The Masters Review

Showcasing new writers. Offering a quality platform for new talent. Novel Excerpt Contest open until November 8, 2026!

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

Our Novel Excerpt Contest is back!

Guest Judge Chinelo Okparanta will select three finalists. The first place winner receives $3,000, online publication, and a one-hour consultation with literary agent Marin Takikawa of The Friedrich Agency.

Learn more: https://t.co/qVlyPbC9eg

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

"Right, but the lesson for a children's fairy tale about fear shouldn't be 'I should've had more fear.'"

"Yes, I agree it shouldn't be. Leave as is."

—Tomiko Breland, "The Fox and the Tree and the Thunder"
Prize for New Narratives Honorable Mention

https://t.co/v40rIaoA6e

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

I lived increasingly at the bottom of my sorrow. I didn’t feel ready to do anything. I didn’t trust any of these doctors. I didn’t trust myself.

—Ioana Barbulescu, "Cut Off"
https://t.co/Cb9qtivQFY

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

The story’s masterful as well at evoking the love and compassion that he mostly only communicates through his rituals of both care and what he imagines to be a kind of deference. 3/3

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

"The drive was dark, coils of smoke in the road. He couldn’t see much. Electricity was still out. No light at all, but licks of fire here and there, and vehicles in far hills."

—Carol Keeley, "Wind and Embers"
Winter Short Story Award 1st Place

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

...of its protagonist’s psychological position: that mix of pride and shame that has him stubbornly unable to change even as he’s more than emotionally perceptive enough to know just what a mess he’s intermittently made of his life. 2/x

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

More from Jim: Both protagonists have been through a lot, still have some of their compassion intact, and do what they can to accommodate their fellow beings even as they prepare to accept their isolation.

https://t.co/Wkajt2rAt5

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

"When the women on the island started changing, people at first called it a mutation."

—Emily Mathis, "When Women Walked on Land"
Winter Short Story Award 2nd Place

https://t.co/Wkajt2s8iD

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

...and the latter’s playfulness its twin protagonists’ mordant acceptance of whatever stunning transformations are going to come down the pike.

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

More from Jim: I choose to read the ending as only an ersatz happiness—as his having decided to will himself into a state of acceptance that the reader cannot entirely celebrate.

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

"The first thing I see through this new head of mine is Jenny’s smiling face, red-nosed and tear-crusted, gazing down at me in the hospital bed."

—Michael Hughes Wesner, "The Big Reboot"
2025-2026 Winter Short Story Award 3rd Place

https://t.co/AQAET16S1E

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

—even as he refuses to confront—just how much pain and disconnect lies beneath his relationship to both his family and the world he’s so deftly satirizing, especially when it comes to his wife.

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

Theoretically, the spiral is designed to give you time for dedicated contemplation and prayer, to bring the brothers closer to God. This is a story.

—Clare Fielder, "The Brothers"
2025-2026 Winter Short Story Award Honorable Mention

https://t.co/fvdhLKwlhO

[Duotrope @Duotrope]

Today's listing of the day is: The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Contest @MastersReview (fee-based) https://t.co/E6wLiYKA11 #WritingCommunity

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

"To want, then to have; to hunger, then to satiate. What a beautiful, perfect thing."

—Stephanie Isan, "Hulijing"
2025-2026 Winter Short Story Award Honorable Mention

https://t.co/PNgypoy1Pr

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

"There is no compass for this journey. No logic. No north, east, south, or west. Only The Traveler’s Stone. Only Felix and Felix and Felix and Felix."

—Erin Jean, "The Traveler's Stone"
https://t.co/suqhdQVe1W

[The Masters Review @MastersReview]

Holding the cockroach, Zahra imagined entire towns underground. She laid it on a bed of cherry pits and drew a mother and father cockroach beside it.

—Pegah Ouji, " A Town of Cherry Pits"
https://t.co/TAbSdnejXr