River Styx, the thirty-five-year-old literary and arts journal, is running its fourth annual short short story contest with a prize of fifteen hundred dollars and a case of Schlafly beer. The Saint Louis–based microbrewery is cosponsoring the competition, which invites fiction writers to submit up to three stories of no more than five hundred words each. The winning work will be published in River Styx.
The 2009 winner, selected from more than five hundred submissions, is Amina Gautier for her story "Minnow." The second- and third-place winners, respectively, are Rose Bunch for "Season" and Gerry Canavan for "When We're Gone." Honorable mentions went to Avni Vyas for "Cartography," Lisa Nikolidakis for "Misplaced," Fred Venturini for "Punches," and Gary Leising for "Enter Fortinbras."
This year's deadline for entries is December 31, and all entrants will receive a one-year subscription to the journal.