In theory, transparency and accountability protect the public. In practice, information is often shaped, cropped, obscured. Lies are presented as evidence without question. Powerful people are implicated in horrific crimes, and then show up to work the next day. What happens when redaction becomes a tool of power?
Write about cover-ups: governmental, institutional, personal. Send us your fiction, poems, and creative nonfiction about what gets hidden. About survivors whose names surface while abusers walk free. About secrecy as strategy, incompetence as weapon, and silence as intimidation. We’re seeking writing that interrogates erasure, exposure, and the dangerous space between truth and what we’re allowed to see. When the black marker moves across the page, who does it protect?
We welcome writing of all forms: fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid work. Erasure pieces are welcome, as long as the source text is under two pages. Please include the source material in your submission.
Three winners will be selected and published at the end of April.
Prizes:
- First place: $1,000 and publication
- Second place: $200 and publication
- Third place: $100 and publication
This challenge is now closed. Thank you to those who submitted! If you missed this call, please add our next challenge to your calendar. It opens November 1.
Our winners are:
First place: “Garry Learnt How to Be a Man Off the Internet” by Rhys L’Hermite
Second place: “Feed” by Celeste Amidon
Third place: “Aswangs Wear Barong Tagalog” by Tresia Traqueña
You can read their pieces on our website beginning November 24!
The scariest monsters aren’t hiding under the bed. They’re the ones we made ourselves. Write about the monsters of our own making and how they haunt us today, whether that’s AI and tech, structural violence, climate collapse, or something just as insidious.
We are not looking for ghost stories or urban legends. Instead, send us writing that responds to what you doomscroll through. We’re seeking recipes for social justice, prose that explores the perils of smartphone addiction, poems about inflammatory rhetoric and the platforms they build, survival tips for the singularity, and more. Show us what “monsters of our own making” means to you.
We welcome all forms: fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, hybrid, or something even genre goblins can’t categorize. If it’s urgent, sharp, and dripping with weird, we want to read it.
Send us your words that are as alive and unruly as the moment. Three winners will be selected and published at the end of November.
Prizes:
- First place: $1,000 and publication
- Second place: $200 and publication
- Third place: $100 and publication
