A biannual blast of short fiction, non-fiction and poetry: exciting new work from fresh literary talent. Publishes in winter and summer.
To order copies: https://shooterlitmag.com/subscriptions. Submission guidelines: http://shooterlitmag.com/submissions. You can also follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ShooterLitMag.
A platonic friendship runs its course in Corinne Whiting's "Friends First", our winning piece of flash nonfiction for August: https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/08/19/shooter-flash-friends-first/
People always asked why we weren’t together. Some were genuinely perplexed that two people with our spiritual chemistry took things no farther than friendship. Others needled, certain that we secre…
*The August Shooter Flash winner will be posted next Monday due to holidays!*
In the meantime, submissions remain open for next month's flash comp... Both fiction & non-fiction welcome, up to 1K words max https://shooterlitmag.com/shooter-flash/
Shooter Flash spotlights bitesize brilliance with one winning story each month, which we publish online (plus in an annual anthology – see link below). As the magazine asks for prose longer than 2,…
Shooter Flash is open for the September competition! Fiction and nonfiction tales up to 1K words welcome. As a bonus, all entrants receive a copy of the 2023 flash anthology.
Guidelines: https://shooterlitmag.com/shooter-flash
Shooter Flash spotlights bitesize brilliance with one winning story each month, which we publish online (plus in an annual anthology – see link below). As the magazine asks for prose longer than 2,…
*The 2024 Shooter Short Story Competition is now open!*
Deadline: Oct 20th. Any genre/theme, up to 5K words long. £500 prize pot and publication in print + online. All entrants receive an e-copy of the A/W issue featuring the winning story.
Guidelines: https://shooterlitmag.com/competition/
A martial arts master's body-bending turns mind-bending in "Teenage Kicks", Billy Craven's winning Shooter Flash for July: https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/07/08/teenage-kicks/
When we were young, there was a man in our town named Shotokan. He was pale and balding and sported a ponytail that was at once tragic and defiant. More importantly, he could dodge bullets. Growing…
The winners of our annual Poetry Competition are Maryah Converse and Anna Mindel Crawford - congrats to them for their powerful and timely work! Read both poems via Shooter's website...
https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/07/02/poetry-comp-winners/
The winners of the 2024 Shooter Poetry Competition share a sense of political and social injustice – one on a global scale, one at the personal level. Maryah Converse won the competition with & #822…
Leonard Cohen, Buddha, beef, maths and more in Jet McDonald's winning Shooter Flash for June, "Death of a Ladle Man": https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/06/10/death-of-a-ladle-man/
Food had an algebraic quality in the prison canteen and Big Beef’s ladle was a large part of the equation. X + ladle = Y Where X was the most delicious part of any given meal and Y was the complete…
Riptides pull between a father and his daughter in Jon Fain's winning Shooter Flash for May, "Almost to the Point":
https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/05/13/shooter-flash-almost-to-the-point/
After an early dinner on their last night in Provincetown, Rob and his daughter Mandy walked to the beach. Light reflected off the water, dappling the waves, and glimmered past a slow-moving boat, …
It's Free Verse poetry fair day! Come over to St Columba's in SW1 between 11:30am-6:30pm to meet a slew of poetry editors/publishers, including us! There will be sweets
The new kid meets his match in S L Krutzig's "Drive", our winning Shooter Flash for April: https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/04/09/shooter-flash-drive/
The truck was Soda Pete’s pride and joy, pistol-silver and not a mark on it. He’d drive it three miles an hour round the high-school parking lot, engine growling so deeply you’d think it might poun…
The winning Shooter Flash for March, "The Power of Five" by Natalie Horner, risks the consequences of deviation from the OCD script...
https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/03/11/the-power-of-five/
If I don’t flick this light switch on five times, a member of my family will die. Five of us in total, one flick per person. I don’t like odd numbers. If I flick the switch five more times that wil…
Shooter will be at the Poetry Society's "Free Verse" fair on April 20th in London - come and meet all the poetry publishers in attendance, including us! We'll be dispensing inside info about upcoming themes, new projects, and discounted copies of the magazine.
*The 2024 Shooter Poetry Competition is open to entries!*
Any style/subject, up to 100 lines max. Winner receives £150 and publication in print + online; runner-up wins £50 and online publication.
Guidelines at https://shooterlitmag.com/poetry-competition
The temperature rises fast in Dana Harris's "Extramarital", our winning Shooter Flash for February: https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/02/19/shooter-flash-extramarital/
They were sitting around the patio table beneath the fawning summer trees: Phil, his wife Manda, and her lover Dom Traynor, who had come over for dinner while his wife was away. Manda had prepared …
Submissions now open for our Spring/Summer issue!
https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/02/05/the-nightlife-issue/
General submissions are now open for Shooter’s Spring/Summer 2024 issue, themed “Nightlife”. Writers should send short stories and non-fiction of 2,000-6,000 words and/or up to th…
Our gorgeous 17th issue, themed The Unknown, is out now!
https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/01/17/issue-17-the-unknown/
The theme of our seventeenth issue, “The Unknown”, enticed writers to contemplate strangeness and difference of all kinds: in travel and identity, race and sexuality, religion and history. The broa…
Our first winning Shooter Flash of the year is a rare nonfiction piece: "Sabbath" by Rebecca Klassen
https://shooterlitmag.com/2024/01/08/shooter-flash-sabbath/
Mum called it Su***de Sunday and had done so since she was a girl. ‘A day so boring you wanted to kill yourself,’ she told me. I wondered if other parents said similar things to their teenage…
The 2023 Shooter Short Story Competition results are in!
