MAYDAY is excited to announce our 2023 prizes in short fiction, creative nonfiction and micro-chapbook poetry! These are all single work prizes, and submissions will be open from September 1st to November 1st, with an entry fee of $20. MAYDAY will award cash prizes: $500 for first place, $250 for second place, and $100 for […]
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Contest 2023 Season
Open Positions
MAYDAY is hiring for the following positions: Production editor As part of the managing editor’s office, the production editor at MAYDAY is responsible for layout and publishing all MAYDAY content. In addition to a general interest in literary publishing, we will be particularly drawn to applicants with backgrounds/interests in digital journalism and publishing, as well […]
Baba Yaga and the Bird
by Sophie Panzer
Baba Yaga lives deep in the Hudson Valley in a house on chicken legs. She studied sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design back in the ’50s and transformed the stilts holding the home up over her backyard pond. Her lot is surrounded by an ancient fence studded with bleached skulls—deer and squirrel bones […]
Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
This year, we’d like to specially feature our amazing friends at Brilliant Books, who style themselves “your local, long distance bookstore.” Though they feature a brick-and-mortar store in Traverse City, Michigan, Brilliant Books distinguish themselves as being one of the largest independent online book retailers in the country, and a crucial example of success in […]
This Body I Have Tried to Write
by Ja’net Danielo
Who among us hasn’t wanted to kill the sweetest thing?
A Cow Stood In the Field
by Louise Bierig
A cow stood in the field. Amanda didn’t hesitate, but walked right over. She was paying $75 an hour to hug this cow, why hesitate? It would be her first hug in over a year.
Comprehension, If Not Closure: A Conversation with Riley Redgate
by Nathan Winer
Learning to separate your own interests away from those feelings of, “I should be more like this, I should be more like that”—that’s going to be valuable forever. And not just in writing.
When All Your Seeds Fail
by Amanda Roth
Try compost – scraps / piled into a heap. The forgotten things / are begging for another life. Let’s say you could / get the dirt to sing.
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by Simon Perchik
wobbling from some near-by breeze / reaching down as the hillside / where her shadow should be