Hi there, writers! We’re back at it again with a mini flash essay contest. This one is inspired by Angie Chuang’s Personals piece, “How a Black-Market IVF Drug Deal Helped Heal My Marriage,” about how she found comfort — the kind she hadn’t been looking for or even known she needed — in an unexpected place. We love this piece so much, and it got us thinking about times when we’ve found closure or reassurance in an unlikely corner.

With that in mind, we’re asking you to tell us about a moment in which you found solace in an unexpected place. Ever accept a tissue from a stranger on the subway after a bad breakup? Find profound wisdom in something your 4-year-old said that enabled you to finally move on? We want to hear from you! Submit a piece of up to 300 words for the chance to have it published on and to receive a free year-long subscription to both and . Submissions are due EOD this coming Monday, March 23, and you can expect to hear back from us later in the week. Ready? Go…

Submit here!

P.S. Looking for some inspiration? Check out the winner of the mini flash essay contest we ran about first kisses.

After publishing this tender coming-of-age essay from our executive editor about her first time over at sister site , we got to thinking about firsts, specifically first kisses. Much like with losing your virginity, first kisses are a big deal. Your first kiss might have been something you worked up to for a long time, or something that took you longer to come to than you’d hoped. Or maybe it was a terrible experience you wished you could forget…until you realized how funny it was, an act you avoided at all costs for as long as possible, one you’re still waiting for…

So, tell us: What was your first kiss like? In 300 words or less, we want to know the good, the bad, the heavily lip-glossed. By submitting, you’ll get the chance to have your flash piece published on and to receive a free year-long subscription to both and . Submissions are due EOD this Friday, February 27, 2026, and you will hear back from us early next month. Ready? We can’t wait to read your minis…

Submit here!

P.S. Looking for some inspiration? Check out the winner of the mini flash essay contest we ran about the best prank ever pulled.

For the past few months — ever since Lee Gutkind and Dinty W. Moore joined us to talk about what the heck a flash essay is, really — we’ve been obsessed with short personal essays. We started working on them ourselves, had some successful contests and published some really great pieces on our flagship publication, .

Because we’ve been enjoying the whole process so much, we thought, Why not do these on a more regular basis? Which is what we’re planning on doing going forward. Starting with one brand-new mini flash contest inspired by a favorite story that we recently revisited, “The Teenage Prank That’s Lasted 60 Years” from Clay Jennings Desmond. What we want to know is: What’s the best prank you’ve ever pulled? “Best” could mean the funniest, the one with the longest impact, the silliest, most clever, the one you can’t believe people actually fell for, the weirdest, most memorable… You get the idea!

Please share your experience in 300 words or less for a chance to have your flash piece published on and to receive a free year-long subscription to both and . Submissions are due EOD this Friday, January 23, 2026, and you will hear back from us later this month or early next. Ready?

Submit Here!

P.S. Looking for some inspiration? Check out the winners of the mini flash essay contest we ran in the fall!

One more thing while we have you… Later this afternoon, at 1 p.m. ET, we’re hosting a live chat over at with superstar couple and about that time they took MDMA and it saved their marriage. This is based on the popular essay Seth wrote for last year, “Our Therapist Gave My Wife and Me MDMA—and It Saved Our Marriage” that has garnered a lot of curiosity since. If you missed reading or listening to it the first time around, you can find a link to do both below. We hope to see on Substack Live this afternoon armed with questions!

Narratively

Upcoming Live Video Chat: We Took MDMA + It Saved Our Marriage—Ask Us Anything

Of all the stories I’ve worked on at Narratively during my five-plus year tenure, the one that’s most fun to bring up when I’m explaining what I do for work is, “Our Therapist Gave My Wife and Me MDMA—and It Saved Our Marriage” by Seth Lorinczi. (You can read it …

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3 months ago · 10 likes · Jesse Sposato

The hardest part about writing can often be getting started. You might have a lot of ideas swirling around in your head that you want to get down on paper, but just sitting down in a chair and staring down that blank document can be brutal! So, we thought we’d make it easier on you and put together a mini flash essay contest for you to submit to. Think of it as a trial run of sorts, an amuse-bouche to whet your appetite for the main course… And if you’re not a fan of metaphors or planning to submit to our 2025 Memoir Prize contest but you like a writing prompt, well, this is for you, too 😉.

