2026 Assistant Derringer Awards Coordinator: Alex Mattingly
Since 1998, the Short Mystery Fiction Society has awarded the annual Derringers—named after the popular pocket pistol—to outstanding published stories and individuals / persons / writers who have greatly advanced or supported the form.
As of 2004, an annually-elected Coordinator administers the Derringer Awards process. Detailed below, the process runs January 1–April 30 and recognizes stories published the previous year.
The current regular Derringer Awards are:
- Best Flash Story (Up to 1,000 words)
- Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words)
- Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words)
- Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words)
As of 2009, a committee of the sitting SMFS Officers, Derringer Coordinator, and two regular members selects a living writer whose outstanding body of short fiction merits the Society's Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement.
The winning short stories are announced on May 1. Winners receive medals that are presented during Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. To donate toward the cost of the medals, contact the Derringer Coordinator.
SUBMISSIONS (January 1–30, 2026)
Who may submit?
With the exceptions of the Society President and Vice President, who have neither authority over the Derringer process nor Derringer eligibility, and the Awards Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator, who have authority over the Derringer process but no Derringer eligibility,
Members who joined the society no later than December 31, 2025 may submit eligible stories written by anyone, including themselves
and
Editors of venues featuring mystery or crime short stories may submit eligible stories published in those venues.
Story eligibility
To be considered for the 2026 Derringer Awards, a submission must be:
b) originally published in 2025 in English,
c) published in a single publication, periodical, collection, or anthology, and
d) available in print and/or electronic form.
e) The submission may originate from any country or location.
Publication Date:
A story’s eligibility is determined by the venue’s cover or front-page date, which must be no later than December 31, 2025.
In the case of self-published stories, a publishing platform, such as Amazon Kindle, must be used to establish story availability, and it must have a publication date stamp. Stories appearing on a website must have a visible first publication date to be considered.
Submission Limits
Any member who joins SMFS by December 31, 2025, may submit up to TWO (2) eligible stories in any combination of standard publication or self-publication.
Editors may submit as follows:
THREE (3) editorial submissions from venues that published fewer than 25 eligible stories during the year;
FOUR (4) editorial submissions from venues that published 26–50 eligible stories during the year;
FIVE (5) editorial submissions from venues that published 51–75 eligible stories during the year;
SIX (6) editorial submissions from venues that published more than 75 stories during the year.
For multi-editor venues, the editors split the number of submissions determined above.
(e.g. 4 editorial submissions are allowed from a four-editor venue featuring 26 eligible stories. If one editor submits 4 stories, the other three editors may not submit any.)
Editors of multiple venues:
THREE (3) editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total up to 25 eligible stories;
FOUR (4) editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of 26–50 eligible stories;
FIVE (5) editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of 51–75 eligible stories;
SIX (6) editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of more than 75 stories.
The number of submissions allowed from any one venue is bound by the venue's total eligible stories.
(E.g. An editor who worked on 100 stories across 5 venues would be allowed 6 total submissions. If one of the venues featured only ten stories, the editor could submit 3 from it, but then would have only 3 submissions left to split among 90 stories and 4 venues.)
Editors who became members of the Society by December 31, 2025, may submit, in addition to their editorial submissions, two eligible stories from venues other than their own.
If an editor is responsible for a publication containing stories they wrote, that editor may submit only up to TWO (2) of their own stories.
An editor may decide not to submit his/her venue's stories. S/he cannot prevent other members of the Society from submitting them UNLESS s/he acquired controlling rights over the stories.
Format and Address
Submissions that do not adhere to the rules will be rejected. Time permitting, an effort will be made by Derringer officials to notify submitters of the rejection and permit resubmission under the rules. However, this is not guaranteed, particularly in the closing days of the submission period.
The 2025 Derringer competition uses William Shunn's industry-standard layout linked to below, except that the manuscript should:
a) use 12-point Times New Roman font,
b) be in .doc or .docx file type, and
c) the personal contact information normally included at top left of page one must be omitted.
William Shunn's short-story formatting page can be found here. Remember, the personal contact information at top left must not be included. If included, the manuscript will be rejected.
Please include the number of words in your submission as shown in the format.
You MUST remove all of your personal information from the manuscripts. This includes, for example, the information everywhere within the body of the document, in the header or footer, or in the document’s properties.
Removing the information about the author is the submitter’s responsibility and failure to do so, or to follow the other formatting guidelines outlined here, will result in the story being removed from consideration.
