Questions serious entrants will ask.

Submissions open December 1, 2026, and close February 1, 2027, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. Finalists and winners are announced in spring 2027. Sign up to hear the day submissions open.

Yes, if it is honestly disclosed. There is no minimum or maximum amount of machine-generated text. Fully generated, partially generated, heavily edited, and lightly edited work are all eligible. A named human author directs the work, reviews it, and takes responsibility for it — and choosing, arranging, and rejecting generated text is direction.

Made with AI is expected. Unedited isn’t. Readers aren’t hunting for fingerprints, and nobody expects you to run your text through a humanizer. They judge whether the text has been worked: readable, controlled, edited. Unrevised machine habits (a pattern repeated until it’s the loudest thing on the page, stock phrasing, reflexive structures) are craft failures like any other. Deliberate use is different: a character who talks like a machine, or a machine-flavored style you chose and control, is judged on whether it works. We do not use AI-detection tools.

No. There is no genre or subject restriction, and these are not awards for fiction about artificial intelligence. Crime, romance, historical, horror, literary, science fiction — anything eligible as fiction qualifies. A work gets no credit for its topic.

No. A clear written account of how the work was made is enough, and can earn full process marks. Prompts, drafts, and repositories are welcome but never required. Process is not scored on technical complexity.

Eighty points for the fiction (impact 50, originality 30) and twenty for the process account (clarity and honesty 10, direction 10). The dossier must also show that a machine took part, and rights and privacy must be respected. Every score band is published.

Only if its opening earns it. Longform entries are first read by their opening 10,000 words, with the synopsis. If the opening doesn’t earn a full read, the rest of the manuscript isn’t read. We won’t ask readers to dig for a good book under an opening that isn’t enjoyable to read. That’s part of the rubric. Make your first 10,000 words count. How the first read works.

Yes. Author-reviewed machine translation is fine; professional translation is not required. Enter with the English opening, an English synopsis, and the complete original-language manuscript. The full English text is due within 45 days only if the work advances past the first reading.

Yes. Everyone credited on an entry is identified privately to the awards; only the public name is published.

Yes. Entry is open worldwide, except where U.S. sanctions law prohibits it. Fees are in U.S. dollars with no international surcharge.

Yes. Entrants keep copyright and all publication rights. Winning does not require a publishing agreement; any anthology or publication opportunity would be optional and separately agreed.

No. People make every literary, advancement, finalist, and award decision. We never run the work itself through an AI model. The only use of AI is helping a reviewer read a process dossier that is too technical to follow unaided.

The awards are not run for profit. Each fee pays card processing first, then the readers, judges, and process reviewers (plus file storage and screening); everything left goes to the prizes. Amounts are announced when submissions close, once the cost of review is known. See where the fee goes.

Because the awards exist to establish that machine-assisted fiction is a real practice, and that needs a record rather than an assertion. The dossier is evidence, not merit — which is why fiction carries 80 points and a strong account will not rescue a weak story. The longer answer is in the colophon.

Authors under 18 may enter Short Fiction through a parent or legal guardian, with added privacy safeguards. The Future Scriptorium Citation is awarded only if eligible youth entries are received.

Fees pay readers and judges and protect the awards from spam and bulk uploads. Limited fee waivers are available on request.

Yes. Manuscripts, dossiers, and evidence are confidential review materials. Public excerpts or summaries require your approval.