Fiction Contest
The 2018 Leapfrog Fiction Contest is open
until June 15.
Marie-Helene Bertino will be finalist judge.
Click on the links above to read about
our past winners.
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novel 2 A.M. AT THE
CAT’S PAJAMAS and the story collection SAFE AS HOUSES. Her work
has received The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, and The
Iowa Award for Short Fiction. She is the current Frank O'Connor
International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland, and teaches
at NYU and in the MFA program at Institute for American Indian
Arts in Santa Fe, NM. For more information, please visit:
www.mariehelenebertino.com.
Read some interviews with Marie-Helene Bertino:
Read an interview with
Leapfrog's Lisa Graziano in Ploughshares' Indie Spotlight. Click
here.
We will accept all entries through our
Submittable page, which you can find here
Adult, young adult (YA)
and middle grade (MG) novels, novellas, and short story
collections are accepted. Minimum word count: 22,000. Individual
stories in a collection may have been published in journals.
Books that have been self-published will be considered
"unpublished" if fewer than about 200 copies were printed.
We look for
literary fiction and mainstream fiction, including science fiction.
Generally we are less interested in strict genre fiction, but if a
manuscript is good and grabs our attention, we don't care what the genre
is.
All manuscripts will
be reviewed by at least two Leapfrog editors, and those that go to the
second round of judging may be read by editors at other small presses as
well.
Manuscripts are
reviewed "blind": the judges do not know the authors' names or any other
information about them. This is important to our judging process and
the integrity of the contest.
1. May I submit more
than one ms? Yes, you may submit as many as you choose. Each requires
an entry fee, and they will be judged separately. The judges will not
know they are from the same author. However, our advice is that you use
your resources to explore several contests rather than entering more
than a couple of mss into a single contest.
2. May I submit to
other contests/agents/presses while waiting for the Leapfrog contest
results? Yes. We ask that you let us know when you enter what other
contests you have entered with the same manuscript, and inform us if
your manuscript receives an award elsewhere. Winning another contest
does not disqualify a manuscript from being named for an award by
Leapfrog. If you receive a publication contract elsewhere, please let us
know as that will disqualify the ms from our first prize.
3. What if I edit my
manuscript after submitting and want to resend? That is usually fine
until the last month of the contest. Just send the new version by email
with a short explanation, and we will make sure all judges receive the
new version.
4. What if I am unable
to send the entry fee through Submittable? If you prefer to pay
the reading fee by physical check, please contact us by email at
fictioncontest@leapfrogpress.com so that we can direct you
around the fee system.
5. What if I decide
to withdraw manuscript? If you withdraw before your manuscript has been
through several rounds of judging, we will refund your entry fee.
6. May I resubmit a
manuscript that I submitted to this contest in the past? We do not
encourage that. Even if you feel the ms has been through substantial
editing, it is likely to be judged about the same as last time, even by
quite different judges. If your ms was named for an award in the past,
we cannot name it again. We are happy to take new manuscripts from past
contest authors, however.
7. Do you ever
publish more than one winner? Yes, we have done that several times.
There may be two winners, especially if there are enough MG/YA
manuscripts to make a separate category.
8. My computer went
belly up and I have only a hard copy of my manuscript. May I send it by
mail? In an emergency, we will accept a hard copy, but we need to know
that it is coming or it will not be processed for the contest. Please
email to discuss this with us before putting a hard copy in the postal
mail.
9. Does my
manuscript need to be formatted a certain way? No. We are not at all
picky about that. Just make it readable. If it was a self-published
book, be sure to eliminate title and copyright pages, and page headers,
so there is no identifying information.
10. What if many of
the stories in my collection were previously published in
journals? That is fine, as long as much of the collection as a
whole has not already been published as a book. A list of
acknowledgments is also fine to include.
11. How many manuscripts do your usually receive? It varies between about 400 and 600.
12. What if I live
outside the United States? About 10% of our entrants each year
are not in the US. We are happy to read manuscripts from any and
all countries. Our 2016 winner lives in the UK.
13. My manuscript
has illustrations. Is that OK? Well.... if they are essential, it's OK.
We do not take picture books, children's or otherwise, and we do not
publish in color. B&W images that are crucial to the book may be
included. Again, please keep the file size reasonable.
14. Is there a
midnight deadline on May 1? We are not concerned about exactly
when your manuscript arrives. If we see it when we log in on the
morning of May 2, it has made the deadline. Sometimes there are
unavoidable delays and submissions arrive after May 1. Please
keep to the May 1 deadline unless there is an unavoidable issue.
Any other questions? Please email us at
fictioncontest@leapfrogpress.com and we will be happy to
help. You are doing us a favor by sending us your work to consider, and
we'll do what we can to make the process easy.
Awards
First Prize: publication contract offer from Leapfrog Press, with an advance payment, plus the finalist awards (see below).
Finalists: $150 and
one or two critiques of the manuscript from contest judges; permanent
listing on the Leapfrog Press contest page as a contest finalist, along
with short author bio and description of the book.
Semi-Finalist: Choice of a free Leapfrog book; permanent listing on the website.
Honorable Mention: listing on the Leapfrog Press website.
We encourage all
contest awardees to inform us of any publicity/contracts/reviews of
their entries. We will be happy to post that information on our website
and in our newsletter.
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