Submission Sunday 9.25.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Vela Second Nonficiton Contest (Deadline November 1 – $1000)

We’re excited to announce Vela’s Second Nonfiction Contest, which will be judged by Claire Vaye Watkins. Contest opens September 15, 2016 and closes November 1. Winner will receive $1000 and publication.

We’re looking for creative nonfiction, written by women, with a strong voice, a compelling narrative, and/or a powerful driving question. We’re interested in a wide range of essays, including literary journalism, personal essays, memoir, and experimental essays. We are not a “women’s magazine,” and are not looking for work that is written solely for a female audience.

Fugue Literary Journal Call for Submissions 

Begun in 1990 by the faculty in the Department of English at University of Idaho, Fugue has continuously published poetry, plays, fiction, essays, and interviews from established and emerging writers biannually. We take pride in the work we print, writers we publish, and the presentation of each and every issue. Working in collaboration with local and national artists, our covers display some of the finest art from photography and digital art to ink drawings and oil paintings. We believe that each issue is a print and digital artifact of the deepest engagement with our culture, and we make it our personal goal that the writing we select and presentation of each issue reflect the reverence we have for art and letters.

To honor the respect we have for our contributors and in spite of financial challenges, Fugue pays for the work we publish. In addition to a copy of the journal in which their work appears, contributors are also compensated for every piece we accept. Fugue is managed and edited by graduate students in the English and Creative Writing Programs at University of Idaho in Northern Idaho, one of the nation's most beautiful regions covered with wilderness areas, mountains, rivers, and lakes.

Tin House Call for Submissions (Deadline September 30)

Starting in 2016, we will accept unsolicited submissions twice a year: in September and March. As always, our summer and winter issues are not themed. We consider each submission for all upcoming issues regardless of theme. If you wish to be considered for a particular theme, please make a note in your cover letter.

Tin House is currently accepting unsolicited submissions for our next THREE issues:

Spring 2017: Rehab. Pub date March 1, 2017. Accepting unsolicited submissions September 2016.
Summer 2017: Open, non-themed. Pub date June 1, 2017. Accepting unsolicited submissions September 2016.
Fall 2017: Theme: True Crime. Pub date September 1, 2017. Accepting unsolicited submissions September 2016.

Lost & Found essays champion books that have been overlooked or culturally neglected, with the hope of bringing them new attention and readership. Featured books need to be at least 10 years old, and preferably about the work of a lesser-known author rather than the lesser-known work of someone famous. We particularly look for pieces where the Lost & Found author has a story to tell about how or why they came to love the book. We are happy to see pitches or finished drafts; it's always a good idea to pitch first.

Sarabande Books Open Essay Reading Period (Deadline September 30)

Sarabande Books publishes essay collections between 150-250 pages in length. We accept essay manuscripts for consideration each September. Sarabande Books was founded in 1994 by Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner to publish poetry, short fiction, and essay; to disburse these works with diligence and integrity; and to serve as an educational resource for readers, students, and teachers of creative writing. First titles appeared in 1996, and the press currently has more than 220 titles under contract or in print, many of them prize-winning. Sarabande authors and staff members conduct an estimated 225 readings, workshops, and lectures per year, and they strive to make their programs and services accessible to all.

The 2016 American Literary Review Awards (Deadline October 1 – $1000)

Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in the Spring 2017 online issue of the American Literary Review will be given for a poem, a short story, and an essay. The American Literary Review has been published since 1990 through the Creative Writing Program of the Department of English at the University of North Texas. Since the journal's inception, we have made it a point to publish excellent poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by writers at all stages in their careers.

We publish the best fiction that comes our way, but we prefer stories that are well-crafted and which reveal the nuances and complexities of characters and situations that surprise us with their unerring truths. The poetry we search out should challenge the reader's imagination through fresh language, precise imagery, formal artistry, and it should demonstrate an attention to the craft and tradition of poetry. We tend to prefer poems that are pleasing to the ear as well as the imagination. We welcome nonfiction submissions in personal essay, memoir, literary journalism, and experimental nonfiction.  

