The storySouth Million Writers Award

updated 7-09-11

The winners of the 2011 storySouth Million Writers Award are:

The prizes for this year's award are:

  • First place: $600 plus the $100 gift certificate from ThinkGeek
  • Runner-up: $200
  • Honorable mention/third place: $100

Top Ten Judges

This year two judges picked the top ten stories from the 158 notable stories. The judges were D. Antwan Stewart and Jason Sanford.

D. Antwan Stewart is the author of The Terribly Beautiful (2006) and Sotto Voce (2008), both Editor's Choice Selections in the Main Street Rag Poetry Chapbook Series. Recent poems appear in The Best Gay Poetry 2008, Callaloo, Meridian, Many Mountains Moving, Verse Daily and others. He is an assistant editor for the online poetry journal Anti- and lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he waits tables while working on his first full-length poetry manuscript.

In addition to running the Million Writers Award, Jason Sanford is the author of a number of short stories, essays, and articles. Many of his short stories have been published in the British SF magazine Interzone, which devoted a special issue to his fiction in December 2010. His fiction has also been published in Year's Best SF 14 , Analog, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, The Mississippi Review, Diagram, Pindeldyboz, and other places. Jason's new short story collection is titled Never Never Stories.

Overview on the Million Writers Award

For background information on the award, please see Jason's introduction to the award and the award rules. The award is for any fictional short story of at least a 1,000 words first published in an online publication during 2010. "Publication" means any magazine or journal with an editorial process (so self-published stories are not eligible).

The deadline for nominations was March 15, 2011. The list of notable stories of the year was released on April 17, 2011, and the top ten stories were released on June 6. Voting on the top stories of the year will last for one month after the top ten stories are released.

$1000 in cash and prizes!

Thanks to our wonderful donors, we've now raised $1000 dollars in cash and prizes for the winners of this year's award. Thanks to everyone who donated. We literally couldn't have done it without you.

The donations break down into $900 in cash prizes plus a $100 gift certificate from ThinkGeek. The specific prizes for this year's award are:

  • First place: $600 plus the $100 gift certificate from ThinkGeek
  • Runner-up: $200
  • Honorable mention/third place: $100

If anyone still wants to donate a few dollars, feel free to do so. Because these donations do not go through Spring Garden Press (storySouth's publisher), donations are not tax deductible. But please note the entire donated amount is used for prize money, minus the small fee PayPal deducts for transmitting the money.

Again, many thanks to everyone who donated for this year's award. You are amazing! The current list of donors is at the bottom of this page.

Quick links to 2011 Million Writers Award

Previous Million Writers Awards

Current 2011 Donors

$100 donations

$75 donations

  • One anonymous donation

$50 donations

$20-49 donations

Other donations

For additional questions or inquiries about the Million Writers Award, contact storySouth founding editor Jason Sanford at lapthai@yahoo.com. For general updates about the award, be sure to check out Jason's website and his Twitter account.