Sapiens Plurum 2023 short fiction contest

We’re excited to announce the eighth annual short fiction writing contest “Building Communities in the Face of Climate Change”. The winner will receive $1000 for first prize. Second prize is $500 and third is $300. The contest opens on Earth Day, April 22, each year, and this year it will run through June 15, 2023.   

We invite stories that explore how we can use science and technology to build resilient communities in a rapidly changing world. We are most interested in the ways that science and technology can help us to ride out the coming storms, especially in communities already under stress. Let your imagination run free. We encourage submissions that explore the impacts of climate change in a very expansive sense. A changing climate puts the entire system at risk, creating compounding crises not only for human civilization but for the entire biosphere. So, we seek stories that explore how communities can evolve to survive and even flourish in a shifting background, not only with sea-level rise, warming temperatures, increased droughts, storms, and wildfires, but also from the by-products of climate change: the increased prevalence of pandemics; biodiversity loss; human and non-human migrations. We encourage stories that explore how we might creatively respond to these threats. Simply put, we are interested in your thoughts, expressed through fiction, around how science and technology can be used to promote positive change in a world where everything is at risk, and nothing is guaranteed.

Winning entries will need all the traditional aspects of good storytelling: strong plots, believable character development, fascinating worlds and interesting settings, all in a form that reflects the Sapiens Plurum Mission Statement. Finally, just a heads-up that upon choosing the winners, we might suggest some light copyediting before posting the stories.