Stoneslide Books (stoneslidecorrective.com), a fiction press launched this past February, is looking for narratives—primarily in the form of novels—that prompt readers “to think, to ask questions, to move the mind forward,” according to publishers Christopher Wachlin and Jonathan T. F. Weisberg, a bicoastal duo who met in a New England writing group. “The full and open form of thinking that we have in mind has to be ephemeral and context dependent,” Wachlin and Weisberg add. “Narrative is the art of building this context and then letting it go in the unceasing movement of story.” The press also publishes the free online magazine Stoneslide Corrective, featuring an inclusive submission policy that offers another potential path to book publication: “If [a submission] works as a short story, it’ll go in the magazine. If it works better as a book, we’ll make it a book. If it’s something else, we’ll invent the form for it.” And for writers looking to engage with the press in a more lighthearted way, the editors have devised “an optional adjunct to the submission process,” the Rejection Generator Project. Writers can choose from a rotating catalogue of themed letters (recent selections include “body blow,” “double take,” and “clammy hug”) to receive an immediate e-mail missive from an imaginary band of snarky editors. The real-life publishers welcome fiction submissions via e-mail; visit the website for guidelines.
Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.