The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival has long served as a gathering point for writers whose work engages with voice, place, and the dramatic possibilities of language. Its Very Short Fiction Contest extends that mission into the compressed form, asking writers to achieve in a few pages what Williams himself pursued on stage: the sudden illumination of character under pressure. The contest is administered by the Festival and judged by a single writer of established reputation, which gives the process a clear editorial throughline rather than a committee's compromise. For the 2026–2027 cycle, the judge is Marguerite Sheffer, whose debut collection, The Man in the Banana Trees, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the PEN America Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her work has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Epiphany, BOMB, The Cosmic Background, and LitHub, and she is a founding member of Third Lantern Lit, a New Orleans writing collective. Her presence as judge signals an openness to speculative and formally adventurous short fiction, as well as to work rooted in a sense of place. The winner receives a $500 grand prize, a VIP pass to the Festival valued at $600, a public reading at the next Festival, publication in the French Quarter Journal, a photo and bio on the Festival's website for approximately one year, and an interview feature in the Festival's newsletter. The entry fee is $10. The deadline is October 16, 2026. These are the terms as stated; writers should consult the Festival's official guidelines for the full submission protocol.