Derringer Awards Policies

 

Derringer Awards Policies

2027 Derringer Awards Coordinator: Mark Schuster

2027 Assistant Derringer Awards Coordinator: Mindy Kinnaman

 

ABOUT THE SHORT MYSTERY FICTION SOCIETY

 

The Short Mystery Fiction Society is a group of writers, readers, editors, publishers, and others dedicated to the promotion and celebration of mystery and crime short stories. Membership is always free. You are welcome to join here.

 

ABOUT THE DERRINGERS

 

Since 1998, the Short Mystery Fiction Society has awarded the annual Derringers—named after the popular pocket pistol—to outstanding published stories and people who've greatly advanced or supported the form.

As of 2004, an annually-elected Coordinator administers the Derringer Awards process.

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)
• Best Anthology

 

The winners are announced on May 1. Winners receive awards that are presented during Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. To donate toward the cost of the awards, contact the Derringer Coordinator.

As of 2009, a committee of the sitting SMFS Officers and two regular members selects a living writer whose outstanding body of short fiction merits the Society's Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer. This committee, the Golden Derringer Committee, also has the option of inducting a deceased writer into the Hall of Fame and/or presenting the Silver Derringer for Editorial Excellence and/or the Bronze Derringer for Exceptional Service.

For the purpose of forming this committee, and at all other places in these policies, “SMFS Officers” is understood to refer to all four elected positions in SMFS: the President, Vice President, Derringer Coordinator, and Assistant Derringer Coordinator.

The sections below describe the process to be followed in administering the Derringer Awards each year.

SUBMISSIONS (January 1 - January 30)

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 Derringer Coordinator and Assistant Derringer Coordinator, who have authority over the Derringer process but no Derringer eligibility,

Members who joined the society no later than December 31 of the previous calendar year 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 Derringer Awards, a submission must be:

a) a mystery or crime story up to 20,000 words, and
b) originally published in English during the calendar year immediately preceding the awards process,
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 (in the case of periodicals), copyright date (in the case of books) or date of first posting (in the case of online publications), which must be no later than December 31 in the previous calendar year.

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 of the previous calendar year may submit up to TWO (2) eligible stories in any combination of standard publication or self-publication.

Serving SMFS Officers are not eligible to win awards, and may not submit stories by themselves or others. 

Editors may submit as follows:

THREE (3) editorial submissions from venues that published up to 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 of the previous calendar year 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 include only up to TWO (2) of their own stories among their total submissions.

An editor may decide not to submit their venue's stories. They cannot prevent other members of the Society from submitting them unless they 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 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 as separate lines in the body of the submission email:

• your name
• the author’s contact information (email address preferred);
• 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 publication date, which must fall in the previous calendar year;
• where the story was originally published;
• the URL to the published story if applicable;
• (optional) URL(s) to validate the story title, author, publication date, and venue.

The file name should match the title of the story.

Again, failure to include any of this information will result in the story being removed from consideration.

Send stories and questions to smfs.derringerawards@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 verify that stories submitted have been received. If any story submitted does not appear in an update and has met the listed eligibility requirements, follow up with the Coordinator at smfs.derringerawards@gmail.com.

All submissions must be received by midnight (Eastern time) January 30. January 31 will be used to prep submissions to be sent to the judges.

JUDGING (January 1–March 30)

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 a minimum of 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 volunteer to judge by contacting the Coordinator directly by December 31 of the previous calendar year.

Volunteers may specify which category they wish to judge, subject to availability, but they cannot judge categories including stories they wrote, submitted, 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 confirms 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.

The Coordinator has the discretion to make adjustments (i.e. number of stories, number of judges, schedule, etc.) to make the competition work smoothly, as long as each story is read and scored by a minimum of three judges and the finalists are announced on schedule (see below). Coordinators are encouraged to share their specific methods and procedures with their successors.

