2023 Short Story Contest

Registration closes after 75 submissions.

Rules & Guidelines

• All entries are submitted online during a prescribed schedule set by the San Diego Public Library.
• The contest is open to original, published or unpublished stories.
• Stories that have won and/or placed in other writing contests are not eligible.
• Stories previously accepted in this contest in previous years are not eligible.
• Simultaneous submissions are allowed. You may submit a new story to our contest while it is also being considered for other contests, so long as it has not won or placed at the time of submission.
• Stories should be suitable for a general audience.
• Authors must live in San Diego County.
• Only one (1) story per author.

Submission guidelines - Any deviations from these instructions may result in the disqualification of the short story from the contest.

• The manuscript must not have the author’s name anywhere on it.
• The manuscript must be double-spaced and not exceed 3,000 words.
• Pages must be numbered, and the page number must appear in the footer of each page. 
• The manuscript title must appear in the header of every page. 
• The manuscript file name must be saved and submitted in this format: “Story Title – Author Name” (Ex.: Librarians in Love – Elsee Dewey). 
• Standard fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, or Georgia in 12 point font size must be used. 
• All stories must be submitted in electronic format, no paper submissions will be accepted. Acceptable formats are: .docx, .pdf, or .rtf.

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Prizes

• 1^st Place – Publication on the website of the San Diego Public Library – and $300.00 first place award.
• 2^nd Place – Publication on the website of the San Diego Public Library – and $200.00 second place award.
• 3^rd Place - Publication on the website of the San Diego Public Library – and $100.00 third place award.
• Public reading of the 3 winning stories at a special program honoring the winners.
• Winners announced in early May.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Previous Winners

2022 Contest Winners

David J. Schmidt | 1^st Place

Short Story:  Enter the Laag

 

David J. Schmidt is an author, podcaster, multilingual translator, and homebrewer who splits his time between Mexico City and San Diego, California. 

Schmidt has published a variety of books, short stories, and articles in both English and Spanish, including Three Nights in the Clown Motel, a book of  “non-fiction horror,” as well as the series Gone Viral: Urban Legends of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Schmidt is the co-host of the podcast To Russia with Love. He speaks twelve languages and has been to 33 countries. He received his B.A. in psychology from Point Loma Nazarene University.

Website: www.holyghoststories.com

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David Hogan | 2^nd Place

Short Story:  Love Too Soon

 

David Hogan is the author of two novels, Hear Us Fade and The Last Island, both published by Betimes Books. His stage plays include the GTC National New Play Initiative award-winning Capital and No Sit – No Stand – No Lie, which opened the ‘Resilience of the Spirit’ Human Rights Festival. He has contributed to Writing.ie, Points in Case, The Good Life Review, and OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, among others. 

 

Website: https://davidhoganwriter.com

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Sara Wilczyńska (pronounced Veel-chin-ska)  | 3^rd Place

Short Story:  Hippity-Hop

 

Sara Wilczyńska was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland. She graduated in computer science and works as a software engineer at Google. After living in Barcelona, Edinburgh, London, Zurich and New York, she settled in San Diego. She teaches yoga and meditation and is a sound healing practitioner. She explores sticking words together into sentences, and presently flirts with short forms. Her work was published in Helikopter literary magazine.

Translator’s bio: 
Kate Webster is a Polish-to-English literary translator living in London, UK. She has translated short stories and essays by Joanna Rudniańska, Marta Kisiel and Agnieszka Graff, among others. Examples of her work can be found on the websites of Przekrój, Switch on Paper and Eurozine. Her translation of Barbara Sadurska's novel The Map is due to be published in 2021.

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Jerry Jamison  | Honorable Mention

Short Story:  Original Fiction

 

Jerry Jamison is a nationally award-winning copywriter with more than forty commendations to his credit. The author of ten novels, he is currently researching and writing on several headline-grabbing true crimes of the 1940s. His fifth book in the genre is in production. Jamison and his wife live in Chula Vista.

2020 Contest Winners

Carl Snow  | 1^st Place

Short Story: Right Now

 

Watch Story Reading

Carl Snow is a native of Kansas City, Missouri. Carl Snow graduated from the University of Maryland and had a long career in the United States Navy. After retirement, he worked as Assistant Editor for The Hook magazine and then as Production Editor for the Topgun Journal at the Navy Fighter Weapons School. When Topgun moved to Fallon, Nevada, Carl remained in San Diego, working as a Technical Writer, researching and writing manufacturing process documents for hi-tech electronics manufacturers. Carl retired for good in March 2011 and volunteers in the Midway Museum Research Library in San Diego, California.

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David Hogan  | 2^nd Place

Short Story: Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White

 

Watch Story Reading

David Hogan’s debut novel, The Last Island, is published by Betimes Books. The novel was a finalist in the San Diego Book Awards and the Kindle version was a bestseller in Australia and the U.K. His stage plays include the New Play Initiative award-winning Capital and No Sit – No Stand – No Lie, which opened the ‘Resilience of the Spirit’ Human Rights Festival. He’s a dual citizen of the US and Ireland and has contributed to Writing.ie, Irish Central, and Points in Case, among others. He has just completed a new novel, Hear Us Fade.

