Force Majeure: a great and unexpected power. We're looking for the best small things, any form, any content, any fine and wonderful creation.

Enter between Jan. 1st and Apr 30th.

CONTEST RULES

Prizes, for a single flash: 1st place $300; two runners-up $100 each. Honorable mentions receive a small honorarium.

Two ways to enter:

1. Upload 1 flash (you'll receive an ebook of the prize issue) - $6
2. Upload 1–3 flashes in a single file (receive a print copy and an ebook) - $15

• DEADLINE: 11:59 p.m. CDT, 30 April 2024.
• Enter as many times as you wish. Entries do not count toward our regular submissions limits. 
• Winning flash must not be (scheduled to be) published in print, ebook, or internet/app format, nor posted online, before December 2024.

All entries considered for publication in Storm Cellar. Open to everyone (except as noted below).

What is a flash?

• Shorter than 1000 words
• Not more than 5 pages
• May contain fiction, nonfiction, hybrids, marks, or images, in any combination*
• May bend genre, form, brains

We encourage entries by Indigenous, Black, and POC, LGBTQIA+, enby, and trans, disabled, fat, morphologically atypical, and neurodivergent, migrant, border-straddling, and poor authors, as well as members of other under-represented groups. (We are not interested in performances of suffering intended for a hypothetical straight, middle-class, culturally christian, white audience.)

Authors who cannot pay the entry fee, because of financial hardship or lack of online payment in their country, should email the editors with the brief statement that they have need (explanation not requested), from the email address associated with their Submittable account, and attach one flash as a .txt or .docx or .pdf file; our email: StormCellar [dot] editor [at] gmail [dot] com.

Incarcerated authors may mail one entry, with short author bio, postmarked by the deadline, to Storm Cellar FMFC 2024, 310 Fourth Ave. S. Suite 5010, PMB 98580, Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA; no entry fee required; for response, someone's email address must be included on the submission itself (such as at the top near the author's name); we cannot return paper, SASEs, nor postcards this year.

Simultaneous submissions allowed; if a flash accepted elsewhere, notify us via a Message within the submission on Submittable, or withdraw. 

NO: entries by agents on clients' behalf, poetry, works that promote supremacist views or are by supremacists, texts <25% English (except experimental/text-art), entries that are AI/LLM-generated or -assisted unless explicitly experimental (place a clear, explanatory note on the first page of the uploaded file).

Others who may not enter: (1) Close friends, family, employers, and students within the last four years of the editors of Storm Cellar or the contest judge(s). (2) Minors without approval from a parent or guardian, where that approval legalizes their writing and reading of certain materials; consider that the magazine may contain offensive, explicit, blasphemous, or otherwise legally prohibited material in some locations.

Contest judged by the editors. All prizes will be awarded. Contest receipts go to prizes, production costs, and to pay contributing artists/writers. No fees may be refunded. "Extra" flashes within uploaded files will not be read. We may disqualify any entrant for any reason. Entrants will be notified of their contest outcome by email, on or before June 30 in the contest year.

Handy link to examples of flash we've printed. Surprise us!

* The magazine interior prints in grayscale, images not wider than 5" and not taller than 7".