When submitting your stories, please include "[Derringers (+category)]" and the story’s title in the subject line. This will make it easy to spot your submission so that nothing is lost. Example: [Derringers Flash] The Case of the Sample Title.
Submitters must include the following information in the body of the submission email:
- the author’s contact information;
- whether you are submitting as SMFS member, publication editor, or both;
- the story title, author's name or pseudonym used for the story;
- the story’s 2025 publication date as well as where and when the story was originally published; and
- the URL to the published story if applicable.
Again, failure to include any of this information will result in the story being removed from consideration.
Send stories and questions to derringerawards.2026@gmail.com.
Anyone submitting someone else's work must have and is presumed to have acquired the proper permissions from the author. By submitting someone else's work, a submitter assumes responsibility for having the proper permissions.
The Coordinator posts updates of the stories received throughout the January submission period. This avoids duplicate submissions and serves to check that stories submitted are received. If any story submitted does not appear in an update and has met the listed eligibility requirements, follow up with the Coordinator at derringerawards.2026@gmail.com.
All submissions must be received by midnight (Eastern time) January 30, 2026. January 31 will be used to prep submissions to be sent to the judges.
JUDGING (January 1–March 30, 2026)
The Coordinator may begin the judging process as early as January 1 for any or all categories. To facilitate judging during the January submission window, the Coordinator may bundle accepted story submissions and make the bundles available to the judges. Judges will receive all assigned stories on or before February 1.
The Coordinator assigns eligible submissions to award categories by length:
- Best Flash Story (Up to 1,000 words)
- Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words)
- Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words)
- Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words)
Each category requires three primary and one alternate SMFS members to judge the category down to five finalists. To protect their identities and the privacy of the judging process, members sign up to judge by contacting the coordinator directly by December 31, 2025.
Volunteers may specify which category they wish to judge, subject to availability, but they cannot judge categories including stories they wrote or published as an editor. The Coordinator keeps this in mind when assigning judges, but any erroneously-assigned judges should inform the Coordinator, who decides how to rectify the error.
Before sending the Derringer submissions to the judges, the Coordinator ensures the manuscripts show neither the author's name nor the details of publication. This is not to mandate blind judging, but to encourage open-minded judging. Judges may recognize authors and publication details but are nevertheless expected to score all stories in their rightfully assigned categories regardless.
If the load of stories appears to be a problem, the Coordinator has the discretion to make adjustments (i.e. number of stories, number of judges, schedule, etc.) to make the competition work smoothly.
SCORING
The Scoring Guidelines below have been used for over a decade to provide a measure of commonality among different judges' approaches. They are not litmus tests to be applied in a cookie-cutter manner by all judges to all submissions, but are rather a source for general areas of consideration that can be used to the extent considered appropriate in conjunction with a judge's individual experience, acumen, and skills.
Using the Scoring Guidelines below as desired, each judge rates each of the four larger general areas of:
- OVERALL WRITING
- CHARACTERS
- PLOT
- OVERALL FEELING.
A judge assigns each of these areas a score of 1 to 10. The judge should note these individual scores but need not formally record them. The judge then adds the four individual areas' scores together to arrive at a cumulative score of 4 - 40. For each submission, each judge in the category reports this single, cumulative score on the scoring sheet provided by the Derringer Coordinator.
If, at any point during the reading of any entry, a judge concludes that the impression formed thus far is final and without reasonable expectation of change regardless of what remains to be read and evaluated, the judge is not bound to continue reading that entry.
SCORING GUIDELINES
1. OVERALL WRITING
- How well does the writing grab and hold your attention?
- Do the prose style and dialogue serve the story well?
- Does the story's setting or overall atmosphere draw you in?
- Does the story rise above others in the category for the way it's written?
2. CHARACTERS
- Are they well developed and convincing?
- Is there good interaction between characters?
- How well does the writer handle viewpoints or inhabit each character?
- Do the characters serve the story well?
3. PLOT
- How well are the story events structured from beginning to end?
- Does the story rise above others in the category for its plot?
- Does the story set up and then meet or cleverly subvert expectations?
4. OVERALL FEELING
- Did you have a good reaction to the story not described by the other elements?
- How memorable was the story?
The alternate judge in a category is called if one of the primary judges is unable to serve to completion. The alternate will be asked to read and evaluate only the entries that the primary judge was unable to assess.
All stories must be scored and returned to the Coordinator by March 30, 2026.
