We've had a refresh: the Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction is now the Calvino Prize for Short Fiction!
Established in 2005, the Calvino Prize has been recognizing and awarding some of the best experimental writing written in English for over 20 years. We are here to celebrate enduring and exciting work that refreshes, renews, or reorients our sense of what a story can do.
The first-place prize package includes $2,000, publication in Miracle Monocle, and a reading in Louisville. If the final judge selects a runner-up, that writer receives $500 and the option for publication in Miracle Monocle. Winners have included emerging and established writers, including 2016 winner Ryan Ridge, author of New Bad News (2020); 2018 winner Amy Parker, author of Beasts and Children (2016); and 2022 winner Emily Temple, author of The Lightness (2020). This year’s final judge is Diane Cook, and past judges include Joyce Carol Oates, Matt Bell, Aimee Bender, Jenny Boully, and Brian Evenson.
Past winners:
2015: winner: Nick Greer, “Glass City”
2016 winner: Ryan Ridge, “ECHO PARK”
2017 winner: Eliezra Schaffzin,"Cingo, Cingere, Cinxi, Cinctum"
2018 winner: Amy Parker, “Pica Ceremony (for feeding the hungry ghosts)”
2019 winner: Margie Sarsfield, “Behavioral Sink”
2020 winner: Leanne Ogasawara, “Bare Bones”
2021 winner: Steve Wilson, “Ted”
2022 winner: Emily Temple, “Out, Out”
2023 winner: Young Rader, "A Bit of Green Apple, a Bit of Rotten Meat"
2024 winner: David Lawrence Morse’s “The Memoir”
2025 winner: Christian Moody's "The Babycatcher"
Final Judge: Diane Cook
In the spirit of Italo Calvino's enduring and exciting work, we're looking for writing that refreshes, renews, or reorients our sense of what a story can do.
Guidelines:
1) Submit a short story or flash fiction sequence of up to 25 industry standard (double-spaced, 12-point font, pages numbered) pages. Entries which use a smaller font or are single-spaced in order to make a longer work appear to be only 25 pages will be trimmed to approximately 25 industry standard pages. New this year: previously published work is ineligible, and excerpts from a larger work are no longer allowed. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but let us know if the work is picked up elsewhere.
2) Your name must not appear anywhere in the manuscript attachment. Instead, please include one title page listing only the title of the manuscript. Entries containing the author's name or identifying information will be disqualified.
3) Please do not send publication history of the author.
4) Submit anytime between July 1 and October 1, 2026.
5) The entry fee is USD 25, and all proceeds go to fund the award.
6) Results will be posted to the University of Louisville's website in January 2027. Finalists and winners will be notified via email.
7) Previous first place winners may not enter for three years after winning. Second place winners and finalists have no restrictions.
8) Faculty and employees of the University of Louisville may not enter the contest. University of Louisville alumni, current students, and former employees must wait a minimum of three years from their date of separation from the university to be eligible for the Prize.
9) The judges reserve the right to withhold the award if no entry is deemed worthy.
10) Winner will receive $2000 (USD) and the winning story will be published in Miracle Monocle, the University of Louisville's award-winning online literary journal. In addition, the winner will be invited to give a reading of the winning piece (hotel and travel stipend included). A runner-up, if named by the Final Judge, will receive $500 (USD) and the option to publish.
11) The use of AI technology in the composition of the submission is prohibited unless explicitly noted and detailed in a cover letter. In the case of its use, please elaborate upon the ways the use of AI provokes interesting/thoughtful questions in the specific story and why it is necessary.
12) For questions, email Kristi Maxwell at kristi.maxwell@louisville.edu.
Here's the bio for this year's judge: Diane Cook is the author of the novel, The New Wilderness, finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection, Man V. Nature, finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, Tin House, Granta, and other publications, and her stories have been included in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a former producer for the radio program This American Life, and was the recipient of a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.