Malahat Review’s short story contest opens

The Malahat Review, a long-standing Canadian literary magazine produced by the University of Victoria, has opened its annual short story contest.

Deadline for the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction is May 1.  The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in the Fall issue of Malahat Review. That person will also be interviewed and the interview will appear in Malahat Lite, the magazine’s e-newsletter.

Every contestant receives a one-year subscription to The Malahat Review either for themselves or a friend. (You set that up in your entry form.)

Maximum length is 3,500 words and you can enter through an on-line process or use regular mail. Eligibility is limited to writers who have not yet published in book form. You can send more than one short story but each must be sent separately and be accompanied by a separate entry fee. Standard formatting applies whether you send by email (.doc or docx files, or PDF) or by regular mail.

Entries already published, accepted, or submitted elsewhere (no simultaneous submissions) are ineligible. Check out the details using the URL at the end of this blog; Malahat is very specific on what “published elsewhere” means.

The cost for you to enter depends on your location: for Canadian entries it’s $25 CAD; for American entries, $30 US; or for entries from Mexico and outside North America it’s $35 US. (Your fee pays for the subscription.)

Entry and payment are on-line, although you can only pay by using a credit card. if you opt to enter and pay using snail mail, the price is the same.

The stories will be blind judged and the final judge is Alissa York. Alissa studied English literature at McGill University and the University of Victoria. She is a faculty member at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies and regularly teaches at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She lives in Toronto. Her novel, Fauna, was short listed for the Giller prize and her short stories have won the Journey Prize and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award.

To get more information on this contest or to enter go to: http://www.malahatreview.ca/contests/far_horizons_fiction/info.html.  if you submit on-line, entering is a multi-step process; you need to pay your fee first.