We’re pleased to announce the eleventh annual Larry Brown Short Story Award. The winners will receive the following prizes: 1st $500 USD, 2nd $50 USD, 3rd $50 USD, and 4th and 5th will receive a copy of the book Tiny Love: The Complete Stories by Larry Brown. Each prize winner will be published in the January 2027 issue of Pithead Chapel.
2026 Guest Judge: Deesha Philyaw
Contest Guidelines
Please read the guidelines carefully before submitting
- The contest is open from August 1st to October 31st of each year
- The submitted story must be less than 4,000 words
- No previously published work will be considered
- The writer’s name and contact information should only appear within the cover letter box in Submittable; submissions will be judged blindly by our guest judge
- Again, no identifying information should appear on the submitted manuscript pages
- There’s a $10 entry fee for each story submission. A discounted submission category, with a $5 entry fee, is open to BIPOC writers.
- Writers can submit multiple entries; however, each entry must be submitted separately and each entry requires an entry fee and cover letter with an address and phone number
- Simultaneous submissions are fine; however, please withdraw the story immediately if it’s accepted elsewhere
- The winners and honorable mentions will be notified by December 15th, 2026, and the prize money will be awarded the day after publication on January 2nd, 2027
- Those selected as honorable mentions will have the chance to be published alongside the winning selections in the January 2027 issue of Pithead Chapel
2026 Guest Judge: deesha philyaw
Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and co-host of two podcasts, Ursa Short Fiction (with Dawnie Walton) and Reckon True Stories (with Kiese Laymon). She is currently at work developing TV shows based on her short fiction. Deesha’s debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, is forthcoming from Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in September 2026.
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