Gene believed the mitochondria were feminist until someone asked him why. That’s how things started going downhill. My husband, Gene Saperstein, fifty-eight years old and retired from the IRS just this past spring, standing there holding a glass of boxed pinot grigio in Lucy Halperin’s living room, surrounded by women with statement earrings. You should know […]
Share your writing with us! We want stories from these genre categories: sci-fi/fantasy; horror/thriller; humor.
Marianna Shek works as a librarian by day. Her previous works have been shortlisted for the Times/ Chicken House Fiction Prize (2022) and longlisted for the Bath Children’s Writing Award (2022). Her short stories have won the Children and Young Adult Conference writing prize and the Wakefield Press YA Horror Anthology competition.
See Their WorkAnthony Neil Smith is a novelist (Yellow Medicine, Slow Bear, many others), short story writer (Bull, HAD, Maudlin House, Cowboy Jamboree, many others), and a professor at Southwest Minnesota State University. His work appeared in Best American Mystery & Suspense 2023. He is the editor of online lit journal Revolution John. He likes Mexican food, California wine, French noir and Italian exploitation flicks.
See Their WorkAvra Margariti is a queer author and Pushcart-nominated poet with a fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra’s work haunts publications such as Vastarien, Asimov's, Strange Horizons, F&SF, The Deadlands, Podcastle, and Reckoning. Avra lives and studies in Athens, Greece. You can find Avra on twitter (@avramargariti).
See Their WorkChristopher L. Morrow is a professor, writer, and avid board gamer. His creative works have been previously published in Under the Gum Tree, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Texas Ballot Poetry. He lives in west Texas with his wife, sons, and four Siberian huskies.
See Their WorkMitchell Shanklin has been published in Lightspeed Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and a story forthcoming in Podcastle. He is a graduate of the Clarion West workshop.
See Their WorkAmy Flanders is an American writer from California who now lives near Oxford in the UK. She has an MA in literary studies, a doctorate in History and enjoys reading and writing historically flavoured fiction.
See Their WorkSeth Wade is a tech ethicist studying and teaching philosophy at Bowling Green State University. You can read his fiction and poetry in publications like Strange Horizons, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Hunger Mountain Review, PsuedoPod, Apparition Literary Magazine, HAD, hex, The Cafe Irreal, Lost Balloon, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, BAM Quarterly, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and The Gateway Review. He is also a Pushcart Prize nominee. You can follow him on X: @SethWade4Real or Instagram: @chompchomp4u or Bluesky: @sethwade.bsky.social
See Their WorkSam Brown is a writer and podcaster, born in Gloucestershire and currently based in East London. He has written for various publications, including anthologies, online journals, and literary magazines. He is writing a novel, THE BIBLE OF BOB SMEEK, a queer political satire set in the United States.
See Their WorkTiffany Harris is a short fiction writer whose work has appeared in Buckman Journal, Black Glass Pages, Humana Obscura, Five Minutes, and Westword. She won the Tadpole Press 100-Word Writing Contest, received highly commended in the Bath Flash Fiction's 29th Award, and was longlisted in SmokeLong Quarterly’s 2024 Grand Micro.
See Their WorkKimberly Giarratano (Jer-ah-tahn-o) is the author of Death of a Dancing Queen, Devil in Profile, and Make a Killing, a series about a tenacious private eye who snuffs out crime in the North Jersey suburbs. Imagine Tony Soprano if he was Jewish, female, young, and on the right side of the law, and you get Billie Levine. Kim previously served on the national board of Sisters in Crime and is currently an instructor at SUNY Orange County Community College. Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Kim and her husband moved to the Poconos to raise their kids amid black bears and wild turkeys. While she doesn’t miss the Jersey traffic, she does miss a good bagel and lox. Find her online at www.kimberlyggiarratano.com
See Their Work
This doesn’t get any easier, narrowing down a large pool of good novel excerpts to a longlist of pieces we wanted to keep reading, with characters we grew to care about in 5,000 words or less. Congratulations to the 31 writers on this list!
So many of our writers and editors love flash fiction, so this is always one of our favorite contests each year. It’s so fun to see these genres played out in stories of so few words! Compression is a great way to increase not only the resonance, but also the creativity in what to leave […]
This contest is quickly becoming one of our favorites! There’s just something immediate about a short story that creates its world through cinematic craft moves and detail-rich writing! Judge Rachel Harrison chose three winners, and we decided to publish two others that we couldn’t let go! And congratulations to everyone on the shortlist. We read […]
We’re excited to announce the winner of the humor challenge! We laughed, we chuckled, raised our eyebrows, but this is the story we returned to the most! We’re grateful to all the submitters who helped us launch a new genre at Uncharted! The Winner: Selected Apologies to Simone de Beauvoir, Written in Lichen by Tiffany […]
Congratulations to our three co-winners chosen by Judge Laird Barron! See below for the reveal of the shortlisted authors. We hope these manuscripts find great homes in the future! The Co-Winners: The Sailor by K. Wallace King “Redolent of Ellroy and Chandler, but stripped down. Lean, mean, and to the point. I loved the sense […]
Congrats to the shortlisted stories and their writers! You’re humor is shining through in these pieces! We’ll be back with the winner of the challenge very soon!
Rescheduled for 8/13/2025! As writers ourselves, we know how invigorating and inspiring it can be to hear from successful genre writers who have found a way to finish their drafts and get their projects into the hearts and minds of readers far and wide. Benjamin Percy may have started in the literary fiction space, but […]
It’s always a delight to open up to a new genre and see how our submitters respond to an exciting challenge! Comedy of any kind is hard to pull off, but it’s especially difficult when it’s solely on the page. We’re excited to add these 19 title to our longlist, while we continue to review […]
We did it! We finally found our shortlist for this contest. They have been submitted to Laird Barron for his judging, and we can’t wait to find out which excerpts are the winners! Congrats to the writers of these 20 shortlisted excerpts!
Get the guidelines on our current contests, where we offer writers premier opportunities for publication and payment. All winners selected by noted guest judges.
