Registration for The 2024 1K Word Herd Competition is now open!
Registration for the 1,000 Word Herd Flash Fiction Competition is now open! Sign up through Eventbrite to participate in this week-long flash fiction competition, with $150 top prize and a total prize pool worth $500 for the top 25 placing stories!
You can register
Registration costs £5 or $7 USD to register + tax/fees.
Each entrant will receive 2 individual prompts at the beginning of the competition: A character and an object/situation. There are no genre restrictions. Each entrant must create a 1,000-word original flash fiction story by the end of the competition and submit.
We are proud to offer each entrant guaranteed feedback on their story from their assigned judges. Offering writers a chance for feedback is one of the Press’ core missions, along with our philanthropic mission to create anthologies to benefit charities. This means we have to limit the spots available, so only 300 spots are available. First come, first serve!
The top 25 stories will also be included in an e-book collection, the proceeds of which will be donated to Trans LIfeline, a grassroots hotline and microgrants 501(c)(3) non-profit organization offering direct emotional and financial support to trans people in crisis – for the trans community, by the trans community.
The competition begins at 12:01 am (eastern) on Saturday 20th and ends at 11.59 pm on Friday, April 26 2024. Registrations will close at 11:59 pm, April 14th.
You can find all of our rules and regulations on our website here.
Get to know the Judges!
Callum Rowland
Callum is a fiction writer, and co-founder of TL;DR Press. He writes across all genres; though science fiction, fantasy, and horror are closest to his heart. His short stories have featured in various magazines, anthologies, and zines, including Daily Science Fiction, Fictive Dream, and Bandit Fiction.
He is Director of Charity for TL;DR Press, and has also worked as either a curator or editor on a number of TL;DR releases, most recently as a curator on Growth.
It is also his third year as a judge for the 1kwhc and last time round was often most impressed by stories that found unexpected and inventive ways to utilise the prompts.
Joe Butler
Joe lives and works in London, but dreams of living and working elsewhere. He is the author of two sci fi novels, Of All Possibilities and Strange Days in the House of August. His writing has been featured in Hexagon, Pilcrow & Dagger, Story Bits, Bandit Fiction, New Orbit, Ghost Orchid, Second Chance Lit, and the Found anthology edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull. He can be found on twitter at @writelikeashark and on his website www.writelikeashark.com
He is one of the co-founders of TL;DR Press, and has been involved in all of the collections the press has published as either a curator or an editor as well as the marketing manager and cover artist for eight of the ten currently released collections. He was also one of the judges for the previous 1KWHC competitions, and loves reading stories where the prompts are used in ways you might not expect.
Penfold
Penfold is a writer, software security engineer, and semicolon enthusiast. He is a founding member of TL;DR Press and has served as curator and editor on various anthologies, as well as judge in the previous 1KWHC contests. He lives near Indianapolis with his wife, two kids, and a number of cats as ever-changing as the sea. He is currently writing a collection of stories about the slow-burning insanity of raising an international family in the lawless, feral suburbs of the midwest. His stories have appeared in previous TL;DR Press anthologies, and he can be found and interrogated at www.justpenfold.com or on Twitter at @justpenfold.
Jenna Harvie
Jenna Harvie is a writer, painter, and photographer from Atlantic Canada. She spends her days writing and editing technical documents for a cybersecurity company and her evenings working on her own fiction, editing, and reading anything she can get her hands on. Jenna is currently editing her first horror novel, writing a few more, and she always has a short story or two on the go. Jenna has been editing for TL;DR Press for three years and has worked on five publications. And when that’s not enough, she paints landscapes and abstractions and photographs the beautiful landscape around Nova Scotia.
Visit Jenna’s art gallery online at https://jennaharvie.com/ or find her on Instagram and Twitter with the handle @jennaharvie.
Mia V. Moss
Mia V. Moss is a speculative fiction author from the Pacific Northwest, now living in the SF Bay area. She is the author of the sci-fi noir novella Mai Tais for the Lost. Her short stories have been published in Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse, StarShipSofa, Galactic Stew, and elsewhere. Mia is currently working on an epic fantasy series. When she’s not writing, she DMs tabletop campaigns, wildscapes her yard, and admires her ever-growing TBR pile.
She can be reached at www.magicrobotcarnival.com or on Twitter & Instagram @atomicjackalope.
Hannah Hulbert
Hannah Hulbert is a full-time mum and part-time writer from the south coast of England. She enjoys looking for mushrooms, doing crafts, and drinking tea, especially when she is supposed to be writing.
You can find her stories in Metamorphosis, Hexagon and the anthology Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse, among others. Her story ‘Ruler of Waves, God of Trees’ from Growth (TL;DR Press, 2021), received a Pushcart nomination.
You can find her via her website, https://hannahhulbert.wordpress.com/
The Charity!
This year, we have once again partnered with Trans Lifeline
Here they are in their own words:
Trans Lifeline is a grassroots hotline and microgrants 501(c)(3) non-profit organization offering direct emotional and financial support to trans people in crisis – for the trans community, by the trans community.
So, what are you waiting for? There are only 300 slots open, and we can’t wait to see what you guys come up with this year!