Claire Steel and Jill Glenn

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BeaconFlash is our annual 500-word short story competition, offering extended critique and web publication to winners. For many years, the competition has been made possible by the support of Roy Chapman Ltd. We are extremely grateful to our new sponsor, Creasey & Co (https://creaseyandco.com/), a chartered accountancy services. First prize in the competition will now be known as the Creasey & Co BeaconFlash Prize.

We are delighted to announce that this year's BeaconFlash will be judged by publisher, editor, tutor and mentor Claire Steele and publisher, editor and writer Jill Glenn. Entry is £3 per story or £13 with critique. 

There are eight prizes this year, totalling £725. Every penny of profit goes to the Beacon Villages Community Library.

COMPETITION SOON OPENING

BeaconFlash is open for entries from September 2025 to May 2026, with a monthly deadline (see below). The top three stories (from three different authors) for each month will go through to the final shortlist (of 30 entries), from which eight prize winners are selected (see ‘Prizes’ below).

You can enter (via the form below) as often as you like whenever you like. It doesn’t make any difference which month or months you enter because you won’t know who else is submitting that month. The more times you enter, the more chances you have of going through to the shortlist. Even if you are selected in a particular month, do keep entering because it is you might find you have a stronger story in a subsequent month with a better chance of being amongst the prizes. 

Any stories not written to the relevant month’s theme with be disqualified with no money refunded. You can write them whenever you like but if you submit them early or late, they will be disqualified.

The top three titles (not authors’ names – see ‘Judging’ below) for each month are announced the following month and, if your story doesn’t make it, you still have it to send elsewhere.

To enter, paste your story into  an email and make the message subjects @BeaconFlash 500 Entry', followed by your title and then send it to beaconflash500@gmail.com . Then pay the fee using the PayPal buttons shown under ‘Fees’ below. We can only accept your entry if payment has been received.

For 2025/26, Claire Steele and Jill Glenn will judge each round and the final shortlist. Judging is blind, meaning the judges will not know who wrote which story until the prize winners are announced. 

Please note that no author can be awarded more than one prize. This means that, if an entrant has more than one story ranked in the top eight, then only their best story will be selected. The best story by another author outside the eight will then be a winner. In effect, the best stories by the top eight authors will be awarded the prizes. The judge’s decisions are final. Results are posted on this website. 

• Round 1: First deadline: 30th September 2025  THEME -  Turning of the Tables
• Round 2: Second deadline: 31st October 2025 THEME -  Out of the Mist
• Round 3: Third deadline: 30th November 2025 THEME -  Get With the Programme
• Round 4: Fourth deadline: 31st December 2025  THEME -  The Fourth King
• Round 5: Fifth deadline: 31st January 2026  THEME -  Deja Vu 
• Round 6: Sixth deadline: 28th February 2026  THEME - Roses
• Round 7: Seventh deadline: 31st March 2026  THEME -  Going to the Mattress
• Round 8: Eighth deadline: 30th April 2026 THEME   -  Bun Fight
• Round 9: Ninth and final deadline: 31st May 2026 THEME  - Countdown

The eight winners (see ‘Prizes’ below) will be announced here between July-August. The top three stories will then be credited and published on the site.

A total of eight prizes will be awarded, including eight free passes to the following year’s BeaconLit Festival (worth £35 in 2024). Prizes are as follows:

First prize (the Creasey & Co BeaconFlash Prize): £75 plus up to 5,000 words critique* from the competition’s judge (worth £100) and free entry to the following year’s BeaconLit festival in July 2025 with publication on the BeaconLit website.

Second prize: £50 plus up to 4,000 words critique* (worth £80) and free entry to the following year’s BeaconLit festival, plus publication on the BeaconLit website.

Third prize: £25 plus up to 3,000 words critique* (worth £60) and free entry to the following year’s BeaconLit festival, plus publication on the BeaconLit website.

Five further prizes of free entry to the following year’s BeaconLit festival.

*the critique offered as prizes can made up of one or more short stories and / or a novel extract. 

• Must be previously unpublished stories.
• No genre restrictions but must be fiction. 
• No age limits. 
• Open worldwide but written in English only. BeaconFlash will not meet any additional costs associated with paying out prize money to overseas entrants. 
• No minimum word count but no more than 500 words excluding the title. Stories over 500 words will be disqualified without being read and no refund will be given.
• The theme for each month can be interpreted however suits but any story not following that theme will be disqualified and no refund will be given.
• Future or past months’ entries received in the incorrect month will be disqualified, with no refund given, and you won’t be able to enter it in the correct month.
• Only the first version of a submitted story will be accepted. Further ‘revisions’ will ignored. 
• Please do not make the theme for the month the title of your story. A good title should be part of the entry and carry some creative weight where the judging is tight. Several anonymised stories with the same title also carry a risk of confusion and administrative error.
• Please read your stories carefully as any spelling or careless mistakes will be marked down.
• No author will win more than one prize (see ‘How it Works’).
• The judge’s decisions are final and no correspondence regarding specific entries will be entered into. 
• The top three prize-winning stories will be published on the BeaconLit website. The other five can be sent elsewhere immediately, and the top three winning stories can be re-used six months after publication here (but note you will need to tell the prospective market that the stories have already been published). 

Our long-standing judge, Morgen Bailey, stepped back from the role at the end of the 2024/25 ‘season’, but we are delighted to announce that the BeaconFlash judges for 2025/26 will be Claire Steele and Jill Glenn of Constellations Press, a local independent publisher, dedicated to bold and original voices.

Claire Steele trained as an editor with Phaidon Press and has worked as a freelance editor, university lecturer, creative writing tutor and mentor. She runs Constellations Creative, a bespoke ten-month writing course.

Jill Glenn has worked as a features writer, magazine editor and editorial consultant for over 30 years. She is currently writing a novel and working on a collection of short stories.

Claire and Jill also run Constellations Literary Consultancy, which offers editing, mentoring and author support services.

If you have any general queries about the competition, please email us at beaconflash500@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you.