SCORING

By longstanding precedent, judges score each story on a 40-point scale, with 40 representing the best possible story that could be written and 0 representing a deeply flawed story that probably shouldn’t have been published in the first place. The Coordinator may provide judges with guidelines or suggestions for how to arrive at a score, but it is ultimately the responsibility of each judge to determine what score they feel each story merits.

Alternate judges in a category may be called upon if any of the primary judges are 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.

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)

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)

On April 1, the Coordinator uploads the finalist manuscripts to Shortmystery's Files section. The files containing the stories should carry this notice:

These stories are posted for the sole purpose of being reviewed by Derringer voters. They may not be shared with others. They may not be downloaded to any other account or device unless they are immediately deleted from that account or device after being read.

The Coordinator then creates polls on the discussion board to conduct the vote. All members who joined by December 31 of the previous calendar year are eligible to vote. Members who join between January 1 and April 30 of the current year cannot participate in the Derringer judging or voting process..

Serving SMFS Officers have the ability to see running vote totals during the voting period. Because of this, and in order to avoid any impression that they may be trying to influence the outcome, they may not themselves vote.

April 30 is reserved for the Coordinator to verify the poll results and prepare the announcement of winners. The Coordinator then removes the manuscripts from Shortmystery's Files section.

WINNERS ANNOUNCED (May 1)

On May 1, the Coordinator announces the Winners on the SMFS Groups.io discussion board and announces them publicly on SMFS’s blog.

AWARD PRESENTATION AT BOUCHERCON

When possible, the honorees receive their Derringer awards during Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. Any winners who are unable to attend will receive their awards by mail.

DERRINGER AWARD FOR BEST ANTHOLOGY

Beginning with the awards presented in 2025, the SMFS also presents a Derringer Award for Best Anthology.  This was initially  done on a two-year trial basis. By vote of the membership, the Best Anthology award was made a permanent part of the Derringers beginning 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. 

Rationale

The four previously existing competitive Derringer Awards are presented for individual 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 and procedures.  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 previous calendar year.  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.

Volumes meeting these qualifications are not disqualified for also including additional material (for example, poetry or essays).

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 by December 31 of the previous calendar year may submit publications for the award.  Each member is permitted to make one submission.  Submissions will be accepted from January 1 to January 30, following procedures as directed by the serving Derringer Coordinator.

Serving SMFS officers may not submit anthologies, just as they are not permitted to submit stories.

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, in order to permit SMFS members time to acquire and read the anthologies if they wish to do so.

Making Submissions

Include "[Derringers Anthology]" and the anthology’s title in the subject line.

Submitters must include the following information as separate lines in the body of the submission email:

• your name
• anthology title
• editor(s) name(s)
• publisher
• publication date
• URL to validate eligibility (optional)

Send your submissions and questions to smfs.derringerawards@gmail.com.

Voting

Voting will be held from April 1 to April 29, 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 of the current year allowed one vote.

Serving SMFS Officers have the ability to see running vote totals during the voting period. Because of this, and in order to avoid any impression that they may be trying to influence the outcome, they may not themselves vote.

The Derringer coordinator will tabulate the votes and announce the winner on May 1, 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.

 

 

Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Procedure

(Updated 6/29/26)

 

In 1999, Edward D. Hoch received the Society's first Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, followed by Henry Slesar (2000) and John Lutz (2001).

At his passing in 2008, with more than 900 published mystery & crime stories to his credit, Ed Hoch was considered the most prolific writer of the form. With the permission of his wife, Patricia Hoch, the Society resumed giving the Golden Derringer in 2009, renamed the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer. Its first recipient was Clark Howard.

The Society further honored Hoch in 2010, with induction to its Short Mystery Fiction Hall of Fame.

The Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer procedure was drafted by 2008–10 Vice President Jim Doherty and ratified by group vote. See Derringer Award results for the full record of recipients and acceptance remarks.

1) The Short Mystery Fiction Society (hereafter, the "SMFS") shall give an annual award for Lifetime Achievement, to be called the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer (hereafter, "the award").