Eerie tales by winner Alice Gwynn and runner-up Edward Barnfield are available to read on Shooter's website, plus honourable mentions go to writers Bethany Wren and Joe Wheelan.
https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/12/14/2023-story-comp-winners/
Alice Gwynn has won the 2023 Shooter Short Story Competition with her eerie, twisting tale, “The Ones Who Came Before”, while Edward Barnfield has come runner-up with his dystopian fiction, “Isolat…
Sarah Macallister weaves a tale of self-delusion in her winning Shooter Flash for December, "A Good Son": https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/12/11/a-good-son/
Peter couldn’t come home for Christmas because his wife dragged him to her family. Susan always played the victim, but she was no wilting flower; she was a parasitic w**d. My son used to be an easy…
Congrats to our 2023 nominees!
Sarah Archer for her story "Ripe" and Elizabeth Tannen for her poem "Contents of a Birth Story...", both in our Spring/Summer "On the Body" issue, plus Shooter Flash winners Edward Barnfield, A. S. Partridge, Sarah Sibley and Johanna Bernhuber, whose work you can read at https://shooterlitmag.com.
Short fiction, non-fiction and poetry
All responses for the Unknown issue have now gone out, and we'll announce the winners of the 2023 Short Story Competition later this month. With more than 800 submissions to the magazine we've had a lot to read!
You can pre-order the Unknown issue at https://shooterlitmag.com/subscriptions/
Shooter publishes two issues a year in spring/summer and autumn/winter. To enjoy exciting new work and support Shooter’s mission of showcasing the best emerging literary talent from around th…
The first day of school carries ominous undercurrents in Johanna Bernhuber's winning Shooter Flash for October, "The Last Day of the Rest of Your Life": https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/10/09/the-last-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life/
It’s the first day of middle school and you’re still in bed. I laid out your clothes for you last night, warm from the dryer and freshly folded. Now, I pour your juice, flip your pancakes, and call…
A wronged wife seeks vengeance at a Cambridge garden party in Elizabeth Vidas's saucy "In the Wake Of", our winning Shooter Flash for September: https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/09/11/in-the-wake-of/
She caught Stan coming out of the bathroom, one hand down his pants as he fumbled with his shirttails. “Stan, come with me,” she said. “I have something to show you in the hydrangeas.” Not the most…
Sarah Sibley breaks down the moments following a riding accident in "Twenty Blinks", August's gripping Shooter Flash winner: https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/08/14/shooter-flash-twenty-blinks/
You feel the rain patter your cheeks and watch the grey clouds sagging above. The stubbled ground jabs into your back. * There is a tearing, crunching sound nearby. You can’t turn your head but re…
A married couple are forced together at sea in Gordon Pinckheard's "Drifting Apart", the winning Shooter Flash for July: https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/07/10/drifting-apart/
You can’t get very far away from each other on a 33-foot sailboat. Graham was sitting in the cockpit, Linda on the foredeck. There were about twenty-five feet between them. They both wanted m…
Our long-awaited Spring/Summer issue, "On the Body", has finally birthed - place an order for one of our most stunning issues at https://shooterlitmag.com/subscriptions, and catch a preview at https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/07/04/on-the-body!
The body is the house that we live in, whether it’s newly built or dilapidated, with sleek modern lines or sagging timbers. People might be content with the houses they inhabit, growing comfortable…
Crystal Fraser zeros in on a midlife moment in May's winning Shooter Flash, the punchy yet subtle "Third Date":
By the time the moths appeared, it was too late. Somewhere, buried in the folds of scratchy wool and inherited cashmere, immune to desiccated lavender and scent-faded cedar balls, eggs had already …
Seduction with a twist in A. S Partridge's winning Shooter Flash story for March, "Gentleman's Relish": https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/03/14/shooter-flash-gentlemans-relish/
Ryan scrolled through his cache of hotties, looking for the girl eating watermelon. He’d accumulated mostly blondes and the golden manes blurred into a comet streak down the screen of his phone. Qu…
A compelling tale of thwarted revenge from Edward Barnfield, "The Torturer's Dog", our Shooter Flash winner for February: https://shooterlitmag.com/2023/02/13/shooter-flash-the-torturers-dog/
“Look at him. Look at him.” Makis points a bony finger to the door, and we watch together as his dog, a dirty grey terrier, circumnavigates the sides of the room to reach us. “Going blind, you se…
Last couple of days to enter December's Shooter Flash! Then, a few weeks later, we'll publish our first anthology of flash winners, which will go out free to subscribers. It will also be available to download via the website. https://shooterlitmag.com/shooter-flash/
Shooter Flash spotlights bitesize brilliance with one winning story each month, which we publish online (plus in an annual anthology) and trumpet on social media. As the magazine asks for prose of …
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For submission guidelines, subscriptions and more, please visit Shooter’s website at http://shooterlitmag.com. You can also follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ShooterLitMag.
