University of Louisville Creative Writing
There are presently no open calls for submissions.
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"