The Smoking Poet is a literary ezine, established in 2006, and published online on a quarterly basis. TSP’s first annual short story contest is open to all writers, whether they have been past contributors to TSP or not, and in any genre.

An entry fee of $10 per submission is required, payment to be made through PayPal. Once you have sent in your submission and we determine it meets our contest guidelines, we will send you the PayPal link for payment with an invoice for your records.

Entries must be submitted as a Word doc file, one per e-mail, in Times New Roman, 12-point font, and double-spaced. The author’s name, address, and telephone number must appear in the upper right hand corner. Word count must not exceed 5,000. Please include a short bio statement, not to exceed 100 words, in the body of your e-mail.

The judges for the contest are Zinta Aistars, managing editor of The Smoking Poet; J. Conrad Guest, fiction editor of The Smoking Poet and author of January’s Paradigm; and our honorary judge, Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of American Salvage, Q Road, Woman & Other Animals. Bonnie will be our feature author of the Summer 2009 issue.

Prizes will be awarded to the top three stories: first prize, $200; second prize, $100; third prize, $50. All of the winners will be published in the summer issue of The Smoking Poet, online in mid June, 2009.

Submission deadline for the contest is May 31, 2009. Please send your submission with the subject line stating CONTEST/Last Name to thesmokingpoet@gmail.com If the subject line does not state CONTEST, then we will assume it is a submission for the ezine. 

We look forward to reading your best work!