CRAFT EcoLit Challenge 2024
CRAFT 2024 EcoLit Challenge
May 20 – 30, 2024
$750 Awarded
Thank you to all who submitted work
to the CRAFT 2024 EcoLit Challenge.
We’re delighted to publish the winner in October 2024.
Congratulations to all who made the list below!
Winner
Janice Vis: “Here and There at the Lake”
Shortlist
Bronwyn Mauldin: “Common Pool Hustler”
Conal McManus: “The Echidna”
Jamie Nielsen: “Survival, in two parts”
Longlist
JR Fenn: “Resolving”
William Hawkins: “The Myth of Snow”
Jana Martin: “Storm”
Amy Nolan: “Entanglements”
Tori Sharpe: “Bat-Thirty”
Honorable Mentions
Ayla Gard: “Rat Child”
Margaret Grayson: “Good Weather”
Kaylie Saidin: “Those Same Trees”
Ken Wilson: “Late-Winter Walk along Wascana Creek”
We’ll return with another challenge in August 2024!
CRAFT 2024 EcoLit Challenge
Ecological literature, commonly called ecolit, addresses ecological and environmental matters. Writers may also hear the term cli-fi, or climate fiction, included in this genre. Here at CRAFT, for this 2024 EcoLit Challenge, we want to take a broad approach: We’re certainly interested in your cli-fi stories, but we are also eager to read about your relationships with the natural world, about how you function in your particular region, area, or environment amidst seasons of change. We welcome both meditation and movement, both personal and communal takes on the theme.
For this challenge, we’re happy to read fiction as well as nonfiction prose. Send no more than 750 words for the chance to win $750 and publication on our site. The winner will be chosen by our editorial team. Please carefully review the guidelines below, and good luck in the challenge!
GUIDELINES:
- Submissions are open to all writers, emerging and experienced.
- International submissions are allowed.
- Please submit prose work primarily written in English, but some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We seek flash prose only for this challenge: submit no more than 750 words in length.
- Work may have been drafted prior to the challenge’s open, or within the ten-day window. Please revise and proofread carefully before submitting.
- Submit polished prose only, please! We are not seeking lineated poetry, lists or listicles, or any accompanying artwork at this time.
- Submitted pieces must be creative, first and foremost, but may be fiction or nonfiction.
- We review literary prose but are open to a variety of genres and styles—our only requirement is that you show excellence in your craft.
- Submit previously unpublished work only—we do NOT review reprints (or even partial reprints) for challenges (including work posted on blogs, personal websites, social media, etc.). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- We allow simultaneous submissions—writers, please notify us and withdraw your submission if your ecolit piece is accepted for publication elsewhere.
- We allow multiple submissions—please submit each piece as a separate submission accompanied by an entry fee.
- This challenge requires a $15 entry fee per submission.
- Please double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12.
- Include a brief cover letter with your publication history, if applicable, and any appropriate content warnings to help safeguard our reading staff.
- We do not require anonymous submissions. The one grand-prize winner of the challenge will be chosen by the editorial staff. The winner will receive $750 and publication.
- We hope to publish the winning piece in October 2024. Any piece already scheduled to be published before January 2025 should not be submitted at this time.
- The winner will be asked to contribute an author’s note, or mini craft essay, that discusses their artistic choices in their piece. The note will be published with the winning work.
- We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason.
- Additionally, we do not tolerate discrimination in the writing we consider for publication: work we find discriminatory on any of the bases stated here will be declined without complete review.
- Any AI-generated work submitted to this challenge will be immediately disqualified.
- Unless you’ve already secured the necessary permissions, please do not include quoted song lyrics in your submitted work.
- Any work that does not adhere to these guidelines will be automatically disqualified.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your submission directly through the challenge’s submission form. We’ll provide marginal notes and a one-page summative letter, focusing on the strengths of the submission as well as our recommendations for development. While editorial feedback is inherently subjective, our suggestions are always actionable and encouraging. We aim to have feedback completed within twelve weeks of the close of the challenge. Should your piece win, no feedback will be offered and your fee will be refunded. Work that we critique is not eligible for future CRAFT challenges or contests, but can be revised and resubmitted for consideration in our general categories.
EDITORIAL FEEDBACK TEAM:
JOANNA ACEVEDO (she/they) is the Pushcart-nominated author of three books and two chapbooks. Her work has been seen across the web and in print, including Free State Review, The Rumpus, and The Adroit Journal. She received her MFA in fiction from New York University in 2021 and also holds degrees from Bard College and The New School. Find her on Twitter @jo_avocado.
MELISSA BENTON BARKER is the flash fiction section editor at CRAFT. A graduate of the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles, her writing appears in Longleaf Review, Moon City Review, Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Best Small Fictions 2021. She has received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
ALYSE BURNSIDE is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The Believer, and elsewhere. She’s working on a book.
KYLE COCHRUN (he/him) is a writer living in Seattle, Washington. He is a contributing writer for PopMatters, where he writes features, interviews, and album reviews. His essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in The Akron Anthology, Watershed Review, Echo, and CRAFT. He received an MFA in creative writing from the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts graduate program.
