The winners of the DWL Short Story Contest 2018 have been announced. See this link for the results.
Our annual contest is open to writers worldwide and it has no entry fee. The 2018 contest offers a total of nearly $700 in prize money, including the PKR 50,000 Dastaan Award (read more about the annual award).
The top 3 entries will win $100 each and ONE of these three will also receive the Dastaan Award. The jury for the contest consists of DWL and Papercuts magazine staff members.
The 2019 edition of the DWL Short Story Contest will be announced in the summer.
Submission Guidelines for DWL’s Annual Short Story Contest:
1. The stories may follow any theme, but should not be more than 5,000 words.
2. Only one entry per person will be accepted.
3. Entries should be in English.
4. Please only submit your original work. If we detect plagiarism in any submitted entry, the story will be disqualified and the author will be blacklisted from future DWL contests.
5. Please only submit an unpublished story. Previously published stories will be disqualified from the contest. We also consider posts on blogs and social networks as published material.
6. If your submitted entry gets published elsewhere before the results of the contest are announced, please inform us and withdraw your story from the contest. As mentioned before, the story will be disqualified if we detect prior publication.
How to Submit:
7. Please email your entry to info@desiwriterslounge.net only as a Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) attachment.
8. The submitted short story must have a title. Please make sure that your document’s filename clearly mentions the title of the story and the name of the author. Writers are allowed to mention their names and the titles of their stories on the first page of the documents. We don’t consider identifying information in the word count and we shield the author’s identity from the jury.
9. There are no formatting restrictions, but please use a reasonable font type and font size. There is no need for page numbering or headers and footers, please.
Note: Writers retain the rights to the stories they submit for the short story contest. Only the three winning stories are published on DWL’s website. The winning stories may also be considered for Papercuts magazine’s print edition. For the three winning stories, first publication rights are with DWL and/or Papercuts magazine. After that, the winning authors are free to publish anywhere, as long as due credit is given to the DWL Short Story Contest and/or Papercuts magazine. DWL staff and Papercuts editorial team members are not eligible to participate in the contest.
Read the winning entries from previous DWL Short Story Contests before you apply. Thanks!
