The Escape Pod Flash Fiction Contest 2022 will be starting its voting period on May 15, 2022. We received a total of eighty-eight submissions. We split the stories into eight groups of eleven, and authors have not been told what group their story appears in.
The top three winners in each group will go into the semi-finals, where there'll be four groups of six stories each. The top three stories in each semi-final group will go to the finals, where there will be one group of twelve stories. The top three stories in this group will be the overall winners.
In any of the groups, if there is a tie for third place, the tied stories will all ascend to the next round. If there is a tie in the final round, the editorial staff will decide whether to consider all tied stories as winners or whether to hold a tie-breaker round.
In each group, you may pick up to three stories. You may vote for fewer than three.
VOTING RULES:
1. This contest is being run by Phoebe Barton, J.M. Coster, and Marcus Tsong. If one of the moderators submitted an entry, they will not use any of their moderator abilities in the contest forums without disqualifying their entry.
2. Stories are posted anonymously. Authors of the stories that did not advance will be revealed at the end of each stage. All author names will be revealed at the end of the contest. Please do not try to publicly guess at the identities of the authors. Those posts will be deleted and the poster will be warned. As an author, please do not try to garner outside support through blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. If we discover that an author has revealed their authorship of a story before it is allowed (in the contest threads or elsewhere), that is grounds for disqualification of the story.
3. As always, constructive discussion is encouraged about all stories posted in this contest. The key word here is constructive. Normal forum rules remain in place. Be civil and respectful. That's our one rule. Rude comments and unconstructive negativity will be deleted or edited, and the offending poster will be warned. Repeated poor behaviour could result in being banned from the forums and/or your story being removed from the contest.
4. Creating multiple accounts to vote for a story will get you banned from the forums and your story removed from the contest. If you are sharing a computer, living space, or router with someone else who will be voting or creating an account, make sure to message one of the contest-runners. Failure to do so may result in various adverse effects such as account deletion and/or banning.
5. It is perfectly fine to vote for your own story. In fact, we encourage all authors to do so because that levels the playing field. Only avoid voting for your own story if you genuinely believe other stories should win over it, not just to be polite, please.
Please read and re-read these rules before asking questions.
VOTING SCHEDULE:
Group 1 will open Sunday, May 15 and close Sunday, May 22.
Group 2 will open Tuesday, May 17 and close Tuesday, May 24.
Group 3 will open Thursday, May 19 and close Thursday, May 26.
Group 4 will open Saturday, May 21 and close Saturday, May 28.
Group 5 will open Monday, May 23 and close Monday, May 30.
Group 6 will open Wednesday, May 25 and close Wednesday, June 1.
Group 7 will open Friday, May 27 and close Friday, June 3.
Group 8 will open Sunday, May 29 and close Sunday, June 5.
To answer questions that have arisen, Groups 2-8 will be made available for reading two days before they open for voting.
The semi-final groups will be posted on Tuesday, June 7 and close Tuesday, June 14.
The final group will start at Thursday, June 16 and close Thursday, June 23.
Happy reading and voting!
Edited because I don't know where that week-long gap around Group 5 came from. But it was a typo.