On that note, in just 300 words or less, recount a perfect day that has resonated with you. It could be an entire day from start to finish, a sliver of an afternoon, something you remember from childhood or an impactful Sunday from last month. We want to know what happened and why it has stuck with you. The winner will have their flash piece published on Narratively.com and will receive free year-long subscriptions to both sites, Narratively.com and Narratively Academy.

Submissions are due this Wednesday, November 12, 2025, and you will hear back from us later this month. Ready?

Submit here!

P.S. Looking for some inspiration? Check out the winner of the flash essay contest we ran this summer!

I love books about craft. Throw some inspiration in there, I’m sold. Anything that gets me itching to write. Naturally then, when The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by landed on my desk, I ate it up. It’s a bunch of artists whose work I love writing about their practices, goals and breakthroughs — plus, they each share prompts, which have been so fun to explore.

Inspired by the book, we’re borrowing the prompt that New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino shared. It is: “Go outside for 15 minutes, at sunset if possible, and pay attention to nothing but your immediate surroundings. Write down what you see and what it makes you think of. Try your best to avoid extrapolating usable meaning for once. Just be an eye.” Want to try this exercise and share a bit of what you wrote here? We’d love to read what you came up with below!

P.S. Last time, we mentioned that the person whose comment got the most likes would win a free one-year Narratively Academy subscription. This week, we’re excited to announce that the winner is for her oh-so-relatable anecdote. Thanks for sharing, Phyllis — we’ll be in touch! Let’s do it again, shall we? This week, if your comment gets the most likes, we’ll send you a copy of one of our favorite books, Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue, co-edited by legendary editor Lee Gutkind. So, type — and like — away!

Whenever we’re trying to write but struggling, there’s one topic that always feels pretty fail-proof: early love. And what’s more fun to free-write on than a certain aspect of early love…early heartbreak. So, tell us: Was the first person to break your heart the boy next door, your long-term partner? Did it happen without them ever knowing you had a crush in the first place? Was it dramatic, surprisingly inconsequential? Did it happen later in life? We want to know!

Share a bit about it in the comments — one line to one paragraph is usually the sweet spot — and then feel free to keep writing on your own if you’re in the zone. Need some incentive? This week, we’re offering a free one-year Narratively Academy subscription to whoever’s comment gets the most likes. So, post away! We can’t wait to read your stories.

Over at Narratively.com, our sister storytelling site, we’ve been publishing the winners of our True Romance Writing Prize, the contest we launched with actor Emma Roberts and Belletrist in March. This past Friday, we published one of the shortread finalists, a tale from Bar Scott about unexpected and highly forbidden romance, which got us thinking…

Inspired by Bar’s essay, we want to know about a romance (or crush) that you had to keep secret. Did you fall for your best friend’s beau? Agree to marry your true love’s brother The Summer I Turned Pretty style? Covet a crush on your teacher in high school that you couldn’t even confide in your BFF about? No time like right now to come clean about it. Drop a few lines in the comments below about your forbidden love — and then, if you feel so inclined, keep writing off the page. See where the story takes you. Maybe it’s the beginning of your next screenplay…or an exercise that simply gets the gears turning. Whatever it is, share away. We can’t wait to hear your stories!

Scrolling through my phone recently, my eyes caught on Brian Macaluso’s essay, “Lights Out” on Memoir Land, in which the author “looks back at the August, 2003 blackout in New York City.” Before even reading the first line of Brian’s lovely piece, I immediately felt inspired to write. I, too, had a memorable story from that day: of psychically meeting up with my best friends at the park without any communication, of notably not trying to seek out my then-boyfriend, which led to our breakup the next day… Just seeing the headline and subhead of someone else’s essay not only made me want to write, but gave me that feeling of wanting to write for no particular reason at all, my favorite.

