Thank you for your interest in submitting your manuscript to the 15th annual BOA Short Fiction Prize!
Since its founding in 2010, the BOA Short Fiction Prize has been awarded to ten of the most exciting and unique voices in American fiction. As with all BOA fiction titles, our prize-winning short story collections are more concerned with the artfulness of writing than the twists and turns of plot. It is our belief that short story writing is a valuable and underserved literary form that we are proud to support, nurture, and celebrate.
Winner Receives:
- Book publication by BOA Editions in spring 2027
- $1,000 honorarium
Contest Period: April 1 – May 31, 2025 *Submission fee: $30 *Please note that submission fees allow us to offer a $1,000 honorarium and also offset the cost of publishing and promoting the winning collection. As a non-profit literary publishing house, we understand that submission fees can be difficult to accommodate. Please know that 100% of your fee will go toward supporting the publication of an excellent short story collection and to supporting BOA’s mission to bring the highest quality literature into the world. All submissions will be personally read, reviewed, and considered by BOA Publisher Peter Conners, founder and sole editor of BOA’s short fiction series. Manuscripts that do not win the contest are still eligible for publication by BOA.
Submission Guidelines:
- Submissions are invited only through Submittable or post mail. We do not have the staff capacity to read or respond to manuscripts that are submitted by email.
- Submit one copy of the manuscript and the $30 entry fee between April 1 and May 31, 2025.
- The Submissions form will close at 11:59 PM EDT on May 31, 2025. Late submissions will not be accepted.
Eligibility:
- Entrants must be a U.S. citizen, a legal resident of the U.S., or have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), or Legal Permanent Status (LPS).
- Entrants must be at least 18 years of age.
- Translations, novels, and novellas are not eligible.
- Individual stories from the manuscript may have been published previously in magazines, journals, anthologies, chapbooks, or self-published books, but must be submitted in manuscript form.
- Employees, volunteers, and board members of BOA Editions, Ltd., or their partners, spouses, or immediate families, are not eligible to submit.
- Authors of BOA titles in other genres and translators who have been under contract with BOA are not eligible to submit.
Manuscript Format:
- Minimum of 90 pages; maximum of 200 pages.
- At least 12 pt. font, typed, double-spaced.
- Name, address, telephone number, and email address must appear on the title or cover page of the manuscript.
- Do not send artwork or photographs.
- File saved as PDF or Word format (e.g. .DOCX, .DOC, .RTF)
- Paginated consecutively with a table of contents
- Attach publication acknowledgments, if any.
- Neither late nor early manuscripts will be accepted.
- Contestants may submit the manuscript elsewhere simultaneously, but must notify BOA Editions immediately if a manuscript is accepted by another publisher.
- Once submitted, manuscripts cannot be altered. The winner will be given the opportunity to revise before publication.
- Contestants may submit more than one manuscript, but a separate entry fee and entry form must accompany each manuscript.
Answers to FAQs:
- The winner will be announced by September 2025.
- The honorarium will be awarded in two parts: one part upon receiving a signed contract, the second part upon publication.
- The winning manuscript will be published in spring 2027, in an original paperback edition and an e-book edition of the American Reader Series.
- The winner will retain full copyright of their work.
- In the unlikely event that a suitable manuscript cannot be found, BOA Editions reserves the right not to award a prize.