Quarter After Eight Writing Contests
Quarter After Eight Short Prose Contest
3rd annual Summer Poetry Chapbook Contest
Judge: Karyna McGlynn
Prize: $1000, plus 25 published copies of your chapbook.
Submissions Open: June 15, 2025
Closing Date: September 15, 2025
2024 Winner: Lane Devers
Judge: Hieu Minh Nguyen
We're seeking captivating poetry manuscripts that leave us in awe, wishing we had written them ourselves. Whether you're experimenting with form or evoking strange and mesmerizing auras, we want chapbooks that make us upset we didn’t write them ourselves. We especially welcome submissions from underrepresented groups. Open to new, emerging, and established writers. Please submit your chapbook manuscripts of up to 25 poems.
32nd annual Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest
Judge: Steven Dunn
Prize: $1,008.15 + Publication
Submissions open: Oct. 15, 2025
Closing Date: Dec. 1, 2025
2024 contest winners, judged by Lily Hoà ng
Winner: Eliza Gilbert, "Unchained Melody"
First Runner up: Carlos Gómez, "Turns"
Second Runner up: Julie Marie Wade, "étude: absence"
Submit up to three previously unpublished pieces of 500 words or fewer. Send us your best prose poems, short-short stories, micro-essays, etc. The entry fee is $15 for three pieces. Include a title page with your email address, mailing address, phone number, and the title(s) and genres of your submission. All entries will be considered for publication in Quarter After Eight. We no longer accept submissions by mail. All entries must be made online through our Submittable page.
About Guest Judge Steven Dunn
Steven Dunn (a.k.a Pothole, cuz he’s deep in these streets) is a Whiting Award winner who was shortlisted for Granta Magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists. He’s the author of three novels: Potted Meat (Tarpaulin Sky, 2016), water & power (Tarpaulin Sky, 2018), and Tannery Bay (FC2/University of Alabama Press, 2024), which is co-authored with his homie Katie Jean Shinkle.
Potted Meat is a 2017 Colorado Book Award Finalist, VICE Magazine’s Best Books of 2016, and adapted into a short film by Foothills Productions called The Usual Route. The Usual Route has played at the LA International Film Festival, Houston International Film Festival, and others.