We invite writers to submit to the 2026 Uncharted Reprint Prize from September 01 to September 30, 2026. 

We want to celebrate the stories that may have gotten lost in the shuffle or are stuck in the limbo of shuttered literary magazines! We know that excellent and exciting stories are published every day, but no one can keep up with them all. This contest is an opportunity for these stories to reach new readers and to live on in excellence on our website. We want to bring light to those lost pieces—the stories that you love but feel are no longer receiving the attention or recognition they deserve.

This award is for all of our genres: Science Fiction/Fantasy, Thriller/Mystery/Horror, Young Adult, and Dystopian. 

The Uncharted team of readers and editors will choose the three winning stories from our shortlist. We’re excited to offer the first-place winner of this contest $1,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively.

GUIDELINES

• The deadline for entry is September 30, 2026. We will announce the shortlist within 12–14 weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are in.
• Your $20 reading fee allows ONE short story or novel excerpt of 1,001–5,000 words per entry.
• We encourage multiple submissions—each story should be a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
• Please submit short stories or novel excerpts—5,000 word count maximum.
• Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us immediately and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
• All entries will also be considered for publication in Uncharted.
• Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
• Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable).
• Please include a content warning to help safeguard our staff (if applicable).
• We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
• Please tell us where this piece was originally published. We will credit them if we decide to publish your work.
• Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.

Some Submittable Hot Tips:

• Please be sure to whitelist/add to contacts this email address so notifications do not get filtered as spam/junk: notifications@email.submittable.com.
• If you realize you sent the wrong version of your piece: It happens. Please DO NOT withdraw the piece and resubmit. Submittable collects a nonrefundable fee each time. Please DO message us from within the submission to request that we open the entry for editing, which will allow you to fix everything from typos in your cover letter to uploading a new draft. The only time we will not allow a change is if the piece is already under review by a reader.

OPTIONAL FEEDBACK ON YOUR WRITING 

You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide two-page global letters discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Uncharted. A significant portion of the editorial letter fees goes to our feedback editor. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.

At Uncharted, we want to help you achieve your publishing goals, and one way we can do that is to offer intuitive and precise feedback on your short story or novel excerpt. We’ve got talented, experienced guest editors, and you’ve got an almost-ready project, so let’s work together to get your piece submission-ready! 

We’re speeding up the process and will get feedback to you within 4-6 weeks of your submission. And you can use your revision suggestions to hone your craft and fix up your piece in order to submit it to our always open, always free genre categories or even one of our contests! You don’t have to wonder if your work is ready when we’ve got writing pros to help you with actionable advice and suggestions to make your work shine!

For this event, we will not consider these pieces for publication. This is for feedback only. We will consider both short stories and novel excerpts. We will provide two-page global letters discussing the writing's strengths and recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Uncharted. A significant portion of the editorial letter fees goes to our feedback editor.

For this event, we’re thrilled to partner with Literistic. Every registrant will receive a free two-month trial for Literistic. (Note that trials do not stack and are not available to current Literistic subscribers.)

Guidelines:

• The Feedback Frenzy is open to all prose writers.
• Please send fiction only.
• We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed. 
• Note that work that has received editorial feedback from Uncharted is not eligible for submission to our contests.
• Your $69 registration fee allows ONE short story or novel excerpt of 1,001–5,000 words per entry. 
• We encourage multiple submissions—each story or novel excerpt should be a separate submission with its own registration fee. 
• Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
• Please include a brief cover letter with what areas you’d like our editors to focus on when giving their feedback on your piece. 
• We do not consider or review AI-generated or AI-assisted work.
• We strongly discourage simultaneous submissions in conjunction with editorial feedback. If your piece is already under review by our team and you withdraw it, we will not be able to offer a refund. If you withdraw your piece before we have begun feedback, we will be happy to let you substitute another piece.
• Please include a content warning to help safeguard our staff (if applicable).

EVENT PARTNER:

Literistic helps writers find, filter, and track submission opportunities without getting overwhelmed by endless lists of deadlines. Each month, the Literistic team curates a focused list of worthwhile contests, publications, residencies, fellowships, and other opportunities, while the new Literistic portal will let you search and personalize results based on your genre and goals. Write more, search less.

