Submission
To submit an entry, send it via email to flasher.contest@gmail.com. Don’t use attachments – just paste it into the text of your email. Also include your full name (or pen name), and, optionally, your university. (You don’t have to be attending a tertiary institution to enter this contest.)
You can submit multiple entries, but please don’t spam us! We’ll get cranky, and you wouldn’t like us when we’re cranky.
Word Limit
All entries must be between 1 and 1000 words. If you’ve got a couple extra words you need to squeeze in, we may be lenient, but if the story is obviously too long, we’ll send it back for editing and resubmission.
We prefer stuff below 500 words, because shorter is tighter, punchier, and usually stronger. Super-short entries are encouraged. Never forget Ernest Hemingway’s six-word tragic masterpiece, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.” Sometimes brevity can be very powerful.
We also accept poetry and script formats.
Copyright
You retain the copyright to any work you submit, but by entering, you agree to provide the owners of The Flasher with the right to publish your entry in online and paper editions of The Flasher. We encourage you to submit your work to other (hopefully better paying) publications – we only aim to inspire you to develop your writing. See Other Flash Publications for our list of… well, you know.
Deadlines
The deadline for submissions is the last day of the month. As soon as one round ends, the next one begins, so we can’t accept late submissions.
Winners
We will announce the winner for each month within the first week of the next month. The winner will be notified by email.
Disqualification
If an entry is discovered to be the work of an author other than the person who submitted it, the entry will be disqualified on grounds of plagiarism.
We will refuse to publish any entries we consider offensive, derogatory or otherwise unacceptable.
We will not publish spam entries.
We get sad when we see poor grammar, so if an entry contains a grammatical error, we may edit it and send it back to the author asking for permission to publish the edited version. We will not disqualify entries on grounds of bad grammar, and we will not publish an edited entry without checking with the author first. We promise.
The Wanker Clause
The judges of The Flasher (i.e. Christine and Miriam) will be allowed to submit entries for publication on the site. They may also publish one story each – but no more than one each – in the paper edition. However, none of these entries will be eligible for prizes.
Just because we wanna.
