ServiceScape Short Story Award 2025

Calling all short story writers: Are you a short story writer interested in gaining more exposure and a bigger audience for your creative work? Would an extra $1,000.00 USD in your pocket be a great thing right now?

If so, our ServiceScape Short Story Award is the perfect way to achieve both. For this award, any genre or theme of short story is accepted. All applicants should submit their original unpublished work of short fiction or nonfiction, 5,000 words or fewer, to be considered. Along with receiving an award for $1,000.00 USD, the winner will have his or her short story featured within our blog, which reaches thousands of readers per month. Rules and exclusions apply.

View the winners from previous years

Terms and Conditions

  • All submitted entries must be original, unpublished works of short fiction or nonfiction, up to 5,000 words in length. The winner retains full rights to his or her submitted piece. We require only that the winning short story be published online first in a permanent blog post on the ServiceScape.com site. The winner retains all other copyright, publishing, and reprint rights and ownership of the story. He or she retains the right to publish his or her work elsewhere and at any time without restriction after the competition is over, as long as the winning short story can remain published on the ServiceScape.com blog as well.
  • In order to qualify as a contest participant, a person must successfully submit the application form below and must be at least 18 years old. ServiceScape is not responsible for any situation that constitutes an application form submission failure, including technical malfunctions experienced by the form submitter or by ServiceScape. ServiceScape employees and/or their immediate family and household members are not eligible to be contest participants. There is no purchase necessary to enter. Void where prohibited by law.
  • Each contest participant can enter only once.
  • Contest participants' application form submissions must be written in English.
  • The contest starts on and ends on .
  • Contest participants will be judged on their quality of writing. All decisions are final. Non-winning entries will be discarded after the winner has been chosen and the contest participants will retain all the rights to their submitted work.
  • The potential winner will be notified via email in December 2025. The potential winner must send a headshot photograph within 10 days of the prize notification. The potential winner must also sign and return an affidavit of eligibility, a liability release, and a publicity release (where legal) within 10 days of the prize notification. If the potential winner does not deliver these required items within the specified time period or if the potential winner cannot be contacted for any reason, the prize will be forfeited and an alternate potential winner will be selected. If all required items are delivered within 10 days of the prize notification, the potential winner will be considered the winner of the contest.
  • The winner of the contest will be awarded $1,000.00 USD, payable by check and mailed within 4 weeks. The prize is non-transferable. All federal, state, and local taxes imposed on the acceptance of a prize are solely the responsibility of the winner. The winner's name, headshot photograph, and writing will be featured within the ServiceScape blog soon thereafter.
  • ServiceScape Incorporated reserves the right to modify or terminate this contest at any time without prior notice.

Application Form