EDITORIAL FEEDBACK TEAM:

B. B. GARIN is a writer living in Buffalo, New York. Her echapbook, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. Her work has appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Palooka, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, and more. She is currently a prose reader and blog contributor for The Masters Review. She continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels. Connect with her online @bb_garin.

ELIANA GRUVMAN is a passionate reader, editor, and writer. She graduated from Fordham University with a degree in English and Spanish language and literature. She is currently a flash fiction editorial assistant at CRAFT and previously interned for Gallery Books at Simon & Schuster and for Ladderbird Literary Agency. Her work has been published on Fordham’s platforms—the Ampersand, MODE Magazine, Bricolage, and RELISH—and has been performed by Free Pizza Sketch Comedy.

JUSTINE PAYTON is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where she is a recipient of the Philip Gerard Graduate Fellowship and the Bernice Kert Fellowship in Creative Writing. She has been published or has work forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, Isele Magazine, The Masters Review, The Keeping Room, and others. She is currently the managing editor of ONLY POEMS, an editor for Ecotone, and an editorial intern with Tin House. Find her on Instagram @just_a_rose4.

GAGE SAYLOR is the assistant director of creative writing at Oklahoma State University. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Passages North, Tampa Review, Crab Creek Review, Iron Horse, and elsewhere. He has won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize at Nimrod and is a previous semifinalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize at North American Review. He received his MFA at McNeese State University, where he was awarded the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction.

CAROLJEAN GAVIN  has published in places such as 7×7, Milk Candy Review, Barrelhouse, New World Writing, Fractured Lit, and Best Small Fictions 2021. She’s the editor of What I Thought of Ain’t Funny, an anthology of short fiction based on the jokes of Mitch Hedberg published by Malarkey Books. She’s the author of the short creative nonfiction, Caught in the Throat (Alien Buddha Press)  and a collection of short stories, Magical Objects forthcoming from ELJ. She has also read and edited for Pithead Chapel, Split/Lip Press, Best of the Net, and Clarion West’s Six Week Workshops. Her website is. She’s still on Twitter @caroljeangavin

DANIELLE STONEHIRSCH holds a B.A. in English Literature with a focus on creative writing. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in many online journals and print magazines as well as in anthologies Reflections, This Is What America Looks Like, Roar: True Tales of Women Warriors, and Grace and Gravity: Grace in Love. She was Pushcart Prize nominee of 2021.

DEIRDRE DANKLIN holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins University. Her novella, Catastrophe, won the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Her flash fiction chapbook, How to Start a Coven, is available from Variant Lit. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, son, and two cats.

Uncharted Magazine is excited to introduce a new submission category for publication in our magazine. Dystopian: We’re looking for stories that show us a future fueled by the cracks in society, that place characters in the middle of the collapse, that capture the unique challenges of a failing government, where survival is at stake, and where characters don’t know who they can trust. We want stories where the dystopian setting places your characters under extreme stress. But don’t leave out the possibilities of redemption, of finding the light in the dark, of characters triumphing in an unpredictable near future. 

Guidelines:  All fiction categories are open year round and we do not charge any submission fees. We accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you inform us immediately and withdraw your work if your story is accepted elsewhere.  

Payment: We pay our authors $200 for original fiction! We pay by check or PayPal, according to the author's preference. 

Word Count: Submitted stories should be between 1,000-5,000 words.  We will also consider previously published fiction, as long as the writer retains the rights or second-publication rights can be obtained. We do not pay for reprints. Writers may submit 1 story per submission. Please wait 1 month after our initial reply before submitting again. 

Cover letters: Cover letters are optional, but it's nice to know who is submitting to us. We do not need your mailing address.  Please refrain from describing your stories. The work needs to speak for itself. Including the title and word count of each story is helpful for more efficient consideration of your work. Please include a brief third-person biography statement. If necessary, please include a content warning to help protect our readers.  

Format: double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 pt font. Word docs work best! 

