Welcome to On The Premises magazine!
Latest Issue Current Contest All Issues
On The Premises is an on-line fiction magazine founded in 2006 by Tarl Kudrick and Bethany Granger. We publish issues in HTML and PDF formats (and maybe someday, ebook formats).
Stories published in On The Premises are winning entries in short story contests launched every June and December. Each contest challenges writers to produce a great story based on a broad premise that we supply. Winning stories are published in individual magazine issues each April and October.
We also hold “mini-contests” four times a year, in April, May, October, and November. Winning mini-contest entries are published on our web site’s mini-contest pages.
We have published authors who live on six different continents–all we’re missing is Antartica. (In May 2019, we published a mini-contest winner from South America, so we’ve now got authors from all six of the continents with substantial populations.) All our stories are written in English.
Our Purpose
On The Premises wants to promote newer and/or relatively unknown writers who can write what we feel are creative, compelling stories told in effective, uncluttered, and evocative prose. Our contests have no entry fees. Winners receive cash prizes and publication.
Prize Money!
| Short Story Contests | Mini-Contests | |
|---|---|---|
| First Place | US $250 | US $35 |
| Second Place | US $200 | US $25 |
| Third Place | US $150 | US $15 |
| Honorable Mention | US $75 | Publication (no money) |
Authors who are paid in currencies other than US dollars will have any applicable currency exchange fees subtracted from their prize payments.
Our Newsletter
If you want to know when new contests begin, subscribe to our (free, short, ten-times-a-year) newsletter. By “ten-times-a-year” we mean every month except March and September. Those are the months we spend working with the authors on editing their stories and we don’t have much to say during those months.
NOTE: When GoDaddy moved our newsletter from one back-end system to a different one, the sign-up form broke. For now, if you want to subscribe to our newsletter, click this link, which generates an email to Editors@OnThePremises.com and send the pre-written email that appears in your email tool. (You might have to tell your browser what email service you use. If you’d rather not do that, just write Editors@OnThePremises.com manually and tell us you want to subscribe.) We will assume you want to sign up using the email address you’re using to write to us unless you tell us otherwise.
We have an old blog about writing and editing, and you can visit us on Facebook too.