Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
About the Flannery O'Connor Award
More than fifty short-story collections have appeared in the Flannery O'Connor Award series, which was established to encourage gifted emerging writers by bringing their work to a national readership. The first prize-winning book was published in 1983; the award has since become an important proving ground for writers and a showcase for the talent and promise that have brought about a resurgence in the short story as a genre. Winners are selected through an annual competition that attracts as many as three hundred manuscripts.
Winners of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction include such widely read authors as Ha Jin, Antonya Nelson, Rita Ciresi, and Mary Hood.
Submission Guidelines: 2011 Competition
New in 2011: We will be accepting electronic submissions to the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction this year alongside hard copy submissions. See details below. For the 2012 competition, we plan to move to all online submissions. Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award news and updates are available on our Facebook page.
Dates for submission: Manuscripts may be submitted between April 1 and May 31. (For hard copy submissions, postmark must be no later than May 31.) Winners will be announced by the end of August.
Our online submissions manager is available here: georgiapress.submishmash.com/submit
Tech support for using the submissions manager is available at 1-406-480-6274. The $25 entry fee can be paid online via credit card or PayPal.
Selection process: Each of three contest judges reads approximately one third of the manuscripts submitted to the competition, with a fourth judge available if needed based on the total number of submissions. Judges select 7-10 finalists each; the pool of finalist manuscripts is read by series editor Nancy Zafris, who makes the final selection of two winning manuscripts. Authors of winning manuscripts receive a cash award of $1,000, and their collections are subsequently published by the University of Georgia Press under a standard book contract.
Eligibility: The competition is open to writers in English, whether published or unpublished. Writers must be residents of North America.
Manuscript Guidelines
Blind review: The intent of this contest is that manuscripts will be considered on the merits of the fiction and that judges will not be aware of the names or publication records of the authors. To this end:
Additional guidelines for hard copy submissions
The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
The University of Georgia Press
330 Research Drive Athens, GA 30602-4901
Confirmation of receipt and notification: For both electronic and hard copy submissions, receipt of the submission will be confirmed via e-mail. You should receive confirmation immediately for electronic submissions and within four weeks for hard copy submissions.
An announcement of winners and finalists will be sent to all entrants via e-mail by the end of August.
To update your contact information, withdraw your manuscript from the competition, or query if we have not acknowledged your hard copy submission after four weeks, please contact us via e-mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). The press will not accept phone calls regarding the Flannery O’Connor Award.
Statement of Integrity: The University of Georgia is thoroughly committed to academic integrity in all of its endeavors, and the University of Georgia Press adheres to all University of Georgia policies and procedures. To help ensure the integrity of the competition, manuscripts are judged through a blind review process. Judges in the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction competition are instructed to avoid conflicts of interest of all kinds.
Books in this series
All My Relations
Stories by Christopher McIlroy
At-Risk
Stories by Amina Gautier
Ate It Anyway
Stories by Ed Allen
Bear Down, Bear North
Stories by Melinda Moustakis
The Bigness of the World
Stories by Lori Ostlund
Black Elvis
Stories by Geoffrey Becker
Break Any Woman Down
Stories by Dana Johnson
A Brief History of Male Nudes in America
Stories by Dianne Nelson Oberhansly
Close-Ups
Stories by Sandra Thompson
Compression Scars
Stories by Kellie Wells
The Consequences of Desire
Stories by Dennis Hathaway
Copy Cats
Stories by David Crouse
Curled in the Bed of Love
Stories by Catherine Brady
Drowning Lessons
Stories by Peter Selgin
The Edge of Marriage
Stories by Hester Kaplan
Evening Out
Stories by David Walton
Eyesores
Stories by Eric Shade
From the Bottom Up
Stories by Leigh Allison Wilson
How Far She Went
Stories by Mary Hood
Ice Age
Stories by Robert Anderson
The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men
Stories by Randy F. Nelson
The Invention of Flight
Stories by Susan Neville
Large Animals in Everyday Life
Stories by Wendy Brenner
Living with Snakes
Stories by Daniel Curley
Low Flying Aircraft
Stories by T. M. McNally
The Necessary Grace to Fall
Stories by Gina Ochsner
Nervous Dancer
Stories by Carol Lee Lorenzo
The Pale of Settlement
Stories by Margot Singer
The People I Know
Stories by Nancy Zafris
The Piano Tuner
Stories by Peter Meinke
The Purchase of Order
Stories by Gail Galloway Adams
The Quarry
Stories by Harvey Grossinger
Rough Translations
Stories by Molly Giles
The Send-Away Girl
Stories by Barbara Sutton
Silent Retreats
Stories by Philip F. Deaver
Sky over El Nido
Stories by C. M. Mayo
Sorry I Worried You
Stories by Gary Fincke
Spirit Seizures
Stories by Melissa Pritchard
Spit Baths
Stories by Greg Downs
Super America
Stories by Anne Panning
Tell Borges If You See Him
Tales of Contemporary Somnambulism
Peter LaSalle
The Theory of Light and Matter
Stories by Andrew Porter
Unified Field Theory
Stories by Frank Soos
View the judges' profiles:
M.M.M. Hayes
Bruce Machart
Kirsten Ogden
Lori Ostlund
A note from series editor
Nancy Zafris
