The fall 2023 Bucks County Short Fiction Contest is open for entries from Bucks County residents who are 18 or older and are not employees of Bucks County Community College.
The deadline for submissions is Thursday, Oct. 19, at noon.
The top three winners will receive gift cards of $200, $100 and $50, and will share their work at a celebratory reading in November with this fall’s final judge, writer Emma Copley Eisenberg, attending.
Stories must be previously unpublished, including in blogs and online platforms, and must be submitted online. Complete rules and the submissions link are available at bucks.edu/shortfictioncontest.
Eisenberg’s first book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia is a work of hybrid nonfiction that mixes memoir, cultural criticism and reporting. It was named a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice of 2020. Her debut novel Housemates will be released by Hogarth Books, a division of Random House, in June 2024.
She is currently a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Wesleyan University, and has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College, Temple University and the University of Virginia, where she received her MFA in fiction. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded and now serves on the board of Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.
The Bucks County Short Fiction Contest receives funding and administrative support from the Department of Language and Literature at Bucks County Community College. For more information, contact the contest director, Professor Elizabeth Luciano, at elizabeth.luciano@bucks.edu.