Home of the Ghost Story Awards
Duotrope, a website that lists literary publications and competitions that are open to submissions, just published an interview with TGS. If you’re thinking of entering our Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition, which opens on February 15, 2018 and offers the winner publication on Midsummer’s Eve and a cash award of $1,000, the interview will tell you a lot about what we look for, and how we make our decisions. Here’s a link.
Sure, it’s scary—it’s a ghost story, after all. But if early reviews are accurate, A Ghost Story deals with the serious themes of mortality and the passage of time. A thinking person’s supernatural tale, in other words—and just the sort of thing we like to read or watch. Plus, it stars 2017 Academy Award winner for Actor in a Leading Role Casey Affleck. . .
This is one we’re planning to see in a theater rather than on the living room flat-screen. . . .
BTW, would you like to know why ghost typically are depicted as being dressed in sheets?
We told you that on the Solstice we’d be publishing the winner of The Summer 2017 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition, along with two honorable mentions. Well, that time is upon us, and all three stories are now available to give you a chilling summertime reading experience. Enjoy.
As for our fall Fiction Award . . . it opens for submissions on August 7, with a deadline of September 30, and Halloween publication for the winners. As with our summer contest, cash prizes are $1,000 for the winner, as well as $250 and $100 for the Honorable Mention and Second Honorable Mention, respectively. Click here for complete guidelines.
One way we celebrate the solstice around here is by announcing—and publishing—the best supernatural stories submitted to our biannual fiction contest. The choice usually is hard, because, with a $1,000 cash prize offered to the winner, we draw well over ten dozen terrific tales from all around the globe each time we run the event. Inevitably, however, a handful rise to the top, making us catch our breath either through surprise, by encouraging us to think about life and death from an unfamiliar perspective, or with the sheer beauty of their writing. We’re delighted to say that this season’s overall winner manages to achieve all three of these effects at once—it’s a real treat.
So, if you enjoy starting your summer with a delightful chill, be sure to revisit The Ghost Story website on June 21, when our new fiction winners will be posted. And if you just can’t wait until then for a a few of the best contemporary supernatural stories the world has to offer, why not get a head start by reading our past winners?
Illustration: Scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Titania and Bottom, by Edwin Landseer (1802-1873)
Submissions to our biannual fiction contest, with cash awards of $1,000, $250, and $100, continue to pour in from all over the world! The winners will be published here on the summer solstice. If you’re planning on entering, you need to submit your story via our online submission system by the end of April. You’ll find the submissions link, as well as full guidelines to our contest, on our Guidelines page.
Good luck!
Mindy McGinnis is the winner of the 2017 Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition and the contest’s $300 cash prize for her sudden fiction piece, “Solitude.” In 2016, McGinnis won an Edgar Allan Poe Award for her young adult novel, A Madness So Discreet. The Edgar Awards are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. They honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theater published or produced in the previous year.
First Honorable Mention and a $100 cash award went to Daniel Soule, an Englishman living in Northern Ireland, for his story, “The Lostling.”
Second Honorable Mention, with a $50 prize, was taken by Emma Murtagh, of Galway, Ireland, for “Tongues.”
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition is for supernatural stories of 1,000 or fewer words. Our next fiction contest is The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award, for which we begin accepting submissions on February 15, 2017. Prizes are $1,000, $250, and $100 for full-length short stories of between 1.500 and 10,000 words. Good luck!
The winner and honorable mentions in the Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition for short-short stories on a supernatural theme will be announced and published on February 14. Stay tuned—and thanks to everyone who participated.
Meanwhile, The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest for full-length short stories that incorporate an uncanny element is scheduled to open on February 15, with cash prizes of $1,000 for the winning story, $250 for the first Honorable Mention, and $100 for the Second Honorable mention—plus publication on TGS.
This will be the fourth time we’ve run The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award. Our previous winners are available for your reading enjoyment. May they provide you with some inspiration—and a pleasurable shudder!
Mexican writer Juan Rulfo penned the novel Pedro Páramo, (1955) a chilling ghost story that was one of the main inspirations for the Latin American literary boom that became known as Magic Realism. I recently came across this cool (and rare) piece of short-short fiction by Rulfo and, since our Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition is currently open for submissions, I thought it was appropriate to reproduce Rulfo’s story here as an example of how it’s done. Enjoy:
“It was already late in the night when I arrived at that little, lost town in the mountains. To my surprise, the peasants were waiting for me. In silence, without any explanation, they took me to the plaza. They tied me up to the tree in the center of that plaza, and again in silence, they left. [Read more…] about FLASH FICTION BY JUAN RULFO
Winter solstice marks the official start of our annual Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition for short supernatural fiction of up to 1,000 words. And what better image than Stonehenge to use in announcing our competition, given that writers from Britain took all three cash prizes last year? We’re wondering if this was just a fluke, or whether the Brits can do it again. . . .
If you’ve got a short yarn ready to be read, or are thinking of writing a miniature supernatural tale—you’ve got until January 31, after all—you just might want to have a look at our contest guidelines. Good luck!
BY CHARLES DICKENS
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my
own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about
a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery
in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors
is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
Marley was as dead as a door-nail. [Read more…] about A CHRISTMAS CAROL