This is all to say…maybe this is just the kind of inspiration you need too? For this week’s writing prompt, I urge you to look back at some kind of major event you lived through — be it the East Village Squatters’ Standoff of 1995, Hurricane Katrina or Harvey, …

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You know that feeling when, after you’ve done something challenging, you look back and think, Wow, I can’t believe I actually made that happen! Or maybe it was the kind of thing you weren’t sure you could muster up the courage to go through with but then you did… Get your nose pierced as a full-on adult after deliberating for quite some time (hi, there!)? Run the full 13.1 miles of the half marathon after just joining a running club a few months before (nope, that one’s definitely not me!)? Finally try the absolutely delicious Mexican delicacy escamoles, also known as edible ant larvae, while on vacation? We want to hear about it! Share your most fun, most daring stories, in the comments below — and then if you feel inclined, spend the rest of your morning writing 500 words about it in your composition notebook. And…share away!

PS: What were your writing wins this week, large or small? Head over to the Narratively Academy Chat and tell…

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It can be fun to think about what might have been. What if you had taken that job across the country all those years ago? What would your life look like now? What if you had said yes to that marriage proposal, kept playing in your college noise band, gone to acting school instead of getting your degree in psychology? We want to know about the thing you almost did, but didn’t. What might that have felt like, and do you ever wish you’d had the chance to find out? Share about it in the comments below — and if this gets you writing in your journal tonight, too, all the better…

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I love a milestone, the kind that shapes and changes you, that pushes you in a new direction. So…rites of passage. (Remember that amazing column in The New York Times?) Tell us about the prom you went to (or skipped!), your epic graduation celebration and why it meant so much, the first time you traveled without a family member, that lease you signed all by yourself… It can be traditional or the very opposite — something that was a rite of passage in your town or felt like one just to you. Write a bit about it here and then keep it going in your notebook later on. Let’s go!

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Last week, we flipped the script and asked you to dream up your best prompt and share it with us. Thanks to everyone who did so — we received sooo many great ones! Today, we’re sharing the prompt that you all liked the most. It comes from Eileen Michels, and it is:

Pick a song from your teens that resonates with you, and still moves you when you hear it. What was going on in your life when you first heard it? Did it inspire you? Help you get through something? Depending on your age, did you first hear it on a record? 8-track? Cassette? Jukebox? iPod? Streaming? What events were going on in the world when it first came out? Politically? Environmentally? What’s YOUR song? 🎶

We can’t wait to hear from you — and we hope this gets you writing. So, share away, and please share this prompt with a friend you think could use it!

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This week, we’re doing something a little bit different. Inspired by the Creative Nonfiction Craft Classic we recently posted about “just writing,” from (check out his newsletter!), we’re handing the keys over to the reader. In Mercier’s post, he talks about regularly sharing writing prompts with his students, eventually instructing them to create prompts of their own and vote on the ones they like best.

So, with that in mind, we’re going to try the same! Dream up your best prompt — something that would inspire you to write yourself — and drop it here. Readers will “vote” with hearts on which they like the best, and the one that wins will be the next writing prompt we share here at Narratively Academy. So, let’s see what you got. Make it as fun, silly and weird as you’d like — and most importantly, make us want to write!

P.S. And congratulations to Jen Shepherd whose comment got the most likes on last week’s writing prompt about dodging a…

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Have you ever had one of those whew, close call! moments in which you (very) narrowly escaped something dangerous or even just mildly alarming? Perhaps your camping trip ended right before that group of black bears invaded the park? Or you slipped in the back door seconds before your parents arrived home and realized you’d left while grounded? We want to hear about it here! And we hope it gets you writing off the page, too — even if it sparks a related idea and you run with it, or conjures a distant memory that gets your fingers typing away, whatever it may be…

In last week’s writing prompt, we asked you tell us about a time you broke the rules, and that garnered some great responses. Like the one from Cathy de la Cruz in which she shared all the things she could have written about before landing on the one that was last on her list but might have been the most radical of all. Because it received so much love, Cathy won a free year-…

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This week, we’re keeping it short and simple: Tell us about a time when you broke the rules. Maybe you snuck out of the house in the middle of the night to sing karaoke, used your college ID to get a discount when you were well into your 30s, ducked into a second movie at the multiplex…you get the idea. It can be a minor offense that earned you an afternoon of detention or a misunderstanding that got you suspended for a week. Length is up to you, but we’d say the sweet spot is somewhere between two lines and two paragraphs. (And if you’re inclined to keep going on your own, we strongly encourage it!)