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Cheyanne Nelson  | 3^rd Place

Short Story: Shackled to the Basement Wall

 

Watch Story Reading

Cheyanne Nelson is a Sophomore at Valley Center High School. This is her first short story she has ever written, although she has worked on writing many books before. She has an interest in photography, music, writing, and art, along with riding her horses, and spending time in the desert with family. She is looking to enlist in the United States Marine Corps after graduating and gaining a PhD in Criminology and Psychology.

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Maddy Cowee  | Honorable Mention

Short Story: Brilliant Blaze

 

Watch Story Reading

Maddy Cowee is an aspiring novelist who waits tables by day and writes by night. Raised on a steady diet of fantasy and fairy tales, she can be found reading, playing video games, and drawing. Though this is her first short story, she has worked as a fiction ghost writer and editorial columnist. Currently writing a novel, she hopes to see her books on shelves everywhere in the not-too-distant future.

2019 Contest Winners

Jeff Edwards | 1^st Place

Short Story: Postcards from the Moon

 

Jeff Edwards is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, Anti-Submarine Warfare Specialist, and consultant for the Defense Department. Trained extensively in mainframe computers, weapons systems, and naval combat tactics, he brings an experience-based edge of authenticity to his writing. Collectively, his novels have won the Admiral Nimitz Award for Outstanding Naval Fiction, the Reader's Choice Award, the Clive Cussler Grandmaster Award for Adventure Writing, the Military Writer's Society of America Gold Medal for Navy Fiction, and the American Author Medal. His novel, The Seventh Angel, was selected for the 2012 Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program.

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Sarina Dahlan | 2^nd Place

Short Story: The Metamorphosis of Mao Mao

 

Sarina Dahlan was born into an Indonesian family in Thailand. While children in the West grew up on fairytales, she learned parables through ghost stories, mythologies, and Japanese manga. A graduate of UCSD, she’s worked in careers as an advertising producer, corporate marketing strategist, small business owner, and a writer. She is the creator and manager of Wandering Wonder Woman, a blog by a global village of women who share travel stories, food recipes, and advice that promote a better world. She finds inspiration for her stories in travelling, the people she knows, and the places she has lived. Her debut short story collection, Shadow Play: Ten Tales from the In-between was published in 2018.

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Kim Keeline | 3^rd Place

Short Story: The Crossing

 

Kim Keeline is the president of Partners in Crime: the San Diego Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the co-chair of the organizing committee bringing the conference Left Coast Crime to San Diego in March 2020. This is her first short story ever although she is working on several books. She is a freelance book publicist, web designer, graphic artist, and social media expert. She also is a volunteer steam train engineer on a 1907 Baldwin Locomotive at the Poway-Midland Railroad, which would explain why she is writing a mystery set in a train museum. She gives monthly talks to Oasis Learning Center or local libraries on literary or historical topics because what else does one do with a Ph.D. in English Literature if one leaves academia after 15 years of teaching?

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Makena Morgan | Honorable Mention

Short Story: White Balance

 

Makena Sunao Morgan is a graduate from Chapman University, having studied with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing as a fourth generation Japanese American. He was inspired to become a writer after picking up a book on mythology during a trip to Japan. Since then he has begun exploring his heritage in more depth and one day dreams of teaching English in Japan for an extended period of time. His writing mainly focuses on science fiction and urban fantasy, with a focus on cultural mythology.

2018 Contest Winners

Aaron Garretson | 1^st Place

Short Story: Abbott's Pursuit

 

Aaron Garretson grew up in San Diego. He attended University City High School, received a bachelor’s in biochemistry from UCSD and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University in New York. His writing has appeared or is upcoming in Carrier Pigeon, SLAB, Opium, Night Train, The Village Voice, and Mexico City's Hermano Cerdo (in translation), among others. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was shortlisted for the Best American Nonrequired Reading. He currently works in an infectious diseases lab at UCSD.

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Jean Seager | 2^nd Place

Short Story: The Award

 

Jean Seager, a native Californian, is writing a short story collection about Jewish immigrants to America in the early twentieth century. Her stories have been published in the online magazine Mikrokosmos, the print magazine The Long Story, and the San Diego Writers Ink anthology A Year in Ink. She is an active member of San Diego Writers Ink, taking classes and participating in read and critique workshops for the past five years.

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Bruce Golden | 3^rd Place

Short Story: The Color of Silence

 

Novelist, journalist, satirist, and native San Diegan Bruce Golden’s short stories have been published more than a hundred times across a score of countries and 30 anthologies. Asimov’s Science Fiction described his second novel, “If Mickey Spillane had collaborated with both Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick, he might have produced Bruce Golden’s Better Than Chocolate”--and about his novel Evergreen, "If you can imagine Ursula Le Guin channeling H. Rider Haggard, you'll have the barest conception of this stirring book, which centers around a mysterious artifact and the people in its thrall." His latest book, Monster Town, is a satirical send-up of old hard-boiled detective stories featuring movie monsters of the black & white era. It's currently in development for a possible TV series.

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Eleanor Bluestein | Honorable Mention

 

Eleanor Bluestein has worked as a public school science teacher, editor of science textbooks, and designer of multimedia educational materials. Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales, her book of short stories, won the Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. Eleanor is thrilled to be honored by the San Diego Public Library. She and her husband are frequent and very appreciative users of the Pacific Beach Taylor Branch.

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For questions or further clarification regarding the rules and guidelines, please contact us at: localauthor@sandiego.gov.