The 2016 Doris Betts Fiction Prize is now open for submissions. The prize awards the first-place winner $250 and publication in the North Carolina Literary Review. Finalists will also be considered for publication in NCLR.

The deadline is Monday, Feb. 15.

The final judge is NCLR fiction editor Liza Wieland. She is the author of seven books and three collections of short fiction and has won numerous prizes and fellowships. Her newest novel is “Land of Enchantment.”

Brad Field of Wilmington won the 2015 Doris Betts Fiction Prize for his story, “Achmed’s Lesson,” a story offering deceptively simple language and a kind of cultural critique that transported readers to a world unfamiliar to many.

For more than 20 years, East Carolina University and the North Carolina Literary & Historical Association have published the North Carolina Literary Review, devoted to showcasing the Tar Heel State’s literary excellence.

Doris Betts was the author of three short story collections and six novels. She won three Sir Walter Raleigh awards, the Southern Book Award, the North Carolina Award for Literature, the John Dos Passos Prize, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Medal for the short story, among others. She was named the University of North Carolina Alumni Distinguished Professor of English in 1980. She was a 2004 inductee of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.

Here are the full guidelines:

• The competition is open to any writer who is a legal resident of North Carolina or a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. North Carolina Literary Review subscribers with North Carolina connections (lives or has lived in NC) are also eligible.
• The competition is for previously unpublished short stories up to 6,000 words. Multiple entries OK, but each requires a separate entry fee. No novel excerpts. Stories do not have to relate to NCLR’s annual special feature topic.
• Simultaneous submissions OK, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
• Submit previously unpublished stories online at https://nclr.submittable.com/submit. Submittable will collect your entry fee via credit card ($10 NCWN members or NCLR subscribers / $20 for non-members/non-subscribers).
• To pay submission fees by check or money order, make payable to the North Carolina Writers Networkand mail to: Ed Southern, PO Box 21591, Winston-Salem, NC 27120- 1591
• Documents must be Microsoft Word or .rtf files. Author’s name should not appear on manuscripts. (Submittable will collect and record your name and contact information.) If you have any problems submitting electronically, email NCLR’s Submission Manager.
• If submitting by mail, mail story manuscript with a cover sheet providing name, address, email address, word count, and manuscript title, to: NCLR, ECU Mailstop, 555 English,
  Greenville, NC 27858-4353 (but mail payment to the Network as per instructions above)

The winner and finalists will be announced by May 1. The winning story and select finalists will be published in the next year’s issue of the North Carolina Literary Review.

Questions may be directed to Margaret Bauer, editor of the North Carolina Literary Review, atBauerM@ecu.edu.