mnartists.org begins publication of the second cycle's winning short-shorts for its new competitive literary series for Minnesota writers. Look for a new call for flash fiction entries for the late fall round to be announced by late-August!
mnartists.org presents miniStories, a quarterly flash fiction competition coordinated by Electric Arc Radio's Geoff Herbach (author of The Miracle Letters of T. Rimburg,Three Rivers Press). This new literary series showcases previously unpublished short stories by Minnesota writers which are selected by authors, editors, and publishing industry veterans from across the country. Winning stories are then published on mnartists.org and in the e-magazine access+ENGAGE. One grand-prize winning author will be selected from each quarter's miniStories winners by series coordinator Geoff Herbach to receive a paid commission for a longer-form short story which will be published on mnartists.org. There are readings at the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis at the end of each quarter's contest cycle, at which miniStories winners and judges will read their fiction. The next miniStories reading by the summer quarter's winning authors will be held at the Ritz Theater, July 28. An anthology collecting the inaugural year's miniStories winning fiction will be published in April 2009 and available for sale at area bookstores. The judges for the late summer-early fall quarter of miniStories:
William Walsh, author, Providence, RI
William Walsh's stories and derived texts have appeared in New York Tyrant, Juked, Caketrain, Elimae, Rosebud, Lit, Quarterly West, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and other journals. His first novel, Without Wax, was published in 2008 by Casperian Books, and an as-yet-untilted story collection is forthcoming from Keyhole Publications in 2009. William lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Brady Bergeson, writer, performer, and English professor, Fargo/Moorhead
Brady Bergeson is a writer and performer with the Lit 6 Project and the Electric Arc Radio Show, heard on Minnesota Public Radio and electricarcradio.com. He teaches in the English Departments at Minnesota State University Moorhead and North Dakota State University. His work has appeared most recently in Opium Magazine and a+E. He is currently working on a full length play and folding 1,000 paper cranes out of old issues of the New Yorker magazine. Dawn Frederick, literary agent,Twin Cities
Dawn Frederick is a literary agent for Red Sofa Literary in the Twin-Cities." SUBMISSION SPECIFICATIONS AND ENTRY PROCESS: Any and all genres of fiction submissions are welcome, but writers must be Minnesota residents and be (or become) registered artists of mnartists.org to enter the contest. (Please note: if you are newly registering on mnartists.org, please select the "artist" category when you sign up rather than the "member" category. That way, you can post your writing and develop a web presence on mnartists.org.) Registration on mnartists.org is FREE. If you need any assistance with creating an mnartists.org page or uploading images we will work with you! Please email your questions to help@mnartists.org and we'll get back to you within a day or two with assistance. Any previously unpublished short fiction, from 5-500 words in length, may be submitted for consideration (submissions longer than 500 words will not be considered). Entrants may submit up to, but no more than, three pieces per competition cycle. Story submissions should be emailed as attachments (preferably as Word documents--.doc) to stories@mnartists.org. miniStories is a publication and reading series presented by mnartists.org, a project of the McKnight Foundation and the Walker Art Center CLICK HERE to go to the archives of all the previous miniStories winners' flash fiction. READ the spring Grand Prize winning miniStories flash fiction, A Plan for Mushrooms by David Bengtson HERE.
