12.13.07: the 2008 Contest Guidelines are [here].
05.17.07: The results for the $5 Innovative Fiction Contest are below.
Our judge, Michael Martone, chose Holly Tavel's story "On the Mysterious Appearance of Philo S. in Other People's Photographs" as the winner of the contest in 2007. She will receive publication in DIAGRAM 7.3 (out at the end of June) and an honorarium of $1000. Congratulations to her.
The ten finalists, whose stories we also loved, will appear in the all-fiction issue of DIAGRAM:
- Elisabeth Benjamin: "Her Slideshow"
- Kay Boruff: "Tickle Me"
- Chris Higgs: "Mother: A Deconstruction with Critical Apparatus"
- Clay Matthews: "The Abridged Version of P. S. Forever"
- Megan Milks: "Yuri-G"
- JoAnna Harriet Novak: "Assignments"
- Katherine Satorius: "Miss Bester"
- Mattie Quesenberry Smith: "Calico Fractal"
- Teresa Shen Swingler: "Taste"
- Girija Tropp: "Looking for the Country of Love"
The finalists will also receive our fine DIAGRAM t-shirts (or our fine new POE TRY shorts, soon to be released). Thanks to everyone who entered, who helped make this a success. Every story was read 3-4 times by our crack staff of fictioneers, and the decisions were necessarily hard, the result of much discussion. And thus it is done. We will most likely do it again next year, though we are fairly sure we lost money on the whole. Still we awarded a prize and got some great fiction, so it's worth it, we think. We are foolish like that. --Editors.
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Guidelines [contest is finished for 2007, unfortunately]. New guidelines will be posted in the winter for next year.
We are pleased to announce the new big sexy $5 Innovative Fiction Contest. We at DIAGRAM desire more great, interesting, groundbreaking fiction. Of course we do get some great fiction, and publish what we can, but we require more, are greedy, get angry too easily, gorge ourselves and regret it later. So we are going to publish an all-fiction issue, issue 7.3, to come out in June 2007.
To augment our fiction submissions, and to encourage the submission of even more interesting slash innovative work, we are attaching it to a contest with a deadline of March 26, 2007. A humane contest. A contest not designed to make us any money or break the backs of you, our readers, our writers. We will not choose our friends or our judge's friends (though our judge's friends and our friends [definition—anyone we know personally or have worked with substantially, for a semester or longer: we love you but you are not eligible for this] are welcome to submit fiction for the issue, they're not eligible for the contest). We will choose a winner and award the prize. Finalists (10+) will receive an offer of publication in said damn fine fiction issue.
So, what you need to know is this:
Enter a story in the DIAGRAM Big Sexy Innovative Fiction Contest for only $5. Enter as many times as you'd like, but unpublished stories/fictions only please. In English, though you don't have to live in the continental USA to be eligible. As you know if you read DIAGRAM we are open to both traditional and unusual fiction forms/methodologies. As such we're particularly interested in work that is a bit off-kilter or unusual/innovative/interesting, but we will try not to limit ourselves by thinking in these adjectival phrases. We like story-stories too.
The judge is big sexy innovative fiction writer Michael Martone, author of a lot of very fine books. He will pick his favorite of the bunch.
The deadline for receipt of submissions is March 26, 2007.
Stories may include visual or formal elements, but aren't required to. Entries may be between 5 (good luck with that) and 10,000 words. Each picture counts as 241 words. Seriously. No, not seriously—ignore that last bit. 5 words to 10,000 words is our guideline, and we are sticking to it. No names on the stories themselves; include a cover letter with your name and the name of your story, and anything else you'd like to tell us. Contact info is great; important, even.
The winner will receive $1000 + publication. The finalists will be published and will at the least receive awesome t-shirts if not more. Our goal with the contest is to not make money. We can assure you we will not make money. If there's extra money after all costs, we'll pay our contest finalists for their sure-to-be-great work.
There are two ways to get stories to us, but only one way in which we will respond (this keeps down our administrative costs, and the entry fee). OPTION ONE (old school): snail mail story with cover letter, no SASE please, but include your email address if you'd like notification via email, and $5 check (or $5 in cash if you want to risk it) to DIAGRAM $5IFC, 648 Crescent NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503. OPTION TWO (electro): pay w/Paypal first (form and button at right after this paragraph) and email story to nmp (at symbol, you know, the "@") thediagram.com with the following subject: $5 FICTION ENTRY. Stories by attachment only, please: PDF, Word, or RTF files.
Once the decisions are made, we will of course contact our finalists and the winner first, and the writers of any other stories we would like to publish in the fiction issue. Then we will send out a timely email to anyone who gave us their email address, and post the results on this very webpage. Important things to note: 1> we can't respond to or return submitted stories, except by the mass results announcement via email (sorry); 2> make sure we have your story in hand by the deadline; 3> please do not send by any method that requires our signature (if you need to overnight it or something, check the box that says NO SIGNATURE REQUIRED).
Questions? same email as above.
Spread the word. We want to read your work. We are nice people. Mostly.