New Orleans Review Call for Submissions (Theme: The African Literary Hustle – Deadline December 31)

Guest Editors: Mukoma wa Ngugi and Laura Murphy

When African literature is published in the West, it is too often realist, in English, and always in the spirit of Chinua Achebe. But romance, science fiction, fantasy, epic, experimental poetry, satire, political allegory all find expression in Africa, though not necessarily publication. Those who are called to write often have to hustle to get recognition by writing a coming-of-age colonial encounter tale or hustle even harder to have their unique voices heard.

In a special issue of New Orleans Review guest edited by Mukoma wa Ngugi and Laura Murphy, we will celebrate (and publish) popular and not-so popular writing from Africa. We are looking for literature (in all the above named forms and others we can’t predict) and critical essays that expand the dimensions of African literature, contribute defiant visions, provide new translations, or revise narratives of the tradition or the hustle.

The Sun Magazine Call for Submissions (now accepting submissions online!)

Writing from The Sun has won the Pushcart Prize and been selected for the Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories anthologies. We publish nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. We tend to favor personal writing, but we’re also looking for provocative pieces on political and cultural issues. Surprise us; we often don’t know what we’ll like until we read it. We rarely run anything longer than seven thousand words; there’s no minimum length.

The Sixth Annual StoryQuarterly Fiction Prize (Deadline October 15 – $1000)

The Sixth Annual StoryQuarterly Fiction Prize. The winner will receive $1000, and the winner, first runner-up and second runner-up will be published in StoryQuarterly 50. Limit: Up to 6250 words, double-spaced. 

Our contest judge is Alexander Chee, author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, Guernica, NPR and Out, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He has taught writing at Wesleyan University, Amherst College, the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Texas – Austin. He lives in New York City, where he curates the Dear Reader series at Ace Hotel New York.

Upcoming Deadlines
 

Tin House Call for Submissions (Deadline September 30)
Columbia Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline September 30)
Siena Art Institute Summer Residency (Deadline September 30)
Sarabande Books Open Essay Reading Period (Deadline September 30)
University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prizes for Fiction and Poetry (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
Ucross Foundation Residency Program (Deadline October 1)
Buzzfeed Emerging Writers Fellowship Program (Deadline October 1)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
The 2016 American Literary Review Awards (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
Southern Indiana Review Mary C. Mohr Award (Deadline October 3 – $2000)
apt Call for Submissions (Deadline October 15)
The Sixth Annual StoryQuarterly Fiction Prize (Deadline October 15 – $1000)
Stonecoast Review Call for Submissions (Deadline October 16)
Bare Fiction Prize 2016 (Deadline October 31 – £500)
Lunch Ticket Call for Submissions (Deadline October 31)
cream city review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 1)
Vela Second Nonficiton Contest (Deadline November 1 – $1000)
The Indianola Review Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)
New Orleans Review Call for Submissions (Theme: The African Literary Hustle – Deadline December 31)

Submission Sunday 9.4.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Ucross Foundation Residency Program (Deadline October 1)

The Ucross Foundation Residency Program offers the gift of time and space to competitively selected individuals working in all artistic disciplines.  The Foundation strives to provide a respectful, comfortable and productive environment, freeing artists from the pressures and distractions of daily life.  As painter Carol Schwennesen commented, "There has been no other art experience that has been as wide and deep and solid as the experience of being at Ucross."

The Ucross Foundation provides living accommodations, individual work space, and uninterrupted time to approximately 85 individuals each year.  Residencies vary in length from two weeks to six weeks.  At any one time, there are up to nine individuals in residence, a mix of visual artists, writers and composers.  In most cases, studios are separate from living quarters. Lunch and dinners are prepared Monday to Friday by a professional chef with ample provisions on hand for breakfasts and weekends.  Lunches are delivered to individual studio doors; group dinners take place at 6 p.m. Residents are responsible for providing their own working materials and for their travel to Sheridan, Wyoming. There is no charge for a residency. 

Southern Indiana Review Mary C. Mohr Award (Deadline October 3 – $2000)

Southern Indiana Review will award two prizes of $2000 each and publication for a poem and a work of short fiction. Jericho Brown will select the poetry winner; Adam Johnson will select the fiction winner. All entries are considered for publication. The editors invite submissions of drama, fiction, interviews, nonfiction, and poetry between September 1 and April 30. 

