The Stony Brook Short Fiction Prize

Win $1000...plus a scholarship to the Southampton Writers Conference!

The Stony Brook $1000 Short Fiction Prize welcomes undergraduate students from all over the United States and Canada to submit original fiction of 7,500 words or fewer. The judges are looking for lively storytelling and unique voices. 

The Southampton Writers Conference is sponsored by the Stony brook Southampton MFA in Creative Writing and Literature, which provides a forum for authors of all genres to study and discuss the craft of writing. Through workshops, lectures, readings, and small-group discussions, the conference offers inspiration and guidance to new writers, established authors, teachers of writing, and editors. To learn more visit stonybrook.edu/southampton/mfa/summer. 

DEADLINE

Submissions open March 1, 2024 and close July 14, 2024. The winner and runners-up will be notified in November. 

ELIGIBILITY

Only undergraduates enrolled full time in United States and Canadian universities and colleges for the academic year 2023-2024 are eligible. 

GUIDELINES

• Submissions of no more than 7,500 words. 
• Author's name must not appear anywhere on the submission.
• All entries must be accompanied by proof of current undergraduate enrollment: a scan/PDF of a grade transcript, a class schedule, or payment receipt showing your full-time status. The institution's name and address must be clear.
• Submission assumes Stony Brook's right to publish winning stories on its website.
• The winning story will automatically be considered for publication in TSR: The Southampton Review, the literary journal of Stony Brook Southampton's MFA program in Writing and Literature. 

For complete guidelines, visit stonybrook.edu/fictionprize. 

To submit, use the <SUBMIT> button at the bottom of the page, which will direct you to a Submittable.com platform.

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Stony Brook Undergraduate $1,000 Fiction Prize

2021 Winners!

First-place story featured in newest edition of TSR: The Southampton Review

Winter/Spring 2022

Stony Brook University is delighted to announce the winners of the 2021 Stony Brook Undergraduate $1,000 Fiction Prize!

Robert Lopez, novelist, essayist, and short story writer, served as judge.

The Winner:

“Hosanna!” by Camry Romney is the first-place winner. Robert Lopez applauds the fact that “Hosanna! crackles with urgency and the sharp language of a true artist who sees the tired old world with its tired old people like it’s something fresh and new. Here we have a writer in control of voice and emotion and pushes the language to exciting and dangerous places. I felt this narrator in my marrow, as they struggled with a very tough upbringing. Bracing, honest, real.”

Bio: Winner Camry Romney is an Arizona native majoring in creative fiction at Arizona State University. The publication of “Hosanna!” in TSR: The Southampton Review, Winter/Spring 2022, represents her print debut.

Runners-up:

“Corpus Christi” by Ben Perez “is a perfect example of a writer risking form and language and emotion,” Robert Lopez notes. “Hunger, confusion, honesty, and above all, artistry, is on display in this genre-bending story of complicated relationships. This is definitely a writer to keep an eye on.”

Bio: Ben Chumney-Perez is a senior studying English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“Father’s Day for Abandoned Children” by Katherine Serna. This story, Lopez writes, “has a young woman coming of age under complicated and difficult circumstances. The writer makes you care about this young narrator and demonstrates how all of us have tough choices to make and our own paths to blaze.”

Bio:  Katherine Serna, a senior at the University of Rochester, is majoring in Creative Writing and Dance, with minors in Latin American Studies and Political Science, is originally from Laredo, Texas. Serna interned at Laredo’s Elusive Publishing, and was a Volunteer Legal Services Project in Rochester. A Meliora Scholar, supporting humanistic research, Serna’s film Compañeras, won first prize in the Undergraduate Writing Colloquium for the Multimodal category, hosted by the U of R’s Writing, Speaking & Argument, a Dean’s Prize for Short Fiction Creative Writing. Her poetry has appeared in Masked: A Student Anthologycreated by the U of R’s English Department. Serna is “passionate about social justice issues” and ways in which artists can effect change.

Our Judge:

Robert Lopez, the judge of this competition, is the distinguished author of the novels Part of the World, All Black Full, and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, named as one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant. He has also written two story collections, Asunder and Good People. His upcoming books include A Better Class of People, published by Dzanc Books and Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere, from Two Dollar Radio. His writings have appeared in Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction—Latino.

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We accept paper submissions. Mail to: 

Director Stony Brook $1,000 Short Fiction Prize

Stony Brook Southampton 

MFA in Writing and Literature 

239 Montauk Highway, CH 238 

Southampton, New York 11968