Sine Theta Magazine

SINE THETA MAGAZINE’S 7TH ANNUAL WRITING CONTEST

Submissions period: 24 May to 22 June

Sine Theta is pleased to host the seventh iteration of our annual writing contest! We are delighted to announce Weike Wang (author of Rental House) as this year’s fiction judge and Muriel Leung (author of How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnamable Disaster) as this year’s poetry judge.

Submit by 22 June 2025 for a chance to be published in our upcoming issue, sinθ #35. This year, we’re able to offer the winner in each category a $150 USD cash prize. Thank you to our Patreon subscribers for the support that makes this content possible.

We’re accepting entries for both fiction (prose) and poetry. We invite you to reflect on the following three prompts as inspiration for your pieces. You may reflect on the prompts separately or as a collective, drawing themes and ideas that resonate with you. Entries must engage with the prompt(s), and can do so either directly or indirectly.

There is no submission fee. Entries will close at 11:59PM PDT.

You may only submit one entry per category, so send us your best work!

PROMPTS

“A bright sun darkens, a full moon wanes, a full cup overflows, and decay follows prosperity.” —Mo Yan, Red Sorghum, 1986. Translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, 1993.
“沉魚落雁，閉月羞花。”

"Fish sink into the sea, geese fall from the sky; the moon does not wish to shine, the flowers do not wish to bloom."

—A set of two chengyu used to describe extreme beauty, evoked especially with reference to the Four Great Beauties of Ancient China. The phrase has its roots in the Zhuangzi. Translated into English by Sine Theta staff, 2025.
Image: Still from 春光乍洩 / Happy Together (1997) directed by Wong Kar-wai. The shot is a close-up inside a dark room: a man, played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai, bends low to examine a cylindrical lamp depicting a waterfall. The glow of the lamp illuminates the waterfall image, creating a glittering effect among the brown, yellow, white, and turquoise hues, and casting a dim light into the man’s sorrowful expression.

HOW TO ENTER

Email sinethetamag@gmail.com with “Writing Competition - NAME - CATEGORY” as the subject line. Attach your submission as a PDF or Word document, with the document title as “CATEGORY - WORK TITLE”. Do not include your name on the document, as entries will be judged anonymously. If you are entering a poetry and a fiction piece, please submit each piece separately via email.

Please include the following completed form with your submission in the body of your email:

Name:

Chinese name (if available):

Short third-person bio (less than 80 words):

If poetry - line count:

If fiction - word count:

Do you identify as a member of the Sino diaspora?: Yes/No (If the answer is no, please do not submit.)

Do you confirm that the submitted work is entirely your own, and that all quotes have been appropriately attributed?: Yes/No (If the answer is no, please do not submit.)

JUDGES

Fiction judge:

Weike Wang is the author of Chemistry (Knopf 2017), Joan is Okay (Random House 2022) and Rental House (Riverhead 2024). She is the recipient of a Whiting award and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Best American Short Stories and has won an O. Henry Prize. She earned her MFA from Boston University and her other degrees from Harvard. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Barnard College.

Poetry judge:

Muriel Leung is the author of the novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnamable Disaster (W.W. Norton & Company) and several collections that include Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books), Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) in collaboration with artist Kristine Thompson. She is a recipient of fellowships to VONA/Voices Workshop, Community of Writers, Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, among others. She received her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from University of Southern California. Based in Los Angeles, she teaches at the MFA in Creative Writing program at California Institute of the Arts.

TERMS AND GUIDELINES

The competition is open to all members of the Sino diaspora, regardless of age or nationality.
Submissions are free of charge.
All entries must be received by 11:59PM Pacific time on 22 June 2025.
An entrant may submit only one piece per category (poetry and fiction) for consideration. Pieces may not be altered once submitted.

If you are also planning to submit other works for the issue’s general submissions period, please send general submissions in a different email than your contest submission. Please also read the relevant submission guidelines for general issue submissions before submitting.
Please note that issue general consideration and contest consideration have different deadlines — the contest’s deadline closes before the issue’s deadline closes. It is not a guarantee that you will receive the results of the contest before the issue’s deadline also closes.

The competition organizers reserve the right to change the judging panel without notice.
Our editorial board will review all pieces and forward shortlisted pieces to judges, who will determine the winners. Judges’ decisions are final. There will be no additional correspondence between the editorial board and judges about the works during the adjudication process.
All winners are guaranteed publication in sinθ #35.
All contest entries will also be considered for regular publication in sinθ #35.
All authors published in sinθ receive a $10 USD honorarium. For the two contest winners, there is an additional $140 USD prize, amounting to a total of $150 USD.
All entries are judged anonymously — do not include your name on your works.
Every piece must have a title.
Pieces must engage with the prompt(s) provided, either directly or indirectly.
Word counts: fiction submissions can be no longer than 3000 words (excluding title), and poetry submissions can be no longer than 35 lines (excluding title).
Entries must be submitters’ original work. Plagiarized work will be disqualified from the competition. We do not accept AI-generated work.
Prose pieces must be works of fiction.
We do not accept simultaneous submissions for the contest. Entries also may not have been previously published, whether online or in print (including self-publishing on a blog).
Entries can include Chinese or other languages so long as they are written primarily in English.
Winners will be notified after the judging period has concluded in July.
We look forward to receiving your entries!