The Mikrokosmos team is excited to announce our 2024-2025 Mikrokosmos Fiction and Poetry Contest. We are looking for fiction and poetry from alumni, students, teachers, and staff of Wichita State University. Our top three submissions from both genres will be printed in Mikrokosmos Volume 71 and receive prize money based on their placement by our guest judges. It costs nothing to submit, but we will ask that you tell us how you are affiliated with Wichita State in your bio. Guidelines are listed below, as well as prize money and brief bios of our two judges, Melanie Merle and Scott Phillips. General submissions may be resubmitted as contest submissions, but please identify if your submission you've submitted it previously during this cycle (Fall 2024). The following prizes will be awarded to both fiction and poetry independently:

First Place Prize: $200

Second Place Prize: $100

Third Place Prize: $50

Fiction: We are interested in stories that excite us with innovation in form, structure, and language; above all, we’re looking for stories that connect us, touch us, and revolutionize our worlds. Experimental or not, please send us a manuscript of under 6,000 words. If you’re submitting flash fiction, include up to three stories in a single document.

Poetry: We are interested in poems that blur contemporary styles with traditional modes, poems that light up with raw energy but point in a specific direction, and poems that push through leaps of image and gesture but resound with a strong emotional core. Above all, we enjoy poems that are willing to take risks while maintaining clarity of expression. Send up to 4 poems or 8 pages maximum, all in one document. If you have a single long poem that exceeds 8 pages, we welcome you to submit it as an exception to the page-limit rule and as the totality of your submission.

(Guest Fiction Judge: Scott Phillips's bio coming soon)

(Guest Poetry Judge: Melanie Merle's bio coming soon)