Our Fiction Editor, Carrie Lee South, chose “Eyecathers” by Alexander Weinstein as this year’s winning story. Here’s what Carrie had to say about the story: “This chilling and prescient story asks us to consider why we make art, and what concessions were willing to make to live a ‘normal’ life. I was captivated from start to finish.”

Congrats, Alexander! The story will be up in June.

Weinstein is the author of the short story collections Universal Love and Children of the New World, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a best book of the year by NPR and Electric Literature. He is the founder and director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and his fiction has appeared in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Experimental Writing, and many other journals and anthologies. His short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang” was adapted as the film After Yang by A24 Films, and was the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at Sundance, the Boston Society of Film Critics Award, and Barack Obama's Best Films of 2022.

introducing the storybottle co. fiction chapbook contest

We’re excited to open up our first fiction chapbook contest in 2026. At StoryBottle, we’ve always been interested in immersive storytelling regardless of genre—we want the high-brow literary, the pulpy, the strange, and the stories that don’t fit neatly anywhere at all. Now we’re interested in seeing what happens when story gets cracked open just a little wider. Maybe that thing you’ve been carrying around isn’t a story so much as a fiction object: a handful of linked stories, a collection of flash, one strange novelette, or something harder to classify altogether. We’re looking for the same great, weird work we love publishing at StoryBottle, just with more room to breathe. The winner will receive $1,000 and 25 author copies of the perfect-bound chapbook. All entrants will also be considered for publication both as individual stories in StoryBottle online and in print, as well as for future chapbook projects. Send us the thing that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else—we want to see what story can do when the bottle gets a little bigger.

Guidelines:

Deadline: August 15, 2026
Entry Fee: $17
Length: up to 60 pages of fiction
Manuscripts may include any combination of flash fiction, short stories, linked stories, story cycles, or novelettes.
Multiple and simultaneous submissions are fine, but each chapbook must be submitted separately and withdrawn if accepted elsewhere.
Entries must be unpublished in their current manuscript form. Individual stories previously appearing elsewhere are welcome; please include an acknowledgements page listing prior publications.
Don't include your name in the manuscript.
Writers with close personal or professional relationships with the editors are not eligible.

submit

Questions? Contact us here.

Deadline: August 15, 2026

Entry Fee: $17

Length: up to 60 pages of fiction

Manuscripts may include any combination of flash fiction, short stories, linked stories, story cycles, or novelettes.

Multiple and simultaneous submissions are fine, but each chapbook must be submitted separately and withdrawn if accepted elsewhere.

Entries must be unpublished in their current manuscript form. Individual stories previously appearing elsewhere are welcome; please include an acknowledgements page listing prior publications.

Don't include your name in the manuscript.

Writers with close personal or professional relationships with the editors are not eligible.