Deer and bird outside barn
Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest
Submissions to our 2023 contest open on Oct. 1.

Quarter After Eight Short Prose Contest

2022 Contest Winners

Winner: Sahar Mustafah, "Tree of Life"

First Runner Up: Amy Beeder, "A Bitch in Time"

Second Runner Up: Ruth Joffre, "A Girl Named Ool"

Contest Submission Guidelines for 2023

 
Prize: $1,008.15 + Publication
Judge: Diane Seuss
Submissions Open: Oct. 1, 2023

Submit up to three previously unpublished pieces of 500 words or fewer. Send us your best prose poems, short-short stories, micro-essays, etc.

To read the work of our 2020 winners, judged by Dinty W. Moore, see our QAE volume 27 Table of Contents page.

The entry fee is $15 for three pieces.

Include a title page with your email address, mailing address, phone number, and the title(s) of your submission.

All entries will be considered for publication in Quarter After Eight.

We no longer accept submissions by mail. All entries must be made online through our Submittable page. See link below.

Submissions open on Oct. 1, 2023. Submissions close on Nov. 30, 2023.

Submit Your Work

Our 2022 Contest Judge: Kirstin Valdez Quade

 Kirstin Valdez Quade, portrait
Kirstin Valdez Quade | Photo by Holly Andres, 2020

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of The Five Wounds, which won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Lambda Literary Award. Her story collection, Night at the Fiestas, won the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation. She teaches at Princeton University.