2nd Annual fMRI Prize: a Flash Fiction Contest for Baltimore Youth and Adult Writers
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Our second Fiction Made to Read & Investigate (fMRI) Writing Prize contest cycle is open! This time, we invite flash fiction from Baltimore writers, both youth and adult, that plays with "causal structures"; what makes what happen when? How are events related? Rather than a step-by-step chain of events, we encourage writers to get wild with their stories, using flashbacks, interwoven storylines, twists and turns that surprise or shed new light on what came before, and other literary techniques that complicate the narrative. Experiment and get creative—within 500 to 1500 words. The Hopkins Review team will be leading some generative community writing workshops, and the contest opens November 15.
Eligibility
Adult writers (18+) who are residents of Baltimore City (including students currently enrolled in in-person college or graduate programs in Baltimore City) are eligible to submit work to the fMRI Writing Prize.
High school writers (14 – 18) who live in Baltimore City are eligible to submit work to the fMRI Youth Writing Prize.
Entry Rules and Criteria
Open for submissions from Nov 15 to Jan 15, writers should submit one piece of original flash fiction that demonstrates complexity in causal structure (a story of 500-1500 words). We can only consider previously unpublished work (stories that have been self-published in their entirety on social media or personal websites are also ineligible), and work that is not AI-generated. Stories will be considered by the Hopkins Review editorial team, with input from the scientific team in the Chen Lab.
Stories will be evaluated on their literary merits. Plots can certainly be complex, ambiguous, or nuanced; and language can certainly be dynamic and surprising.
One or more winners will be chosen from both the youth and adult contests.
Winner & Finalist Prizes
The winning stories will be used in neuroscience experiments: Dr. Chen’s lab will record brain activity while people are reading or listening to the stories, and as they talk about the stories, in order to study the neural systems that support memory. Each winner will receive publication by The Hopkins Review as an open-access online feature at HopkinsReview.com (including standard publishing contracts, granting nonexclusive world rights and permission to reproduce in print and audio for scientific papers), a $500 prize, participation in a public event/reading, a written report about their story’s experiment results, and a framed graphic created from their story’s brain data.
Additional finalists may be selected for publication, in which case they will receive a $100 prize. This is a free contest, supported by the Chen Lab, The Hopkins Review, and the JHU Discovery Awards.