Home of the Ghost Story Awards
One thousand dollars to the winner, $250 to each of two honorable mentions. Custom illustration and publication for all three both online and in our upcoming print anthology, 21st Century Ghost Stories: Volume II.
Read our guidelines—and send us your story!
Ghost Rider photo by Gabriel Millos.
Since 2015, when The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award began, winners and honorable mentions have included writers who had never before published a single word—as well as writers who had already received broad acclaim for their novels, nonfiction books, short fiction, poetry, and articles of all kinds.
Lisa Taddeo, author of our our summer 2017 TGS Fiction Award-winning story, “The Donegal Suite,” is one of the latter. At the time she submitted “The Donegal Suite,” she had already earned the first of her two Pushcart Prizes for a short story, as well as attracted a great deal of attention for her nonfiction articles in Esquire and other magazines.
Recently, Lisa also published her first book—a wonderful and searching piece of nonfiction titled Three Women, which has already gotten a great deal of attention in the media. We wanted to tell TGS readers about her book—and also to say congratulations to its author.
Rather than summarize “Three Women,” you can read more about it on its official publisher’s page.
Meanwhile keep in mind that very soon we will begin accepting submissions for our fall competition. If you’re a writer, and you are thinking about submitting a piece, please have a look at our contest guidelines.
Beyond that, we hope you’re having a great summer.
The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award is a biannual competition with cash prizes of $1,000 for the winner and $250 for each of two honorable mentions. On Midsummer’s Eve and Halloween, we publish the three stories we have selected in the most recent running of the contest.
Believe it or not, Halloween is not that far off, and we’ll begin accepting submissions for our fall contest on August 1. If you’re interested, you’ll find the contest guidelines here.
And if you’d like to read our past winning and honorable mention stories, you’ll find them here.
0ur summer 2019 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award-winning stories are now published. Have a look!
By deadline time at the end of April, The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition had received its largest-ever number of submissions, at well over 300. We’ve been doing a lot of reading since then, and we’re almost ready to publish the winning story and two honorable mentions.
As always, the big reveal will take place on the Summer Solstice—June 21—right here on The Ghost Story website. Also as always, each story will be accompanied an original Andy Paciorek custom illustration. For some chilling reads at the start of summer, make sure you check back with us on the longest day of the year.
And if you entered our contest . . . you may already have heard from us about your work. If you haven’t, we’ll be in touch before the 21st. In all cases . . . thank you for participating in our biannual supernatural story event. Cheers — The Editor
The summer 2019 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest is now closed to submissions. To everyone who participated: Thank you! We’ll be in touch with you between now and Midsummer’s Eve, when we’ll publish the winner and two honorable mentions.
If you had intended to enter our competition and didn’t quite get your story in on time . . . don’t despair. Our fall contest—with the same $1,000 first prize, $250 for honorable mention, and both print and online publication—opens for submission on August 1.
Until then, Cheers—The Editor
The deadline for The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award is April 30. If you’ve got a story you want to submit, but you haven’t uploaded it by the time April slides into May . . . you’ll have to wait for our fall competition, which runs from mid-August until September 30. You’ll find our contest guidelines and access to our online story submission system right here.
The winner and three honorable mentions in our annual Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition are now available for your enjoyment. Have a look.
It’s time for another Ghost Story Awards contest. The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition is open for submissions until January 30. Short-short stories of between 250 and 1,000 words will be eligible for a cash award of $500 (winner) or one of two honorable mention prizes worth $250. All three winning stories will receive Valentine’s Day publication on The Ghost Story Website, as well as book publication in our upcoming anthology, 21st Century Ghost Stories: Volume II.
You can click right here for guidelines to our 2019 contest. Good luck!
On December 15, we will begin accepting submissions to our annual Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition, for supernatural short-short fiction of under 1,000 words.
We’ve made some important changes to the contest—including increasing the cash awards. You can read all about it on our contest page.