Welcome to PACT’s first-ever open submission contest!
We’re thrilled to lower the drawbridge, open the gates, and see what comes floating down the moat.
For our inaugural contest, we’ve chosen flash. Here at PACT, we’re unabashed fans of the form. It’s versatile, surprising, nuanced, and endlessly inventive.
We’re also delighted to welcome Guest Editor Joy Saler Drees to lead our very first open submission contest. Before you dive in, take a moment to read Joy’s thoughts on what makes flash such an exciting form, what she’ll be looking for as she reads submissions, and a few of the pieces she considers true gems.
⚡OPEN CALL DETAILS⚡
1 Flash Piece / Submission only.
1000 words MAX
Fiction + Nonfiction = Ok!
No cover letter
No bio
No submission fee
Submissions should be sent to: PACTDeskSet@gmail.com
Story + Word Count MUST be pasted into the body of the email
Subject line format: PACT [Contest Name] – Fiction or Nonfiction
Our Guest Editor Joy Saler Drees
What excites me as a reader/what I’m looking for in a piece:
Those moments that shift, that change, that surprise and move you, these are the moments I like to see in flash fiction. Like dancing, living in the moment and feeling the music, your body move, flash fiction can embody such experiences where you’re totally emerged, for a brief period, in someone else’s moment, and then you feel the transformation, not necessarily of the self but just something in you when it’s over.
So give me your moments that make the reader feel, give those little surprises at the end. Not plot twists or gotchas but rather those unexpected actions humans are prone to do, the unpredictable which, in hindsight, feel inevitable. In other words, a moment that gives a brief story in a character’s life. A moment that moves. A dance of the emotions.
Here’s some flash pieces I like:
What they all have in common is that they work in layers, balancing both an external and internal conflict, which gives movement to the story and thus, endings that shift and give the reader a moment that surprises but also feels inevitable. It’s these sort of endings that I think linger with the reader, an emotional experience.
From Joy: I like this story because it seems quiet with little action when really there’s tension and conflict in every sentence. Told within the span of less than twenty-four hours, the protagonist, though flawed, is sympathetic, an outsider in his own body. He longs for connection but doesn’t know or believe he can get it any more. The ending, where he walks away from his fantasy (and horror) of recreating his past, delivers both a tragic and hopeful read.
From Joy: Another flawed character, this story builds up to the moment in the end. The protagonist has done the unimaginable: identified his son’s body. Through carefully crafted hints in the scene, the reader gathers the protagonist wasn’t the best father to his son. Yet, there’s a turn in the story where the protagonist does something unexpected, something he normally wouldn’t do, and this is the shift, the change the story delivers that makes it so powerful.
From Joy: A magical and surreal read with carefully chosen imagery that fits and highlights the themes of the story. No word goes wasted in this brief piece. Each image (the lipstick, the dolls, the dirt) gives a feeling of what the protagonist and her sisters are going through even though they can’t name exactly what it is. The reader is left in the end with this feeling, perhaps unnamed but shaken nonetheless.
Joy Saler Drees recently moved from San Diego to Santa Rosa, CA with her family and chubby kitty. She holds a MFA from Pacific University, is an editor at Flash Fiction Magazine, and works with the disability community, supporting self-advocacy. Recent works have appeared in Molotov Cocktail, Year in Ink Anthology, Emerge, Literally Stories, River & South, and Rain Taxi.
