Editor’s Note: I got an e-mail from Jay at Magers & Quinn this morning asking me if I’d post this last call for submission to mnLIT’s flash fiction contest. I thought, why the hell not? Here it goes! If you can say tell a story in 500 words, I suggest you send something in what do you have to lose?

Magers & Quinn Booksellers and mnartists.org are looking for Minnesota writers. We’re running two series: What Light is a poetry competition, and miniStories is a flash fiction contest. Winning poems and stories will be posted on mnartists.org and on magersandquinn.com. Winning authors will be invited to record audio versions of their work, which will be posted online and distributed through iTunes. Twenty authors in each category will be chosen between June 2009 and March 2010. Three of those twenty grand prize winners will be selected. Grand prize winners will be able to submit a second work to be posted online and will receive a small cash prize.

So sharpen your pencils and start writing.
Eligibility and submission guidelines,
Overview:
For 2009 there will be only one call for the whole year’s worth of mnLIT submissions. mnartists.org will be taking submissions for the What Light Poetry Project and the miniStories flash fiction competition from March 12 until May 15th. You must be a resident of Minnesota to submit work for consideration in the mnLIT competition. Submissions to each series will be handled separately: poetry submissions to What Light will be considered by a panel of poets and editors; flash fiction submissions to miniStories will be read and selected by another panel of authors and editors. What Light and miniStories panelists will read and make the

miniStories FLASH FICTION COMPETITION
miniStories is a flash fiction competition series which spotlights original short-short stories by Minnesota writers. Twenty pieces will be selected for publication by a panel of noted authors, editors, and publishing industry veterans from across the country. We’re pleased to announce that novelist Geoff Herbach is returning for a second year as lead juror in the miniStories competition. From the pool of 20 winning authors, 3 grand prize-winners will be selected to receive a paid commission for a second short story (which may or may not be flash fiction) to be published by mnartists.org. Grand prize-winners’ commissioned pieces will go through a full editing process and will be illustrated for publication with specially chosen artwork from the vast database of mnartists.org artists.

There will only be ONE call for Ministories submissions in 2009 — March 12 through May 15

Eligibility and Submission guidelines:
Any Minnesota resident may submit up to three previously unpublished pieces of flash fiction, in any genre; each submission should be no longer than 500 words in length. Stories should be submitted as email attachments to stories@mnartists.org (preferably formatted as Word documents) or pasted into the body of an email. Please put “miniStories flash fiction submission” in the subject line of your email.

You must be a resident of Minnesota and become a member of mnartists.org to have work published in this contest. At the time entrants to miniStories submit their flash-fiction for consideration, they should also submit a low-res (72 dpi) photograph of themselves, a brief bio (no more than 150 words). With this biographical information, entrants should also include links to any relevant personal websites or blogs they would like mentioned should their story(ies) be selected.