We’ve been doing giveaways for the past few weeks to folks with the most popular comments. Last week, Adam posted a hilarious story about getting into trouble with friends at a new job, winning him a free year-long subscription to Narratively Academy. This week, we’re offering one more. So, post away — we can’t wait to read your stories.

P.S.…

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I was recently messaging with my two oldest and dearest friends about going to a show together this fall and sent the text, “Nothing like the three of us at a concert!” by which I really meant, Whenever the three of us are together, shenanigans ensue. Cue accidentally crashing a wedding that happened to be taking place at the hotel we were staying at (that would be this past March!); wandering through a random door once and winding up in the green room of one of our favorite bands…you get the idea. So, dear writers, I’m posing this question to you: What sorts of fun trouble have you gotten into with your friends? (It doesn’t have to be your oldest friends, though I do find there’s a special sauce of silly that often gets cooked up with old pals in particular.) Either way, we’d love to hear about any singular funny moment in which you and your buddies did something hilarious that only you all could have done together.

And, as we’ve been d…

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There might not be anything as wonderfully nostalgic as a summer job. Afternoons scooping frozen yogurt with your friends, days spent basking in the sun poolside making sure the neighborhood kids were safe. Even working as a line cook at a beach stand and coming home smelling like fry oil sounds kind of romantic with enough distance. We want to take you back to a time when a summer job felt almost as fun as a summer vacation…sort of. In a sentence, or two or three, tell us about a favorite, vivid memory from a seasonal summer job.

Ever own your own ice cream truck and forget to shut the freezer overnight? Work as a camp counselor and get pranked by one of the kids? It could be happy or silly, even kind of terrible but funny in hindsight — whatever gets you writing. Plus, a bonus: We’ve been sweetening the pot recently with our prompts by offering incentive for the most-liked comments. Last week’s winner was Mansi, who shared a bit about …

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We don’t want all of our writing prompts to be a reminder of the strange and challenging times we’re living in right now, but with Independence Day around the corner while our freedom is constantly being challenged, the state of the world — and our role in it — is top of mind. Which is why we want to know what you’ve been doing to make an impact: in your community, school, neighborhood, society-at-large…

Did you just attend your first protest and have a life-changing experience there? Was there a moment recently when you spoke up for something you believed in despite being afraid to do so? Have you gotten back in touch with your incarcerated pen pal that you first began writing to almost a decade ago? (That last one would be me!) We want to hear about it — tell us in one brief sentence or 200 words. And, as always, if this prompt inspires you to keep writing after the fact, kudos!

Need a little more incentive to start typing? The perso…

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At a time when so much feels chaotic, we’re leaning hard into love and kindness. With that in mind, we want to hear your stories about something nice a stranger did for you that left you with a smile. A positive note to uplift one another and remind us all that there really is so much good in the world. Did someone offer to help you carry your suitcase up the subway stairs recently? Hand you a tissue when you were publicly weeping alone on a bench?

It can be a recent example or something that happened 10 years ago that has stayed with you ever since. Share one line, or 300 words, about your experience. We look forward to hearing from you here—and if this sparks something that you continue writing off of this page, even better!

And… because our site is brand new and this prompt is all about good vibes, we’re going to add some extra incentive here: The response that gets the most likes will win a free year-long Narratively Academy subscription!

P.S. What else did you write this week? Our new community is all about encouraging each other to keep writing and celebrating successes. Be sure to check out the #WeeklyWin chat we posted yesterday. Accomplish a creative goal this week (big or small) that you’re proud of and want to share it? You can do so here! ♥️

We love a writing prompt when we have a contest underway because it always gets us, well, in the mood to write! With just nine days left of our Narratively x Belletrist True Romance Writing Prize (which you can read more about here), we want to get you energized. So … did you inexplicably ghost your soulmate only to realize shortly after that you’d made a huge mistake — but by then it was too late? Or maybe your lost-true-love saga dates wayyy back. Make a forever promise to your camp crush at age 11 and actually expect to keep it — but learn that she’d long forgotten who you even were? Or something else completely? We want to know all about it!

And, to make this extra fun — because who doesn’t love a side of competition to go with your long-lost love story — we will award a limited-edition “Never Not Reading” hat from Belletrist x Tertulia to the person whose comment gets the most “likes.” So, please share a short tale below about the one who got away — it can be one sentence long or …

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