2) The recipient of the award shall be selected by a special committee, hereafter “The Golden Derringer Committee.”

3) The committee shall consist of the following members:

a) The SMFS President, who shall serve as the committee's chair.
b) The SMFS Vice-President
c) The SMFS Derringer Coordinator
d) The SMFS Assistant Derringer Awards Coordinator

All of the above committee members shall serve for the duration of their terms of office.

In addition, there shall be two more committee members selected:

e) A Permanent Member, who shall serve for life or for as long as the member chooses to serve. The permanent member should be selected on the basis of long-standing membership in the SMFS (if possible a founding or charter member should be chosen), and broad knowledge of the mystery genre in general and the mystery short story in particular. The permanent member's function, in addition to being a voting member, is, first, to provide some long-term continuity to the committee, and, second, to bring to the committee a sense of historical perspective and institutional memory. The permanent member shall be proposed by the SMFS President, based on suggestions from members and the President's judgment, and shall be ratified by the general membership. As of 2026, the Permanent Member is Josh Pachter.

f) A member selected from the general membership, chosen at random from among those rank-and-file members volunteering for the position. This member shall serve for one year and shall ensure that the rank-and-file membership has some say in the selection.

4) a) The criteria for selecting a recipient should be having produced an impressive body of short crime fiction, and having made a major impact on the genre.
b) The award should be reserved for writers, not editors, who may be honored by other awards (see below). Notwithstanding this, if a candidate, who is a writer, is also well-known as an editor, and his/her editing is part of what has made a major impact on the genre, the committee shall be free to consider this aspect of the candidate's career in making the selection.
c) Candidates who are better-known as novelists than as short story writers, but who have nevertheless produced an impressive body of short fiction, shall not be barred from consideration because they are primarily perceived as novelists.
d) The lack of recent productivity shall not be regarded as a bar to consideration, as long as the work produced when the candidate was active meets the criteria described above.
e) Only living candidates should be considered, with the exception that if a candidate was alive at the time deliberations began, but died while they were going on, in such a case the award might be given posthumously.

5) The deliberations of the committee shall be kept strictly confidential, and all members must agree to this, each year, prior to the beginning of deliberations.

6) Nominations from the general membership shall be encouraged. Nominations shall take the form of short essays of no more than 200 words, sent to the SMFS President, in his/her capacity as the chairman of the committee, OFF-LIST. It should not be construed, however, that the candidate who has the most nominations, or who is the subject of the best-written nomination, shall be chosen. The committee members shall seriously consider nominations from the general membership, but are free to ultimately choose any candidate they consider worthy, even if no one from the general membership nominated that particular candidate. In other words, nominations from the general membership are suggestions, not mandates.

The President is responsible for maintaining a file of nominations which have been received from the membership for writers who have not yet actually received the Golden Derringer. This file is to be provided to the other members of the Golden Derringer committee at the beginning of deliberations, updated with the addition of new nominations received, and further updated by removing nominations for the winning recipient once they have been chosen. At the time of leaving office, the President will deliver the file to their successor.

The Golden Derringer is to be presented annually. In addition, the Golden Derringer committee may choose at its discretion, once each year, to present any or all of the following awards:

·         The Hall of Fame: this recognition, established in 2010, is to honor writers who have been deceased for no less than ten years, who were not recipients of the Golden Derringer, and who made a significant positive impact on the history of the crime and mystery short story.

·         The Silver Derringer for Editorial Excellence: this award recognizes an individual who has made an extraordinary impact on mystery and crime short fiction through their editing.

·         The Bronze Derringer for Exceptional Service: this award is created and included here in order to give the Golden Derringer committee the flexibility to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of mystery and crime short fiction in roles other than writing or editing.

The winner of the Golden Derringer, along with, if applicable, the recipient of the Hall of Fame, Silver Derringer, and/or Bronze Derringer, will be announced by the Derringer Coordinator on May 1 of each year, along with the winners of that year’s competitive Derringers.