Our annual Kickstarter Fundraising campaign for the in-person festival Oct 4-6th in Portland, OR and our separate streaming event Oct 18-22nd on Eventive is open now!

In the Kickstarter:

• You can pledge for the in-person event which takes place October 4-6th on all 3 screens of the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR
• You can also pledge for Deluxe tickets the streaming event October 18-22nd. Available to stream worldwide. (Plain streaming tickets will be available later.)
• Regular general admission tickets for the Portland event will be available soon through the Hollywood Theatre and the HPLFF website

Pledge for VIP Experiences, meet our Guest of Honor Aaron Moorhead (Resolution, The Endless, Synchronic), see 50+ short and feature films, attend author readings, panel discussions, live performances, and more!

BACK THE CAMPAIGN before it ends on Sunday, September 22nd, 8 pm Pacific Time.

An Annual Festival Tradition

Each year since 2014 we have held a Lovecraftian MicroFiction Contest, taking entries from authors from all over the world! The winning entries are published in a small book with the Challenge From Beyond for that year. We began this as a way to engage and include more creators in the Cosmic Horror genre, and the proceeds support the Festival directly. 

What is it?

Micro Fiction is very short prose fiction. Smaller than Flash Fiction but bigger than a haiku. Usually 500 words or less. There are some famous short short stories, including Hemingway’s - For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

For our Lovecraftian Micro Fiction contest, we look for Cosmic Horror, Weird Fiction, or Speculative or Science Fiction with a Horror twist, as well as horror or ghost stories with an uncanny tone.

According to Lovecraft, “The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”

Lovecraft himself wrote some extremely short fiction. "Memory," "What the Moon Brings," and "Ex Oblivione" are examples. Micro Fiction is a fun way to explore a genre or topic in a challenging way.

Can you write a complete story in this limited amount of space? By complete story, we mean a character, situation, beginning, middle, and end. Not a vignette, not a character study, but a story.

What do I get if I win?

• The winning authors will be published in a book with the current year's Challenge From Beyond! Winning authors will receive 2 complimentary copies of the book.
• The overall winner will be invited to participate in the 2024 Challenge From Beyond round robin story project with some of the finest modern Lovecraftian Authors! (Past authors include Molly Tanzer, Joseph Pulver, Sr., Wilum Pugmire, Nick Mamatas, Ross Lockhart, Cody Goodfellow, Pete Rawlik, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Gemma Files, Lee Zumpe, Selena Chambers, Nadia Bulkin, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Tim Pratt.) Participation is not mandatory if you win.

• The overall winner, if planning to attend this year's H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR, will have an author reading slot reserved for them so they can read their story at the festival! (this is optional)

How to Submit

You can submit up to 5 entries by going to the contest entry page on ArkhamBazaar.com

Rules, Terms and Conditions

• Stories must be 500 words or less. Entries of more than 500 words will be disqualified with no refund and will not be read. Please check your word count before submitting! Most word processing programs have a built in word counter. There are also web sites for this, like wordcounter.net
• All entries must be English language.
• Stories should not require any special formatting besides normal paragraph breaks. We're looking for content, not visual formatting.
• All entries must be written by you. You may not submit another author’s work. Your original stories only, please.
• Your entry must contain your legal name, your author name (if different), and story title.
   
• FILE FORMAT should be a text file (.txt) or rich text format (.rtf)

• Your file name should be "your name-MFC2024-#of entries". For example if you submit 2 stories, your file name should look like this: JaneDoe-MFC2024-2.rtf

• Deadline for entries is AUGUST 9, 2024. Winning entries will be notified no later than SEPTEMBER 4, 2024
• The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® & CthulhuConTM reserves the right to publish the winning entries in a limited edition book with the current year's Challenge From Beyond, which may be sold to cover printing costs. All submissions may be used for promotional purposes. Authors of the top 10 entries will receive 2 complimentary copies of the book, for which shipping in the US is free, and outside the US may incur a small shipping fee. Additional copies will be available for purchase.
• Overall winner will be invited to participate in the 2025 Challenge From Beyond round robin story project, which will take place in summer 2025.

Dennis Paoli, the screenwriter of landmark films based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft like Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Castle Freak, as well as horror classics like Ghoulies 2 and Body Snatchers, is joining us October 6-8 to present his newest film Suitable Flesh, based on H. P. Lovecraft's "The Thing on The Doorstep." In the wake of the Writer's Guild of America union strike, which saw new union contracts finally successfully negotiated after a heroic 148 days on the picket line, we're thrilled to host the writer of all of our favorite movies. Dennis worked hand in hand with director Stuart Gordon to bring Lovecraftian visions to life, and audience members who get to see Suitable Flesh will have serious resonator flashbacks to these classic works, largely due to Dennis's script, as well as the loving work of director Joe Lynch and producers Barbara Crampton (Dr. Catherine McMichaels in From Beyond) and Brian Yuzna (the Re-Animator series). This film is a serious homage to the erotic horror that many of us young Lovecraft fans in the 80s cut our teeth on. Dennis will be at the festival to introduce both screenings of Suitable Flesh (Friday, opening night, October 6th at 9pm, and the encore screening on Sunday, October 8th at 9:30pm), as well as a still to be announced classic Lovecraftian film. 

SUITABLE FLESH directed by Joe Lynch, adapted by Dennis Paoli (screenwriter of RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND) from Lovecraft’s story “The Thing on The Doorstep”, starring Barbara Crampton and Heather Graham, will be making it’s Providence, RI premiere at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival at the Columbus Theatre, August 18-20 (GET TICKETS HERE), and its Pacific Northwest premiere at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR on October 6-8, AND playing the new HPLFF in Mobile, AL on November 3-5! How’s that for a series of premieres for this NEW CLASSIC!

This film feels like an old-school Stuart Gordon film, due in large part to the screenplay by Dennis Paoli, but has a beautiful neo-noir atmosphere courtesy of director Joe Lynch and cinematographer David Matthews. Lovingly shepherded by producer Barbara Crampton (who starred in several of Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft films), this is a love letter to Lovecraft fans who long for the kind of sexy horror most of us cut our teeth on. It takes Lovecraft’s story, flips the script so that Upton and Derby are women, and ratchets up the potential of the tale to erotic,  sinister, and frankly insane heights.

In the film, successful psychiatrist Elizabeth Derby (Heather Graham) has brutally murdered her young patient Asa Waite (Judah Lewis). Locked up in a psych ward, she recounts to her friend Dr. Daniella Upton (Barbara Crampton) an insane, obsessive tale of erotic attraction, out-of-body experiences, ancient curses, grisly deaths and unspeakable evil. The things Elizabeth has felt, seen and done have destroyed her marriage, ruined her reputation, left bodies in her wake, and led her to a ‘kill or be killed’ desperation. If Daniella doesn’t believe her now, more deaths will follow, and Elizabeth will be forever lost. But who would believe such a mind-bending story? And worse, if it is all true, who will be left to tell it?

Barbara Crampton as Dr. Upton comforts Heather Graham’s Elizabeth Derby in the psych ward.

Get Tickets to the Providence event, August 18-20th.