Response Times: Please allow us up to three months to inform you if we have accepted your work for publication. You will usually hear from us much sooner. We cannot offer personalized feedback on each story. If we say, “send more,” however, it does mean that we hope to see something else from you. We consider submissions sent via Submittable. We are not open to email submissions and are not open to submissions sent via post. 

Diversity Statement: We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason. We reserve the right not to publish works that dwell unnecessarily in or that are unchallenging of the discrimination categories listed above. We reserve the right to send back work unread and unevaluated if we find the work violates our vision of inclusivity and non-discrimination. This may result in banning individual works or writers from our submission queue. 

Rights: Uncharted Magazine holds first serial publication rights for three months after publication. Authors agree not to publish, nor authorize or permit the publication of, any part of the material for three months following Uncharted Magazine's first publication. For reprints, we ask for acknowledgment of its publication in Uncharted Magazine first. 

Courtesy: Please refrain from withdrawing your submission to fix a typo or misspelling. These minor issues will not result in an automatic decline. We read submissions based on the value of the story, not the typing.   

OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:    You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. We aim to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Uncharted Magazine.

Uncharted Magazine publishes Thriller/Mystery Short Stories from fiction writers of any background or experience. We are rolling horror stories into this category! We want stories that keep us up at night, afraid to turn the corner. Stories that take us into the resonant fear of looming monsters and haunting ghosts. We want stories that thrill us by keeping us on the edges of our seats, hearts pounding, wondering how it will end! Stories with characters who refuse to stay in the shadows! We want stories of mystery that make us search for answers, for reasons, for the things that happen in the shadows.
Guidelines:
All fiction categories are open year round and we do not charge any submission fees. We accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you inform us immediately and withdraw your work if your story is accepted elsewhere.
Payment: We pay our authors $200 for original fiction! We pay by check or PayPal, according to the author's preference.
Word Count: Submitted stories should be between 1,000-5,000 words.
We will also consider previously published fiction, as long as the writer retains the rights or second-publication rights can be obtained. We do not pay for reprints.
Writers may submit one story per submission. Please wait one month after our initial reply before submitting again.
Cover letters: Cover letters are optional, but it's nice to know who is submitting to us. We do not need your mailing address.  Please refrain from describing your stories. The work needs to speak for itself. Including each story's title and word count is helpful for more efficient consideration of your work. Please include a brief third-person biography statement. If necessary, please include a content warning to help protect our readers.
Format: double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 pt font. Word docs work best!
Response Times: Please allow us up to three months to inform you if we have accepted your work for publication. You will usually hear from us much sooner. We cannot offer personalized feedback on each story. If we say, “Send more,” however, it does mean that we hope to see something else from you.
We consider submissions sent via Submittable. We are not open to email submissions and are not open to submissions sent via post.
Diversity Statement: We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason. We reserve the right not to publish works that dwell unnecessarily in or that are unchallenging of the discrimination categories listed above. We reserve the right to send back work unread and unevaluated if we find the work violates our vision of inclusivity and non-discrimination. This may result in banning individual works or writers from our submission queue.
Rights: Uncharted Magazine holds the first serial publication rights for three months after publication. Authors agree not to publish, nor authorize or permit the publication of, any part of the material for three months following Uncharted Magazine's first publication. For reprints, we ask for acknowledgment of its publication in Uncharted Magazine first.
Courtesy: Please refrain from withdrawing your submission to fix a typo or misspelling. These minor issues will not result in an automatic decline. We read submissions based on the value of the story, not the typing.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. We aim to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Uncharted Magazine.

Uncharted is looking to add some talented new readers to our team! If you love the following genres:  Science Fiction/Fantasy, Thriller/Mystery, and Historical Fiction or experience across a wide spectrum of these genres., and three to four hours of reading submissions a week sounds like fun, we encourage you to apply. Our readers work remotely and can set their own schedules. BIPOC, marginalized or underrepresented writers are strongly encouraged to apply!

This position begins when accepted and involves a commitment for 6 months, though we are flexible. PLEASE NOTE: readerships are unpaid and on a strictly volunteer basis. If interested, please send a cover letter, resume, and at least one writing sample. We look forward to hearing from you!

*Cover letters should address your interest in the above genres, including favorite stories and/or writers. Please include any memberships.