 | Hello Uncharted readers and writers,
We take such joy in finding and publishing the most entertaining and thought-provoking genre stories and novel excerpts each year, and we know 2026 will be another standout in our history as a literary magazine. We know this because you as writers not only continue to submit to our industry-leading, prize-awarding contests and challenges, but you’ve also flocked to our always-free, always-open regular queue. It’s an honor to read your stories and to present the best of the best to our readers each week.
We hope that our contest and challenge calendar is full of inspiring prompts and submission opportunities. We’ve already opened our first contest, one of my favorites, the Cinematic Short Story contest, judged this year by Ananda Lima. Her book of short fiction, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Tor Books, 2024), can be found in bookstores nationwide!
Next is a new one for our noir writers (including crime, mystery, thriller, and atmospheric horror stories) to submit work that uses shadows, the juxtaposition of law and crime, and lurking antagonists. We will return with our ever-popular novel excerpt prizes, with two opportunities to showcase your book excerpt to thousands of readers. We’re adding more opportunities for our writers to learn from seasoned agents on how to make their pitches irresistible; and we’re trying out a Summer Camp theme challenge and much more!
We love genre stories for their bursts of creativity, inspired world-building, and the chance to escape reality. I hope that readers find all of this and more in the work we publish, and I hope that writers find ways to sink even deeper into their storytelling, to take risks, and to experiment with form and structure. We’re here to read your writing and to publish it to the best of our abilities!
Tommy Dean, Editor in Chief |  | NOW OPEN:Guest Judge: Ananda Lima DEADLINE: 3/8/26 |
| We invite writers to submit to the second Uncharted Magazine Cinematic Short Story Contest from January 05 to March 08, 2026. This award is for all of our genres: Science Fiction/Fantasy, Thriller/Mystery (Horror), Young Adult, Historical Fiction, and Humor stories.
Guest Judge Ananda Lima will choose three winning stories from our shortlist. We’re excited to offer the first-place winner of this contest $2,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively.
For this short story contest, we want to read your most cinematic stories! We want stories we can clearly visualize, that make us feel as if we’re there in the moment, and that engage all our senses. We want worlds that pop into our minds, characters who are fully articulated and intent on breaking their rituals. We want stories with vitality and velocity that rely on swift cuts of action and reaction.
Consider crafting your story around the most important moments in your character’s life, and fully engage us in this story. Think of the opposites of shadow and light, and the gray areas in-between, and write the stories we can’t look away from. We especially love stories that incorporate elements from multiple genres, so consider how these combined tropes might enhance your story. We’re drawn to stories that leverage their conflicts to create tension and resonance. | | | Need a reminder to submit? Add the deadline to your calendar: |
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Ananda Lima is the author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Tor Books, 2024) and Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers and Program Curator at StoryStudio, Chicago. Lima was named to Newcity’s 2025 Lit 50 list, which recognizes influential people and organizations shaping Chicago’s literary culture. She was a mentor at the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program and the inaugural Latinx-in-Publishing WIP Fellow, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers. She has an MA in Linguistics (UCLA) and an MFA in Creative Writing (Rutgers-Newark). Craft, her fiction debut, was longlisted for the Story Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal. The New York Times describes it as “a remarkable debut that announces the arrival of a towering talent in speculative fiction.” | | |
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| | Ash Vale (they/them) is a queer, non-binary Canadian writer who has an affinity for teeth and weird little guys in the woods. Their short fiction and poetry has been or will soon be published in places like Nightmare Magazine, PseudoPod, Heartlines Spec, and more. They’re also one of the co-founders of Otherside Spec, a queer-led speculative fiction magazine for 2SLGBTQIA+ authors, poets, and artists. | | |
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| | Sophia Zhao is a fiction writer whose work has appeared in The Colored Lens, Factor Four Magazine, and The Lorelei Signal, among others. Born and raised in New York City, Sophia has failed to obtain her driver's license. | | |
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| | Thea Liu (she/her) is a Taiwanese fantasy and horror writer. Her short fiction has been published in Uncharted, Factor Four Magazine, and more. She lives in Taipei with her two cats, neither of which understand (or care) that she would prefer to have both hands free so she can write more efficiently. | | |
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Be wary of openings that are static or overdone such as waking up, talking on the phone, driving alone, or getting on an airplane. |
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