Submission Guidelines

Everything a writer needs to know before entering — in plain language.

Currently open Pays via prize pool Responds within ~4–6 weeks

At a Glance

What we want: Original flash fiction for the current cycle — details loading…
Length: Loading… There's no minimum, but we find the strongest entries make full use of the space.
Language: English only.
Who can enter: Writers anywhere in the world, 18 or older. (Residents of Quebec, Canada are not eligible, per local contest law.)
Entry fee: $25 CAD per story. Half of every entry fee goes directly into that cycle's prize pool.
Simultaneous submissions: Not accepted — your story shouldn't be under consideration anywhere else while it's with us.
Multiple submissions: Welcome. Each additional story needs its own entry fee.
Response time: Every entrant receives written feedback and a result once judging for that cycle wraps, typically within four to six weeks of the entry deadline. Exact dates for the current cycle are posted on our homepage.
Payment: The winner takes the full prize pool for that cycle (minimum $200 CAD, no cap below $25,000 CAD). There is no additional per-word payment for contest winners — see Rights & Payment below for how that pool relates to publication rights.

What We're Looking For

We started Flash Pot Fiction because we think writers are chronically underpaid and under-appreciated, and we wanted a contest model that reflects that. Our inaugural cycle deliberately left the prompt open — any genre, any subject — because we wanted to see the full range of what writers bring us before narrowing things down. Format varies cycle to cycle: word limit, genre or category restrictions, and prompts (if any) are all set independently for each cycle and posted here and on the homepage before that cycle opens.

Good flash fiction rewards precision. We're not looking for a scene cut short — we're looking for a complete story told fast.

How to Enter

Pay the $25 CAD entry fee for the current cycle on our homepage.
Submit your story any time after payment, up until that cycle's deadline.
Paste your story text directly into the submission form — no attachments needed.
Late submissions can't be accepted. Entry fees are non-refundable once payment is confirmed, except where we cancel a cycle outright or a technical error on our end prevented a timely submission.

Judging

Judging is blind. Judges see only your story's title and text — never your name, email, or any other identifying detail.
Entries are judged on craft and originality. Judges' decisions are final.
This is a skill-based contest, not a raffle or lottery — the pool is never awarded by chance.
Beyond the single winner, we typically name a handful of honorable mentions each cycle.

Rights & Payment

You keep copyright of your story, full stop. Entering grants us a non-exclusive license to use your submission for judging and contest promotion — nothing more.

If your story wins, accepting the prize includes granting us first anthology publication rights, as a condition of the prize itself. We benchmark that rights grant against SFWA's professional short-fiction rate (currently US$0.08/word); if the prize money you're awarded is less than that per-word rate would come to, we pay you the difference on top. Honorable mentions may separately be offered paid anthology rights at that same per-word rate, as a standalone payment, at our discretion.

We don't accept work that was generated, in whole or substantial part, by AI.

Open Call — General Submissions

Beyond the contest, Flash Pot Fiction is now open to general (non-contest) fiction submissions for the magazine. This is an ongoing, open-ended call — no deadline, no reading fee.

Pay: 12¢ CAD per word for original (previously unpublished) work, or 6¢ CAD per word for reprints, paid on acceptance.
Genre & length: Open genre, flash length preferred (up to 1,000 words).
Reprints welcome: Previously published work is fine — just tell us where and when it first appeared.
How to submit: Email your story to admin@flashpotfiction.com with the subject line "General Submission — [Story Title]." Paste the story directly into the body or attach it as a .docx or .pdf, note your word count, and if it's a reprint, say where and when it was first published.
Rights: You keep copyright. Accepted work is paid for first publication rights only.
Response time: Typically 4–8 weeks.
Full terms: This is a plain-language summary. The binding terms for the open call are in our General Submission Terms.

Flash Pot Fiction is brand new — we launched our first cycle in August 2026, so if you're checking us out on a submissions tracker, this is a young, actively-run project, not an established institution yet. Our sister site, Flash Pot Fiction Canada, runs the same open call for Canadian speculative fiction at 15¢ CAD/word.

Full Legal Terms

This page is a plain-language summary. The binding terms of contest entry are in our Official Contest Rules; the binding terms for the open call are in our General Submission Terms. How we handle your information is covered in our Privacy Policy. If anything here ever conflicts with those documents, the relevant terms document governs.

Questions

Email admin@flashpotfiction.com — we read everything, including if you just want to say hi or ask about judging.