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P=Poetry, N=Nonfiction, F=Fiction
- This event has passed.
PFN – After Happy Hour Contest. Theme: Food
We’re putting together a feast of words for our 4th contest issue. For this call, we’re looking for stories, essays, and poems that feature food. That could be as a central image, an aspect of the plot (cooking it, eating it, growing it, etc.), a defining trait of the characters (cooks, servers, baking show contestants, etc.), or a key detail of the setting (restaurant, farm, canning factory, etc.). However it’s used, food should feel necessary for and integrated into the work–we’re looking for more than just a passing mention of breakfast on the character’s way out the door.
Food isn’t just limited to Earth/human fare, either. Anything that a being consumes for sustenance counts as “food” for the purposes of this theme: predators hunting prey, plant-based lifeforms that “eat” sunlight, synthetic protein pastes, or any other means of gaining nutrients a lifeform could use. Beverages can also count, though we’re not interested in the typical “bunch of people in a bar” stories (unless you’re doing something very new, cool, and different with it).
The contest will be judged by the After Happy Hour editors. We read submissions anonymously, so please remove your name and other identifying information from your file before sending it.
Poetry: Send up to 3 individual poems, no line or word limits.
Fiction: Send a single short story or up to 3 flash or micro pieces (fewer than 1,000 words each) in a single document. We have no upper word limits, and aren’t opposed to publishing stories upwards of 5,000 words that justify their real estate.
Creative non-fiction: Send a single short work or up to 3 flash or micro pieces (fewer than 1,000 words each) in a single document. We are specifically looking for creative non-fiction for this issue, not scholarly essays about literary genres or subgenres (though if you’re using the tropes of scholarly essays within the context of a narrative or lyric piece, that we do want to see).
Suites: Send up to 5 linked works that will be considered as a set. Individual works within a suite can be poems or flash or micro-length prose (under 1,000 words each).
Hybrid/Cross-Genre: Yes, please. Follow whichever of the above guidelines makes the most sense.
Prize Info:
The winners and honorable mentions for this contest will receive a percentage of the total entry fees paid (including purchases of After Happy Hour print issues):
· Up to 3 “ranked winners” will split 30%.
· Up to 3 honorable mentions will split 15%
All submitted works will also be considered for publication in the issue. If we publish your work and you don’t win a prize, you’ll be paid at the standard contributor rate ($2.50 per printed page, with a minimum of $15 and maximum of $50).
How much will I win, though?
In the first 3 years, the prize ranged between $103-$320 for winners, and from $56-$160 for honorable mentions. We’ll post periodic updates on the Submittable page as the reading period moves along so you can get a sense for what you stand to win.
- Please include a brief (100 word max) 3rd-person bio in your cover letter.
- To limit editor and reader bias, we read all submissions anonymously. To this end, we ask submitters to remove their name and contact information from the document itself.
- We are not opposed to sex, violence, or profanity when they are necessary to the story—we’re fans of all three, in fact. Having said that, we will not accept any work that contains hateful or discriminatory content, including racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Gratuitous sex and violence will probably get you rejected, too.
- Use standard manuscript format (12-point Serif font, standard margins and spacing). It’s not like we’ll reject you for a bad font (probably) but it makes it easier to read, and that makes us happy. The exception is poetry that uses non-standard formatting for stylistic reasons. Prose writers have no excuse.
- We accept submissions only through Submittable. If the Submittable platform presents an accessibility barrier, please email us at AfterHappyHour@gmail.com and we’ll find a workaround.
- We accept and encourage simultaneous submissions. All we ask is that you be a good literary citizen and withdraw your submission through Submittable if it’s accepted elsewhere (if you’re withdrawing part of a submission, you can send us an e-mail). It is also expected that you’ll withdraw your submission from consideration by other journals if After Happy Hour accepts it.
- Please send only one submission per category at a time. We’ll happily consider submissions in multiple categories from the same author (e.g. a poem and a story).
- If you work in mixed genres (hybrid poetry/fiction, illustrated stories, etc.) submit the work in the category that seems to fit the best, and we’ll figure it out.
- Our response time is generally less than 6 weeks, but we are humans (mostly) and have been known to fall behind. If you haven’t heard from us in 3 months or more, you can send an e-mail and give us a nudge. You can also check on the status of your submission at any time by logging into your Submittable account.
- Accepted submissions may be edited for grammar. All changes are sent to the author for approval before publication.
- We acquire first publishing rights and electronic archive rights. All rights revert to the author following the work’s publication in After Happy Hour you can re-publish and anthologize your work at will. Content can be removed from the website on request, but cannot be removed from the the issue in which it was published.