Work is a huge part of most people's lives. The average adult human spends almost half of their waking hours at work--but, despite that, it's something that's often overlooked in creative writing. In this year's contest, we're flipping that ratio. We want to see stories, essays, and poems where work and/or labor is a core element. It's not enough if a character mentions going to work in dialogue--work should be so woven into the piece that it wouldn't be the same without it.

As usual, we're open to broad and creative interpretations of work and labor. We’d love to see pieces set in workplaces, and we’re definitely interested the more political side of labor. But we're also open to work focused on the emotional and unpaid labor of caretakers and stay-at-home parents, stories about crew members on space stations or laborers in high-fantasy serfdoms, or visions of what “work” might look like on other planets, in other dimensions, or on future dystopian (or collectivist utopian) versions of Earth.

We're also excited to announce that this year's contest is sponsored by Chill Subs through their Contest Transparency Partnership! They'll only support contests that meet a pretty high transparency and fairness standard, so we're very honored to have been accepted into their program. What this means for yinz:

• Everyone who enters the contest will also get 1 free month of any Chill Subs membership, which you can claim by clicking the link in your submission acknowledgment email
• Honorable mentions will get a free 1-year Chill Subs membership ($200 value) 
• Two finalists will each get a free 2-year Chill Subs membership ($400 value)
• One winner will get a free 5-year Chill Subs membership ($1,000 value)

...those prizes are on top of the usual percentage-based cash prizes explained in more detail below.

All entries are considered for publication. Contributors who aren't picked for a prize will be paid at our standard rate ($2.50 per printed page, $15 minimum/$50 maximum). Each entry is $10, which covers:

• 1 prose work of 1,000 words or longer 
• 1 suite of up to 5 linked pieces
• up to 3 individual poems sent in a single document
• up to 3 flash or micro prose pieces in a single document

Note: You know what really sucks about work? Sometimes you can do it all the time and still be broke. We get it. And we also don't want to miss out on awesome writing just because the author's got bills to pay. We have a limited number of free submissions available. These entries are not eligible for the prize, but are still eligible for publication in the Work & Labor print issue at our usual $15-$50 pay rate (and still get the 1 free month of Chill Subs). To access the free submission form, email us at AfterHappyHour@gmail.com and we'll send along the link (this is just to keep the free slots from getting filled by submission bombers, you don't need to explain or justify why you're asking for it).
 

Other details and things you might be wondering:
 

Can I include images?
 This is a soft no. We can’t accept color images, photos, or full-spread comics and graphic narratives since it’s a print issue (we want to give money to authors, not spend it on fancy printing). If your work includes black-and-white sketches or other small visual aspects we can consider those, but in general we’re focusing on the words in this issue.

Can I send previously published work?

No, we only accept original, unpublished work for our contests (though we'll happily consider your reprint for our next online reading period).
 

Prize Info:
 The winners and honorable mentions for this contest will receive a percentage of the total entry fees paid (including purchases of After Happy Hour print issues):

• Up to 3 “ranked winners” will split 30%.
• Up to 3 honorable mentions will split 15%.
   

How this will look in practice will depend on the work we receive. Possible scenarios:

• Three 1st place winners, one each in fiction, poetry, and CNF, who each get 10%; three honorable mentions, one in each category, that get 5% 
• Two 1st place winners, one each in poetry and prose, who each get 15%; two honorable mentions, one in each category, that get 7.5% 
• Overall 1st (20%) and 2nd (10%) place, plus 1-3 overall honorable mentions
• A single Grand Prize winner who walks away with the whole 30%, plus 1-3 overall honorable mentions

The more submissions we get, the more winners and honorable mentions we're likely to award.


What happens with the rest of the entry fees?
 Submittable takes $1.49 for each entry, so roughly 15%. The remaining 40% will go to printing the issue and paying other contributors, with a portion to be donated to our current donation partner, Casa San José.


Why are you making writers do math?
 We're sorry. The managing editor's a Virgo. But we do have a real reason. Mostly, a percentage-based prize lets us bump up how much authors get if we get a ton of entries. The flexibility also feels more fair than setting categories ahead of time. If the best submissions are all stories or all poems, we can adjust the prizes to reward the works we feel are the most deserving. This makes it easier to give prizes to hybrid and cross-genre works, too, since it might be tricky to fit them into a genre category otherwise.


How much will I win, though?
         The total entries and prizes for our last 3 contests were:

• Contest #2: 95 entries; 1 $320 winner, 1 $160 honorable mention 
• Contest #3: 178 entries; 2 $290 winners (poetry & prose); 3 $100 honorable mentions
• Contest #4: 254 entries; 2 $420 winners (poetry & prose); 3 $140 honorable mentions

...this year's prizes will depend on how many entries we get, but that gives you a sense of what prize winners have taken home in the past. 

General Guidelines:

Poetry: no line or word limits. 

Fiction: We have no hard word count limits, and welcome stories in that hard-to-publish 5,000-10,000 word length that justify their real estate. That said, this is a print issue, so we won't be able to publish anything that's a true novella length.

Creative nonfiction: We are specifically looking for lyric or narrative nonfiction, not scholarly essays (though if you’re using the tropes of scholarly essays within the context of a personal essay, that we do want to see).

Suites: Send up to 5 linked works that will be considered as a set. Individual works within a suite can be poems or flash or micro-length prose (under 1,000 words each).

Hybrid/Cross-Genre: Yes, please. Follow whichever of the above guidelines makes the most sense for your work. 

        Other general guidelines:

• Please include a brief (100 words max) 3rd-person bio with your submission.
• To limit editor bias, we read all submissions anonymously. Please remove your name and contact information from the document (including the headers, top of the first page, under the title, etc.) before submitting it.
• Use standard manuscript format (11- or 12-point font like Times New Roman, double-space prose/single-space poetry, etc.). We won’t reject you for weird spacing or a bad font (probably), but following this standard makes things easier to read, and that makes the editors happy. Poets/experimental prose writers have more liberty here if the non-standard formatting is used for formal or stylistic reasons. Straightforward prose writers have no excuse.
• We accept submissions only through Submittable. Submissions sent to our e-mail will be deleted unread.
• Multiple submissions are allowed, but each submission must be accompanied by its own $10 entry.
• Simultaneous submissions are accepted for the contest. However, your entry fee will not be returned if the piece is accepted elsewhere and you need to withdraw it.
• If you need to withdraw a longer prose piece, or an entire packet of poems or flash prose, you can choose the “withdraw” option on Submittable. To withdraw a single poem or flash piece from a packet, you can message us through Submittable or e-mail us (afterhappyhour [at] gmail [dot] com).
• Accepted submissions may be edited for grammar. All changes will be sent to the author for approval before publication.
• We acquire First North American Serial Rights for the print issue. The author always holds the copyright to their work and retains all other rights. There is no period of exclusivity and authors can anthologize or republish their work however they see fit, though we would appreciate a mention that the work was first published in After Happy Hour.