Our Novel Excerpt Contest is back!

Guest Judge Chinelo Okparanta will select three finalists. The first place winner receives $3,000, online publication, and a one-hour consultation with literary agent Marin Takikawa of The Friedrich Agency.

Learn more: mastersreview.com/novel-excerpt-…

"Start with a character. The character is like a person, but not."

—Lei Wang, "How to Begin a Love Story"
Prize for New Narratives 1st Place

mastersreview.com/prize-for-new-…

Guest Judge Charles Yu: “How to Begin A Love Story” will draw you in with its beguiling voice, and keep you reading with its sense of rhythm. Starting from abstraction and generality, it builds momentum and intrigue with playful, complex tone...

...keeping the reader off-balance and wondering and enjoying. And then the particulars, a story blooming inside the meta-story, the piece working on both levels and in the space in between. I finished it and immediately wanted to read it again.

"There is a story. It may be apocryphal, and if so, you can disabuse us of it now.¹ It’s an age-old story,² a great American story,³ an extraordinary story…⁴"

—Annie Bartos, "Stories and Stakes in a Noisy Democracy"
Prize for New Narratives 2nd Place

mastersreview.com/prize-for-new-…

Guest Judge Charles Yu: “Stories and Stakes in a Noisy Democracy” is a witty, engaging, and ingenious piece. The writer pulls off the difficult feat of writing something of import and meaning, something that manages to be weighty and yet not at all self-serious."

More: "It is full of surprises and pleasures, macro- and micro-, a piece of history and commentary and entertainment that works conceptually, structurally, and visually."

"Thank you for contacting the Global Environmental Support Hotline.

Due to increased ticket volume, response times may be delayed."

—Deahna Fumarol, "Global Environmental Support Hotline"
Prize for New Narratives 3rd Place

mastersreview.com/new-narratives…

Guest Judge Charles Yu: "Global Environmental Support Hotline” is evocative and well-paced, slowly accumulating details to build not just a chilling narrative but an implied world.

More from Yu: I was impressed with its economy and inventiveness, its restraint and patience. The calibrated tone and diction enhance its drama and effectiveness.

"Right, but the lesson for a children's fairy tale about fear shouldn't be 'I should've had more fear.'"

"Yes, I agree it shouldn't be. Leave as is."

—Tomiko Breland, "The Fox and the Tree and the Thunder"
Prize for New Narratives Honorable Mention

mastersreview.com/prize-for-new-…

I lived increasingly at the bottom of my sorrow. I didn’t feel ready to do anything. I didn’t trust any of these doctors. I didn’t trust myself.

—Ioana Barbulescu, "Cut Off"
mastersreview.com/new-voices-cut…

"The drive was dark, coils of smoke in the road. He couldn’t see much. Electricity was still out. No light at all, but licks of fire here and there, and vehicles in far hills."

—Carol Keeley, "Wind and Embers"
Winter Short Story Award 1st Place

...of its protagonist’s psychological position: that mix of pride and shame that has him stubbornly unable to change even as he’s more than emotionally perceptive enough to know just what a mess he’s intermittently made of his life. 2/x

The story’s masterful as well at evoking the love and compassion that he mostly only communicates through his rituals of both care and what he imagines to be a kind of deference. 3/3

"When the women on the island started changing, people at first called it a mutation."

—Emily Mathis, "When Women Walked on Land"
Winter Short Story Award 2nd Place

mastersreview.com/winter-short-s…

...and the latter’s playfulness its twin protagonists’ mordant acceptance of whatever stunning transformations are going to come down the pike.

More from Jim: Both protagonists have been through a lot, still have some of their compassion intact, and do what they can to accommodate their fellow beings even as they prepare to accept their isolation.

mastersreview.com/winter-short-s…

"The first thing I see through this new head of mine is Jenny’s smiling face, red-nosed and tear-crusted, gazing down at me in the hospital bed."

—Michael Hughes Wesner, "The Big Reboot"
2025-2026 Winter Short Story Award 3rd Place

mastersreview.com/winter-ssa-3rd…

—even as he refuses to confront—just how much pain and disconnect lies beneath his relationship to both his family and the world he’s so deftly satirizing, especially when it comes to his wife.

More from Jim: I choose to read the ending as only an ersatz happiness—as his having decided to will himself into a state of acceptance that the reader cannot entirely celebrate.