The 2016 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest is underway! In its nearly three centuries of existence, The Saturday Evening Post has published short fiction by a who’s who of American authors including Ray Bradbury, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Louis L’Amour, Jack London, Joyce Carol Oates, Edgar Allan Poe, Anne Tyler, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Sinclair Lewis, among so many others.

Now you have the opportunity to join our illustrious lineup by entering The Saturday Evening Post’s fourth annual Great American Fiction Contest. “This contest is a tribute to the Post’s legacy of featuring the most renowned American fiction writers,” says Steven Slon, editorial director and associate publisher for The Saturday Evening Post. “Our goal is to continue the tradition of finding and featuring compelling stories and the authors behind them.”

The winning story will be published in the January/February 2016 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, and the…

This is what I took away from the master class on how to get published last Friday: agents are pompous snobs.

Correction: the agents at this class were pompous snobs. ‘Well, the truth is, most people can’t write,’ one said in a lofty tone. The other one said, ‘And to be honest, I’m very, very busy with my already existent clients, so I don’t have much time to read from the slush-pile.’ However, they wanted to ensure us that if the writing was good, then of course they would take us on as clients.

Someone asked about taste, as in: aren’t agents just as subjective as the rest of us? How much of the decision making comes down to personal taste? ‘None,’ they said. We are professional people and know good writing when we see it,’ they said.

I raised my hand and asked how much of the decision making is colored by trends…