Southern Indiana Review presents a cross-section of emerging and established artists and writers whose work is both regional and national in scope and degree of recognition. With the support of the Indiana Arts Commission and National Endowment for the Arts, SIR is published in October and May by the University of Southern Indiana and sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts.

The Wrong Quarterly Call for Submissions

The Wrong Quarterly is a London-based literary print-journal showcasing fresh talent in cross-genre fiction. We are constantly on the lookout for innovative takes on genre and prose; we aim not only to publish a printed quarterly (on actual pages, with magnificent hand-feel), but to cultivate a meaningful international community of inventive writers and literary professionals. We accept fiction under 10,000 words, fully edited, and previously unpublished. We also accept life-writing, and any pieces which are 'difficult' to categorise. We no longer consider essays. We don't publish poetry. Sorry about that. 

Typehouse Literary Magazine Call for Submissions

We are looking for submissions of poetry, short fiction, creative non-fiction and visual art. We are looking for writing that conveys a unique perspective and honest insight into our world. Genre fiction submissions welcome. Founded in 2013, Typehouse Literary Magazine is a writer-run literary journal sprung from the community The People’s Ink, based in Portland, Oregon. Our purpose is to showcase previously unpublished material of all genres that seeks to offer a fresh, unique perspective of the human experience. No matter what you write, draw, or photograph, we would like to see your work.

Hippocampus Magazine 2016 Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction (Deadline September 23 – $1000)

Hippocampus Magazine is an exclusively online publication set out to entertain, educate and engage writers and readers of creative nonfiction. Each monthly issue features memoir excerpts, personal essays, reviews, interviews and craft articles. Hippocampus Magazine is giving away more than $1,200 in cash and prizes this November in our sixth annual creative writing contest, the Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction.

Oxford American Call for Submissions 

The Oxford American welcomes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions, as well as proposals for Points South and feature articles. The Oxford American is a nonprofit, quarterly literary magazine dedicated to featuring the best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South.

The magazine was founded in 1992 in Oxford, Mississippi, by Marc Smirnoff and is known for featuring original work by such literary powerhouses as ZZ Packer, Charles Portis, Kiese Laymon, Rebecca Wells, Nikky Finney, Allan Gurganus, Ernest Gaines, C. E. Morgan, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Jesmyn Ward, and many others, while also routinely publishing emerging writers. The OA is likewise known for publishing a wide range of fine art and photography in every issue, including works from Thornton Dial Sr., Jungjin Lee, Eudora Welty, Sally Mann, Gordon Parks, Carroll Cloar, Roger May, Christopher Rodriguez, Eleanor Davis, and William Eggleston.

Bare Fiction Prize 2016 (Deadline October 31 – £500)

International awards for Poetry, Flash Fiction, and Short Story. Now in its third year, the Bare Fiction Prize has given new and old writers alike an equal chance to win big cash prizes and publication within each of the three categories offered. In 2015’s Bare Fiction Prize, first place in the poetry competition (judged by Jo Bell) went to Astra Bloom – a complete newcomer to the UK literary scene. Each entry is judged anonymously by our judges, with the poetry and flash fiction category judges reading every single entry and our short story judge reading a longlist selected by magazine editor, Robert Harper. 1st, 2nd & 3rd prize winners will be published in the Spring 2017 issue of Bare Fiction Magazine and on our website, with the prizes to be awarded at the launch reading in London in Spring 2017.

Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton Hodder Fellowship (Deadline September 19 – $80,000)

The Hodder is a one-year fellowship of financial support. Writers and non-literary artists of exceptional promise who wish to pursue independent projects at Princeton University during the academic year. Potential Hodder Fellows are writers, composers, choreographers, visual artists, performance artists, or other kinds of artists or humanists who have “much more than ordinary intellectual and literary gifts”; they are selected more “for promise than for performance.” Given the strength of the applicant pool, most successful Fellows have published a first book or have similar achievements in their own fields; the Hodder is designed to provide Fellows with a year of “studious leisure” to undertake significant new work. Advanced degrees preferred, although not required. Non-US citizens are welcome to apply. 

