The new guard CONTESTS IN FICTION & POETRY

The New Guard Tenth Anniversary Editor’s Edition is closed. Thank you to all who entered!

TNG BANG! submissions are accepted all year. BANG! authors are showcased individually on our site for a month—we publish a cycle of an author’s flash fiction, nonfiction or short poems. Please see the BANG! page for more details.

KNIGHTVILLE POETRY CONTEST: Final Judges are TNG Founding Editor Shanna McNair and Consulting Editor Scott Wolven. $1,500 and publication for an exceptional poem in any form. Up to three poems per entry. Up to 150 lines per poem. Please submit all three poems in a single document. $22 entry fee.

MACHIGONNE FICTION CONTEST: Final Judges are TNG Founding Editor Shanna McNair and Consulting Editor Scott Wolven. $1,500 and publication for an exceptional work of fiction in any genre. Submit up to 5,000 words: anything from flash to the long story. Please note we do not accept novel excerpts. $22 entry fee.

The new guard CONTEST GUidelines 

We accept .doc and .docx files. International entries are welcome.  Simultaneous submissions are accepted, provided we're notified upon publication elsewhere. Entrants have no submission entry limit. Each submission is carefully considered for publication.

We do pay strict attention to word and line count. Stories submitted over word count (5000 words) will be disqualified; poetry over the 150 line count will also be disqualified. Please submit previously unpublished work only. Any size print run or online publication (including self-publishing, blogs and/or social networking or video readings) disqualify an entry. We no longer accept entries via postal mail. 

Finalists and semi-finalists receive one free copy of The New Guard; winners receive two copies. Winners and selected finalists and semi-finalists will be published in our print publication. TNG is not published online.

TNG retains standard first publication rights; all rights immediately revert to the writer upon publication. Writers must be at least eighteen years of age to enter. Please note that we do not presently accept unsolicited submissions--we are considering contest entries only at this time. 

A note on conflict of interest when submitting: Please submit writing that our Judges have not read. Writers who have directly worked with TNG Founding Editor Shanna McNair or TNG Consulting Editor Scott Wolven on a poem or short story (via The Writer’s Hotel or other venue) may not enter that same poem or short story for the contest; the short story or poem will be disqualified.

TNG holds a membership with Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. We follow standard literary magazine contest rule ethics.

MORE ABOUT TNG VOL X JUDGES:

Shanna McNair is Founder and Director of The Writer’s Hotel and Founding Editor and Publisher of The New Guard literary review. Shanna writes prose, poetry and scripts and is an award-winning journalist. She recently served as a RISCA Fiction Fellow Competition Judge, and as an Interdisciplinary Study Adviser at Lesley University. Her debut novel, “Soul Retrieval” is forthcoming from High Frequency Press in 2024.

Her creative writing has appeared on KGB Bar Lit online, and in Maine Magazine, Naugatuck River Review, Stonecoast Lines and elsewhere; her work in journalism appears on Village Soup.

She was selected for writing residencies at Studio Faire (2022 and 2024) and Gullkistan (2024). She has been a writer-in-residence at Hewnoaks Artist Colony, at the Thomas Lynch Cottage and at the Stonecoast Ireland Residency. She is a graduate of the Dartmouth College Creative Writing MALS program, the Stonecoast MFA program and holds a Creative Writing Certificate from Oxford University, via Dartmouth. She has worked extensively in the visual and performing arts.

Her play, “Fat Sushi” was chosen as part of Belfast, Maine’s One-Act Festival; she directed and produced. She has worked extensively in the visual and performing arts.  Click here to read her latest short story, “Funhouse”, on KGB Bar Lit with an introduction by Rick Moody. Shanna lives and works in Maine. More at www.shannamcnair.com.

Scott Wolven is TWH Consulting Director and Consulting Editor of The New Guard literary review. He is the author of the short story collection, Controlled Burn. Scott's stories have appeared seven years in a row in The Best American Mystery Stories Series, the most consecutive appearances in the history of the series. The title story of the collection appeared in Best American Noir of the Century. The story “The Copper Kings” (Controlled Burn) is included in the prestigious collection, 20 + 1 , an anthology of 21 new short stories “by emblematic American authors,” to celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Terres d’Amerique,” published by Albin Michel and edited by Francis Geffard. His short story, “Playboy,” was featured in Playboy Magazine. The film, “Hepburn” by Tommy Davis, a work based on Scott's short story, “Hammerlock,” was featured at The New York Film Festival on the Main Stage. Scott was a Staff Writer for Season Two of "Hightown" for the STARZ TV network and Jerry Bruckheimer TV. More at www.scottwolven.com.

The New Guard literary review representative authors: Ralph Ellison, Charles Simic, Richard Blanco, Elizabeth Hand, Mark Doty, Tim Seibles, Rick Moody, Joe Wenderoth, Sharon Olds, Stephen Dunn, Patricia Smith, David Plante, Joe Wenderoth, Chris Abani, John Callahan, Thomas Lynch, Josip Novakovich, Sven Birkerts, Donald Hall, Barbara Hurd, Adam Braver, Scott Wolven, Shanna McNair, Debra Spark, Dan Marmor, Erin Belieu, John Goldbach, Fred Marchant, Jaed Coffin, Sarah Braunstein, Alexandra Oliver, Theodore Deppe, Cortright McMeel, Marge Piercy, Maxine Kumin, Madeleine Blais, Lewis Robinson, Tess Gerritsen, Baron Wormser, James Patrick Kelly, Tod Goldberg, Mike Heppner, Michael Kimball and many more.

::The New Guard literary review and High Frequency Press make up the publishing arm of The Writer's Hotel writing conferences. We are back to our in-person conferences! The Writer’s Hotel All-Genre MAINE “Mini MFA” writers conference will be held on Boothbay Harbor at the Spruce Point Inn June 5-11, 2024. Our TWH Maine instructors are TWH 2024 All-Genre Faculty: Chris Abani, Richard Blanco, Maine State Poet Laureate Julia Bouwsma, Susan Conley, Elizabeth Hand, Elyssa East, Jeffrey Ford, Former Maine Poet Laureate Wesley McNair, Mira Ptacin, Alexandra Oliver, Debra Spark and TWH Directors Shanna McNair and Scott Wolven. Work on your writing with the best of the best! Please visit our sister site at www.writershotel.com for more details. Pitch one-on-one to agents, attend workshops, and much, much more. TWH also offers private study via Workroom, book doctoring and book to film work.::