March 31 is reserved for the Coordinator to verify the outcome of scoring. For each Derringer category, the five stories with the highest averages become the Finalists.
FINALISTS ANNOUNCED (April 1, 2026)
On April 1, the Coordinator announces the Finalists on the SMFS Groups.io discussion board and announces them publicly on SMFS’s blog.
VOTING (April 1–29, 2026)
On April 1, the Coordinator uploads the finalist manuscripts to Shortmystery's Files section and creates polls to conduct the vote. All members who join prior to January 1 of 2026 are eligible to vote. Members who join between January 1 and April 30 of 2026 cannot participate in the Derringer judging or voting process. During the month of April, these Members may read the finalist manuscripts, but will not be able to vote or post to the SMFS list.
April 30 is reserved for the Coordinator to verify the poll results and prepare the announcement of winners. The Coordinator then deletes the manuscripts from Shortmystery's Files section.
WINNERS ANNOUNCED (May 1, 2026)
On May 1, the Coordinator announces the Winners on the SMFS Groups.io discussion board and announces them publicly on SMFS’s blog.
MEDAL PRESENTATION AT BOUCHERCON (October 2026)
When possible the five honorees receive their Derringer medals during Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. If you'd like to donate toward future medals, please contact the Current Derringer Coordinator. Any winners who are unable to attend will receive their medals by mail.
NEW: DERRINGER AWARD FOR BEST ANTHOLOGY
Beginning with the awards presented in 2025, the SMFS will also present a Derringer Award for Best Anthology. This is being done on a two-year trial basis. If there are no significant problems or objections from the membership, the award will become permanent with the awards presented in 2027.
Because this award is fundamentally different from those presented to individual stories, a different procedure is required, and is described below. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, this description uses the dates which will apply for the initial presentation of the award (covering works published in 2024), but these specific dates should obviously be updated for each successive year.
Rationale
The four existing competitive Derringer Awards are presented for short stories, and the finalists in each category are determined by a group of volunteer judges. This model is not practical for a Best Anthology award which evaluates full-length books, not stories under 20,000 words. No small group of volunteers can be expected to read all of the eligible anthologies in a given year in order to determine a list of finalists or choose a winner. It also will not be possible, as is done with the short story finalists, to make the finalist texts available to the entire membership of the SMFS for free. A Best Anthology Derringer must therefore be governed by a different set of rules. Those described here are closely modeled on the process by which the Anthony Awards are presented.
Eligibility
To be eligible, an anthology of mystery and crime short stories must have been published in English, in print and/or electronic form, during the calendar year in question. It must contain stories, of any length up to 20,000 words, by at least five different authors. Collections (that is, a selection of works by a single author) are not eligible. A minimum of seventy-five percent of the anthology’s contents (calculated as a percentage of the number of stories, not number of words) must have been previously unpublished in English. For the purposes of eligibility, new translations of stories originally published in languages other than English will be considered as previously unpublished.
Anthologies edited by currently serving officers of SMFS are not eligible. Anthologies containing stories by serving SMFS officers retain eligibility, in fairness to the editors and other contributors.
Submissions
SMFS members who join the Society prior to January 1, 2026, may submit 2025 publications for the award. Each member is permitted to make two submissions. Submissions will be accepted from January 1, 2026, to January 30, 2026, following procedures as directed by the serving Derringer Coordinator.
The Derringer Coordinator will tabulate the submissions, and the five anthologies receiving the most submissions will be declared the finalists (in the event of a tie, and only in the event of a tie, there may be more than five finalists).
The Derringer Coordinator will announce the finalists on February 1, 2026, in order to permit SMFS members time to acquire and read the anthologies if they wish to do so.
Making Submissions
Include only one submission per email. Include "[Derringers Anthology]" and the anthology’s title in the subject line.
Submitters must include the following information in the body of the submission email:
- your name
- anthology title
- editor(s) name(s)
- publisher
- publication date
Send your submissions and questions to derringerawards.2026@gmail.com
Voting
Voting will be held from April 1, 2026, to April 29, 2026, at the same time as the voting for the other competitive Derringers. As with those categories, voting will be via a poll on the SMFS groups.io site, with each member who joined prior to January 1, 2026, allowed one vote.
The Derringer coordinator will tabulate the votes and announce the winner on May 1, 2026, along with the winners of the other competitive Derringer categories. The award will be presented to the editor(s) of the winning anthology, if possible at that fall’s Bouchercon.
