L’Esprit Literary Review
Judged by Michael Nath
I like fiction that banquets the reader. Too much fiction now follows a strict diet.
Michael Nath
Original portrait of Leopold Bloom drawn by Issue One Contributor Jennifer Ostopovich
L’Esprit seeks short fiction exhibiting exceptional ingenuity and vision in narration, now sponsored by Chill Subs’ Contest Transparency Program.
The contest is now closed; check back soon for full results!
Overview
The 2026 Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration will be awarded to the short story or novel excerpt, of up to 5,000 words, that best exhibits risk-adept narration challenging literary convention. All excerpts must stand on their own. Both first- and third-person work will be considered. Pieces with emotional depth and urgency that take sophisticated narrative risks in terms of both sentence and story will be in the strongest contention. We are drawn above all to voice and style. Surprise us. We look for fiction that accelerates form irrevocably into content.
We are excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Chill Subs through their Contest Transparency Program. Because the Bloom Prize meets their standards of transparency & fairness, Chill Subs is offering several more prizes.
Find the contest score on Chill Subs’ calculator here.
All entries will receive one free month of any Chill Subs Membership. Additionally, Chill Subs will provide the Grand Prize Winner with 5 years (worth $1000) of Membership. Second and third place will receive 2 years ($400 value), while finalists will receive 1 year ($200 value). These are in addition to the monetary prizes and publication from L’Esprit:
$500 and publication to the Grand Prize winner; $150 and publication to Second Place; $50 and publication to three (3) Finalists. Shortlist, Finalists, and any Honorable Mentions will be announced permanently on the journal website. See the previous results–and read all five Finalist stories in the 2025 Prize–here.
All entries receive a digital copy of Issue Seven and are considered for paid publication in the journal.
Procedure
In the first round of judging, the L’Esprit editorial team will assemble a shortlist–and potentially a longlist–based on technical-mechanical skill, acuity in blending verisimilar narrative elements with robust narrational architecture, and prosody. These announcements will be made on a rolling basis. From there the team individually ranks the shortlist pieces and meet to determine five Finalists. Our most recent contest received 238 total submissions.
The Grand Prize Winner and Second Place Award will be selected, via blind read, from this pool of finalists by Guest Judge Michael Nath; see more on Michael’s background and interests below.
We expect to have full results by February 2026.
Rules
We have two options for entrance. A $10 fee includes a complimentary digital copy of L’Esprit Issue Seven, featuring writing from Kathleen Rooney, Christopher Linforth, Art O’Connor, Kat Meads, Robert Cunningham, and more. Issue Seven also features the Grand Prize Winner, Second Place Award, and Finalists from the 2025 Clarissa Dalloway Prize for Short Prose. This high-resolution version is optimized for reading on tablets and other devices, allowing the issue to be experienced as designed, immersive and rich.
A $15 fee includes the digital copy of I7 plus an Expedited Response; we will prioritize your submission and reply with a decision about the shortlist phase within three days. This option may be ideal for those who are planning to submit their piece elsewhere and would especially benefit from a quick response. If the fee presents a genuine difficulty, please email us about a waiver.
We accept simultaneous submissions; please let us know right away if a piece has been offered elsewhere. Likewise multiple submissions are welcome, with individual payment for each piece.
All proceeds directly help support the journal and pay writers; contests are vital to help us offset costs such as promoting our contributors at AWP, hosting live and virtual reading events, and running print copies of each issue. These expenses are never fully covered by submissions, but are a significant help. We are pleased to have been able to raise the total cash award amount for every new contest we’ve run, and plan to continue doing so.
Please include the following with each submission:
- A third-person bio, to be used as the contributor’s note should your work be accepted.
- Social media handles (Bluesky and Instagram), if you’d like to be promoted online.
- An optional cover letter to introduce the work, yourself, provide some context to your submission; please note that this in no way impacts the likelihood of publication.
- Finally, we would appreciate knowing how you found the journal (social, ad listing, database search, reference, etc).
- See our complete submission guidelines for more. Submit your work to the contest on Submittable.
Thank you for your support of fearless writing.
Michael Nath is a British author and academic.
His first novel, La Rochelle (2010), was shortlisted for the 2011 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. His second, British Story: A Romance (2014), was a Morning Star Book of the Year. It was described by The Times Literary Supplement as “a wonderful exercise in novelistic virtuosity, strange and beautiful.”
His most recent novel, The Treatment, (Quercus, 2020), was a critical success: The Guardian (Michael Donkor: “it is the voices and the language that make this novel such a triumph”); iPaper (Sarah Hughes: “His writing is addictive, sometimes strange, often beautiful”); Arts Desk (“A London novel to join the greats”); Morning Star (Paul Simon: “beautifully vulgar”); Tablet (hailed by AN Wilson: “Some of the most interesting dialogue I’ve read in years … a fantastic book”); Metro (Anthony Cummings: “a maverick project that defies comparison”)
Michael on what he likes in fiction:
I like authors who are doing it their way; their ‘signature against the world’. This is why I admire novels as far apart as Wuthering Heights and Neuromancer: Emily Brontë and William Gibson were making the rules for themselves. This is why I read Moby Dick twice in my first term as an undergrad. And why I keep reading Musil, Kafka, Joyce; Sir Water Scott, Jane Austen, Dostoevsky.
To me, there is nothing more important than voice. What is voice? The most familiar mystery; is there anything more friendly?
Above anyone, I admire Shakespeare: a dramatist, also one of the greatest writers of prose; he indicated the future for the novel in English. The prose of Shakespeare has the vigour of an ever-growing tree; I like prose that is woody, not lapidary: living, not stony.
Listen to Nietzsche: ‘Of prime necessity is life: a style should live.’
And let’s add that Shakespeare was supreme at setting problems, rather than solving them. I like fiction that dives deep, without checking its oxygen.
I like fiction that laughs. When the royal librarian begged Jane Austen to try an historical romance, she wrote back to him that they’d hang her for laughing: ‘I must keep to my own style & go on in my own way.’ Huzza!
And I like fiction that banquets the reader. Too much fiction now follows a strict diet.
I don’t care for fiction in the present tense: we weren’t all born this morning.
And I like fiction that has its way with my heart; Jane Eyre has its way, every time.
An interview with Michael can be found here.
Dan White, Private Collection
in mediam mentem // Leopold Bloom Prize
L'Esprit Literary Review 