ART&WRITINGCONTESTS
Our 2024 contests are now open!
The Southeast Review offers four annual contests with cash awards: the Southeast Review Art Contest, the World's Best Short-Short Story Contest, the Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest, and the Gearhart Poetry Contest.
The winner in each category receives $750!
Winners and finalists in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will be published in our biannual issue in Fall 2024, and the winner of the Art Contest will be published in the biannual or online. Winners and finalists will be notified in Spring 2024.
See below to submit and for this year's judges and guidelines. The entry fees are $16.
2024 JUDGES
Southeast Review Art Contest
Michelle Sakhai received her Bachelor’s in Art History and Fine Arts from Hofstra University, and currently serves on the advisory board for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She received her Masters in Fine Arts from the Academy of Art University, and has studied internationally including d’Arts Plastique I Disseny (LLOTJA) in Spain. Additionally, she has taught art at the University of California, Berkeley.
World's Best Short-Short Story Contest
Works by Venita Blackburn have appeared in the NYTimes, New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Story Magazine, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Paris Review, and others. She received the Prairie Schooner book prize for fiction, which resulted in the publication of her collected stories, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, in 2017 and earned a place as a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions award among other honors. Blackburn’s second collection of stories is How to Wrestle a Girl, 2021, finalist for a Lambda Literary Prize and was a NYTimes editor’s choice. Her debut novel, Dead in Long Beach, California, 2024 is about the mania of grief, all of human history and a lesbian assassin at the end of the world. Her home town is Compton, California, and she is an Associate Professor of creative writing at California State University, Fresno.
Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest
Shze-Hui Tjoa is a Singaporean writer living in the UK. She is the author of THE STORY GAME: A MEMOIR (Tin House Books, 2024), named one of the best books of Summer 2024 by The Boston Globe. She has writing and interviews in, or forthcoming in, BOMB Magazine, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, The Millions, Poets & Writers, Between the Covers podcast, and elsewhere. She has received career support from global arts organizations including Green Olive Arts, Disquiet International, and AWP's Writer-to-Writer Mentorship Program.
Gearhart
Poetry Contest
Karyna McGlynn is a writer, educator, and visual artist. She is the Director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts, and was the 2023-2024 Visiting Distinguished Professor of Poetry in the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. She is the author of three poetry collections from Sarabande Books, including 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse, which was a 2023 Lambda Literary finalist, and Hothouse, which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Karyna received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan, and her PhD in Creative Writing & Literature from University of Houston. Her writing has appeared in Poetry, Missouri Review, and more.
Contest Guidelines
Southeast Review Art Contest
2020 was the inaugural year of our art contest, and we are thrilled to continue it in tandem with our journal’s goal of drawing attention to and supporting the work of a wide variety of artists and art forms.
We welcome art submissions in all art genres: drawing, painting, illustration, photography, comics, video art, and so on—if you can name it, we’re interested. Artists should send in a portfolio of 8 of their best works and include a list of titles, dates, materials, and dimensions. These works can be previously advertised or published in other journals or previously exhibited in galleries. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
World's Best Short-Short Story Contest
In 1986, Jerome Stern, the then-director of Florida State University’s creative writing program, founded this contest to celebrate micro fiction. Submissions had to be under 250 words, and the winner received a crate of oranges as well as a check. Stern passed away from cancer in 1996, and though the guidelines and prize have changed since, we continue holding the contest in Stern’s memory, with a modern master of the short-short story judging the entries annually.
Please send up to three short-short stories per submission. Each short-short should be no more than 500 words. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
Only withdraw your entire submission if none of your submitted short-shorts remain available. To withdraw a single short-short, please add a note to your submission with the title you would like to remove from consideration. (Please notify us via Submittable only.)
Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest
Our nonfiction contest was established in honor of Dr. Ned Stuckey-French, whose legacy will last as one of service to the literary community, his students, hospital workers’ unions, and beyond. His spirit of selfless service is a model we aspire to, and his unflinching dedication to truth and its telling inspires the nonfiction we publish and produce.
We seek submissions in this vein: nonfiction that prods and pressures expectations; that speaks to the personal against the powerful; and that prioritizes soul, heart, and service. Please send essays of up to 10 pages. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
Gearhart Poetry Contest
Our poetry contest began in 1996 to honor Michael Wm. Gearhart, a Ph.D. student in creative writing at Florida State University who died suddenly at the age of 39 as he was completing the final steps of his degree. The contest continues today in his memory.
Please send up to three poems, no more than 10 pages total. Include no more than one poem per page. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
Only withdraw your entire submission if none of your submitted poems remain available. To withdraw a single poem, please add a note to your submission with the title you would like to remove from consideration. (Please notify us via Submittable only.)
Submissions for Currently or Formerly Incarcerated Writers
If you are a currently or formerly incarcerated writer, or if you are submitting on behalf of one, you may submit to the contest for free via mail (see address below), or by contacting the Editor at southeastreview@gmail.com.
Address
Southeast Review
Department of English
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306