Editorial Transparency & Fairness
Additional Contest Details, Policy + Disclaimers
The inaugural $3000 Strange Pilgrims Prize for Story of the Year & Essay of the Year is now open for reduced fee early bird entries!
A little background on contests + lit mags
The marriage of literary contests and literary magazines happened a long time ago, likely before you or I were ever born, probably around when our own grandparents found each other. The most basic reason for this was and remains is: funding. Funding for the arts has always been precarious (particularly in North America), but it’s only gotten worse over the decades. And most often, when there is funding available, it gets scooped up by non-profit (even if well-meaning) organizations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars who pay incredible salaries to their grant writers for this very purpose. For example, and saying this without any shade whatsoever, organizations like CLMP and Poets & Writers have received huge sums of governmental grants funding which they can then decide to distribute and allocate to other lit mags and orgs as they choose to. Over the past several decades, some of the magazines that have consistently received funding from these bigger conglomerates are places like…The Paris Review, Granta, and Narrative Magazine.
For newer mags, then, or even just for any mags that aren’t as big as these aforementioned ones, getting arts funding is extremely difficult if not virtually impossible. This has been the primary reason, then, that lit mags hold contests that charge some kind of reading fee. Such contests allow for:
Fundraising for the lit mag’s annual budgeting needs
Potentially expanding offerings and projects the lit mag and its staff can undertake
Recognizing and creating exciting opportunities for writers
Helping promote and platform writers and their careers
In recent times, places like Patreon, Kickstarter, and of course, Substack have stepped in to allow for creative and innovative ways for artists and the projects they create to be backed and supported directly by their audience, and the best platforms (like Substack) also allow for expanding that audience right on the platform itself.
Now, there are many ways a contest can go wrong. As a part of the Chill Subs team, we vet and review many mags and writing opportunities and contests on a near-daily basis. So ensuring that our own contests are scam-and-slime free is of utmost importance to us.
Strange Pilgrims Transparency & Fairness
We take contest ethics seriously. All judging is blind, and every piece is read by a human (it’s sad we even need to say this). Final decisions are made with care.
We also maintain a strict conflict of interest policy: we do not consider work from friends, students, or colleagues.
All winning pieces are published in Strange Pilgrims, and prize amounts are paid promptly upon publication. All our winners (& often finalists) will be nominated for prizes like the Pushcart, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, Best SFF, Best Spiritual Literature, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American/Canadian anthologies and the O. Henry Prize wherever applicable.
Curtis Brown is our our partner, not our sponsor: they run the agent conversations and offer the free course, they don’t pay for the prize, and the final call on winners is ours alone.
We believe contests should sustain a magazine, not exploit its writers. As an independent, ad-free, reader-supported publication, entry fees are one of the ways we fund our prizes and cover the costs of paying contributors, keeping the magazine and our newsletter alive, and supporting the editorial labor that makes the magazine possible. That said, we’re writers ourselves, and we know how tough fees can feel, and accessibility matters.
On that note, here’s how we handle fee waivers: generous entrants sometimes choose to cover the cost of another writer’s entry. Those sponsored spots go into a small pool of waivers. If you’re in real financial need, you’re welcome to email us to ask if one is available. If it is, we’ll happily honor it; if not, we’ll be transparent that the pool has run dry until more support comes in.
If you’re in a position to sponsor another writer’s entry, please consider it. This collective approach allows us to extend waivers where they’re most needed while still keeping the magazine sustainable.
We also include a 3-month Strange Pilgrims Membership for each entry. Submitting should connect you with resources and community, not just the contest. After you submit, we’ll send you details on how to claim this comp.
Disclaimer
Please read all guidelines carefully before submitting. We’ve worked hard to make the process for this award transparent—outlining the submission period, reading stages, selection process, timeline, and when you can expect results and publication of winners.
We will ALWAYS choose winners. As writers and submitters ourselves, we don’t take your trust for granted. At the same time, please note that we cannot issue refunds for submissions once they are made.
If you have questions about the process, you are welcome to email us. We ask that all queries remain professional and respectful—there are people behind this screen, and many common questions are already answered in the guidelines above. Most of all, we value kindness and community, and we’re always glad to hear from our readers and submitters.
Curtis Brown/UTA Partnership
The free course has to be one on Curtis Brown Creative’s course page — it can’t be put toward anything that isn’t listed on this web page. The course must be redeemed within 12 months of the award, and it cannot be exchanged for cash.
A one-on-one agent conversation is included in the prize. After this, any further communication will happen at the agent and writer’s discretion and we will not be involved in facilitating anything further.
The specific agents we’ll be working with include but are not limited to: Lily Kovacs, Liv Bignold, Ciara Finan, Rachel Goldblatt, Rosie Pierce, Flo Sanderson, Elizabeth Milne and Clare Conville.
Entering or winning this contest does not guarantee representation. All finalists get read by a professional and experience Curtis. Brown/UTA literary agent, and if one wants to take a writer further, that means a full submission package — manuscript pages plus a synopsis and cover letter, and your work would be placed at the top of of their consideration cycle.
