machado's debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize. She is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Guernica, Gulf Coast, NPR, and elsewhere. Her stories have been reprinted in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and Best Women’s Erotica. Her memoir House in Indiana is forthcoming in 2019 from Graywolf Press.