ALEXA DORAN recently completed her PhD in poetry at Florida State University. Her full-length collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). Look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Witness, Salt Hill Journal, and Gigantic Sequins, among others.
BRANDON DUDLEY is the author of Hazards of Nature: Stories, selected by Sigrid Nunez as the winner of the 2020 Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Chapbook Contest. His writing, interviews, and criticism have appeared in New South, The Millions, The Forge, Fiction Writers Review, North by Northeast 2, and others. He holds an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. He lives in Maine with his wife and two sons. Find him on Twitter @brandondudley8.
ROSS FEELER’s fiction has appeared in Electric Literature‘s “Recommended Reading,” The Common, New South, Potomac Review, Story | Houston, Hypertext, and others. His novel-in-progress received the Marianne Russo Award from the Key West Literary Seminar and was a finalist for James Jones First Novel Award. He teaches English at Texas State University.
B. B. GARIN is a writer living in Buffalo, New York. Her echapbook, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. Her work has appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Palooka, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, and more. She is currently a prose reader and blog contributor for The Masters Review. She continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels. Connect with her online @bb_garin.
COURTNEY HARLER (she/her) is a queer writer, editor, and educator based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe (2017) and an MA in English (Literature) from Eastern Washington University (2013). Courtney is currently editor in chief of CRAFT and editorial director for Discover New Art, and has read and written for UNT’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize, The Masters Review, Funicular Magazine, Reflex Fiction, and Chicago Literati in recent years. She also hosts the literary podcast PWN’s Debut Review, as well as teaches and edits for Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio in New Jersey. For her creative work, Courtney has been honored by support from Key West Literary Seminar, Writing By Writers, Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Nevada Arts Council. Courtney’s work has been published in multiple genres in literary magazines around the world. Find her on Instagram @CourtneyHarler.
KATELYN KEATING (she/her) was the editor in chief of CRAFT from 2018 to 2021 and now serves as editor at large. She was a 2017 fellow of the LA Review of Books Publishing Workshop and has been on their faculty since 2018, overseeing PubLab, leading the magazine track as a program manager, and serving as the publisher coordinator for LITLIT: The Little Literary Fair. She is a production manager with Berrett-Koehler Publishers, and was the production and operations manager at Prospect Park Books until it left California in 2021. Her essays appear in Crab Orchard Review, Flyway, Lunch Ticket, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. Katelyn has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles, where she worked for two years on Lunch Ticket, serving as editor in chief for issues 11 and 12. Find her on Twitter @katelyn_keating.
JILL KOLONGOWSKI writes the Substack Tiny True Stories and is also the author of the essay collection Life Lessons Harry Potter Taught Me (Ulysses Press, 2017). Her work also appears in Electric Lit, Insider, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brevity, River Teeth, and elsewhere. Her essays have won Sundog Lit’s First Annual Contest series and the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Nonfiction at Lunch Ticket, and she earned her MFA from St. Mary’s College of California. Jill teaches writing at the College of San Mateo, and lives in Northern California with her husband and daughter. Find her on Twitter @jillkolongowski.
VAL M. MATHEWS is a big-hearted, fun-loving editor who teaches courses in developmental editing for the University of California Berkeley Extension, Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and the Editorial Freelancers Association in New York City. Val also freelances on the side and works as an editorial consultant for CRAFT and The Masters Review. Previously, she was an editor for The Wild Rose Press, a small traditional publishing house in New York. She earned an MA in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University and a BFA from the University of Georgia. Fun fact about Val: She’s been an FAA-certified flight instructor for over twenty-five years, and in the past, she flew Lear jets for a living.
GABRIEL MOSELEY is a writer and editor from Seattle, Washington. His work has appeared in The Masters Review, Nordic Kultur, Stratus, and Alaska Airlines’ Alaska Beyond Magazine. He received an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and certificates in both editing and literary fiction from the University of Washington. He has been a finalist for the Made at Hugo House Writing Fellowship, LitMag’s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction, and the Haleakalā National Park Residency. He is a guest editor for The Masters Review.
GAGE SAYLOR is the assistant director of creative writing at Oklahoma State University. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Passages North, Tampa Review, Crab Creek Review, Iron Horse, and elsewhere. He has won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize at Nimrod and is a previous semifinalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize at North American Review. He received his MFA at McNeese State University, where he was awarded the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction.
After retiring from full-time work, DAVID K. SLAY completed a two-year program of short fiction writing workshops in the University of California, Los Angeles, Writers’ Program. His short stories, flash fiction, and microfiction can be found in a group of diverse literary journals, including Door Is A Jar, Gold Man Review, ImageOutWrite, The Magnolia Review, Random Sample Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, American Writers Review, and others. Nonfiction craft articles are in CRAFT and Submittable’s “Content for Creatives,” and he has served as a guest editor for Vestal Review. He has been a submissions reader for CRAFT since 2019, and is currently an associate editor for the short fiction section.