Our annual $1500 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize is closed.
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Short story must be
5,500 words or less
5,500 words or less
Entry fee is $20
(includes a digital copy of Ruminate)
(includes a digital copy of Ruminate)
Deadline is Feb. 15th (plus a 3-day grace period)
Tyrese L. Coleman is the author of the 2019 PEN Open Book Award nominated collection, How to Sit, published with Mason Jar Press in 2018. Writer, wife, mother, attorney, and writing instructor, she is also an an editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, an online journal dedicated to flash fiction. Her essays and stories have appeared in several publications, including Black Warrior Review, Buzzfeed, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, and the Kenyon Review. She is an alumni of the Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University and a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. Find her at tyresecoleman.com or on twitter @tylachelleco.
As with all our submissions, we highly recommend reading a copy of the magazine to better understand the type of work we are looking for.
Download a free excerpt from Issue No. 38 featuring some of our favorite short stories
Want to read a full issue?
Purchase issues featuring past Ruminate Short Story Prize recipients here:
Purchase issues featuring past Ruminate Short Story Prize recipients here:
"Stories have a way of percolating in people. They land, they ripple outward, they settle. Over time they become a part of us through their telling and retelling, a new limb through which we feel the world. Their lessons latch on to our senses and color anew everything we experience."
—Jason Villemez, winner of Ruminate's 2018 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize. His story, "Coda" appears in Issue 48: Exposure.