May Fortnightly Round-Up II

Hello short story fans! Here’s what’s been going on for the past few weeks on the blog –
Tania x

Live Lit
We’re delighted to welcome a new event to our listings – Unsung Live, London: “a short story night for genre fans – science fiction, fantasy, horror and more”.

The Story Sessions are running two events and a workshop at the Broxley Max lit fest, London. Check out White Rabbit’s second Alice in Wonderland podcast, Six Impossible Things Before BreakfastRecliffe Future Way was launched on May 1st and is running its fiction trails in Bristol throughout the month.

The Word Factory #33 is happening in London on May 30th – the masterclass is sold out, but there’s the short story reading club and the Irish-themed evening event.

Lit Mags
Hotel Magazine has announced issue 1 and is calling for submissions for its second issue, and Paper and Ink want your stories on the theme of ‘childhood’. The third issue of Confingo is now on sale, Firewords Quarterly’s Issue 4 is hot off the presses.

Jotters United has a new issue out, 2Tango, and a call for submissions, Spelk also wants your short stories, and Bunbury has launched Issue 8 and shared some more exciting announcements with us.

Competitions

The Queen’s Head zine has launched a flash fiction competition, with illustrator Mahr, deadline June 7. Ambit magazine has launched its first annual short story competition, judged by Alison Moore, deadline July 15th. Headstuff magazine has launched a knockout comic short fiction competition with a prize fund of 3200 euros! The Creative Future Literary Awards are now open to marginalised writers, deadline 15 June, and The Moth’s International Short Story Prize is open, deadline June 30th.

The fourth Hysteria writing competition is open for entries, deadline 15 August. Holland Park Press is running a short story competition, I Is Another, deadline 31 August. The University of Leicester’s 2015 short story competition is now open, deadline 11 September.

Festivals

The full programme for this year’s London Short Story Festival in June has now been announced.

If you are eager for even more short-story-related news, do follow ShortStops on Twitter where, when we should be writing, we spend (far too) much time passing on news from lit mags, live lit events, short story workshops and festivals! If you’d like to review an event or a publication, drop me a line.

Happy reading, writing, listening and performing!
Tania x

AMBIT’S 1ST ANNUAL SHORT FICTION COMPETITION OPENS MAY 1ST, 2015

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Ambit launches its first annual short fiction competition in May, after the success of our poetry competition last year.

The competition will be judged by Alison Moore, and will run from May 1st – July 15th. Winners will be announced on September 1st  2015. First, second and third prizes will be awarded (£500, £250 and £100 respectively) and the three winners will be published in Ambit 222, out in October, and invited to read at our launch party with Alison Moore.

We are accepting stories of anything up to 1000 words. It costs £7 to submit one story to our competition, but if you enter enough stories you will qualify for a free one year subscription to Ambit (so, 4 entries for UK subscription, 6 for the rest of the world).

Please submit your entries via our Submittable portal where full directions can be found.

Do read our competition guidelines carefully at ambitmagazine.co.uk.

All stories will be read with great care and completely anonymously.

Good luck to all!
The Ambit Editors