The WSFA Small Press Award was inaugurated by the Washington Science Fiction Association in 2007. The award is open to works of imaginative literature (e.g. science fiction, fantasy, horror) published in English for the first time in the previous calendar year. Furthermore, the Small Press Award is limited to short fiction—works under 20,000 words in length—that was published by a small press. The nominees are narrowed down by a panel elected by the WSFA membership, and these finalists are then judged by the entire WSFA membership to select a winner. Throughout the process, the author and publisher of each story are kept anonymous.
The winning story is announced at Capclave, the WSFA convention held in the Washington, D.C. area each October.