Deadline: October 1

$5,000 Fiction | $5,000 Nonfiction | $5,000 Poetry

Winners receive a cash prize, publication in the Spring 2025 issue of the Missouri Review, and promotion across our social media channels.

Guidelines

• Submit one piece of fiction or nonfiction up to 8,500 words or any number of poems between 6 to 12 pages. Please double-space fiction and nonfiction entries.
• Multiple submissions and simultaneous submissions are welcome, but you must pay a separate fee for each entry and withdraw the piece immediately if accepted elsewhere.
• Entries must be previously unpublished.
• Standard Entry fee: $25. Each entrant receives a one-year subscription to the Missouri Review in digital format (normal price $24) and a digital copy of the latest title in our imprint, Missouri Review Books, a short story anthology by former contributors (normal price $7.95).
• “All Access” Entry fee: $30. In addition to the one-year digital subscription to the Missouri Review and TMR Books e-book, Life Support: Stories of Health & Medicine, entry fee grants access to the last 10 years of digital issues and the audio recordings of each digital issue.

Submit online or by mail.

Read prize-winning stories by Melissa Yancy, Rachel Yoder, and Thomas Dodson, essays by Peter Selgin and Dave Zoby, and a selection from poetry winners Katie Bickham, Kai Carlson-Wee, and Alexandra Teague.