Upcoming Deadlines
 

Hendrick's Gin Tiny Tales Contest (Deadline September 5)
Bitch Media Fellowships for Writers (Deadline September 15)
Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton Hodder Fellowship (Deadline September 19 – $80,000)
Hippocampus Magazine 2016 Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction (Deadline September 23 – $1000)
Columbia Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline September 30)
Siena Art Institute Summer Residency (Deadline September 30)
University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prizes for Fiction and Poetry (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
Ucross Foundation Residency Program (Deadline October 1)
Buzzfeed Emerging Writers Fellowship Program (Deadline October 1)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
Southern Indiana Review Mary C. Mohr Award (Deadline October 3 – $2000)
apt Call for Submissions (Deadline October 15)
Stonecoast Review Call for Submissions (Deadline October 16)
Bare Fiction Prize 2016 (Deadline October 31 – £500)
Lunch Ticket Call for Submissions (Deadline October 31)
cream city review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 1)
The Indianola Review Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)

Submission Sunday 8.21.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Black Warrior Review Twelfth Annual Contest (Deadline September 1 – $1000)

Black Warrior Review is named for the river that borders the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Established in 1974 by graduate students in the MFA Program in Creative Writing, BWR is the oldest continuously-run literary journal produced by graduate students in the United States.

$1000 & PUBLICATION IN EACH GENRE
Fiction Judge: SOFIA SAMATAR
Nonfiction Judge: T CLUTCH FLEISCHMANN
Poetry Judge: HOA NGUYEN

BWR publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and art twice a year. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners alongside emerging writers. Work appearing in BWR has been reprinted in the Pushcart Prize series, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, New Stories from the South, and other anthologies.

Columbia Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline September 30)

Columbia Journal was founded in 1977 by students in the Columbia University School of the Arts Graduate Writing program. Since then, our student production and editorial staff has been publishing the very best in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. We have featured work from Nobel laureates and unknowns, National Book-award winners and newcomers. Our past issues have included everyone from Raymond Carver to Lorrie Moore to Louise Glück to Philip Gourevitch to Noam Chomsky and Etgar Keret. Recent issues have featured Lydia Davis, Michael Ondaatje, interviews with Mary Jo Bang, and John Waters, just to name a few.

Today, Columbia Journal publishes both in print and online, and represents the meeting of these two wings. The annual print edition, published in Spring, is a combination of solicited work and the very best of the submissions we’ve received, including the winners of our annual contest, all furnished in a beautifully crafted edition. Online, you’ll find work that is in flux, pieces on the cusp of change, that are changing, that aim to change us. We showcase poetry, fiction , nonfiction, translations, art, film, and music–work that is broadening the horizons of art, straining against the limits, and ultimately unveiling human experience in new and profound ways.

LUMINA 2017 Nonfiction Contest (Deadline September 1 – $750)

Our 2017 Nonfiction Contest judge is Leslie Jamison. Our 2017 Nonfiction Contest is considering work on the theme "Borders and Boundaries." Entrants may submit up to two nonfiction pieces (in a single document) of no more than 5000 words each. 

LUMINA is the literary journal of the Sarah Lawrence College MFA program. We seek exciting and rule-breaking work. We place emerging visual artists and writers alongside their established counterparts. We want art that pushes boundaries with eloquence.

Stonecoast Review Call for Submissions (Deadline October 16)

Stonecoast is one of the leading MFA programs in Popular Fiction, so we at Stonecoast Review welcome both literary and genre submissions. Whether your story lives on Mars or somewhere in Middle America, we want to be transported to your world. Our editors and readers are excited to read romance, fantasy, science fiction, fairy-stories, thrillers, historical fiction or general fiction.

We welcome writing in the genres of creative nonfiction, fiction, popular (genre) fiction, and poetry. The editorial staff of the Stonecoast Review seeks exciting work from both new and established writers. Our goal is to publish innovative and deeply resonant literature that embodies our core values of social and environmental justice, cultural awareness, and international perspectives. We especially want unique, powerful writing that takes chances and brings the reader to entirely unexpected places.

Buzzfeed Emerging Writers Fellowship Program (Deadline October 1)

With the mission of diversifying the broader media landscape by investing in the next generation of necessary voices, BuzzFeed’s Emerging Writers Fellowship is designed to give writers of great promise the support, mentorship, and experience necessary to take a transformative step forward in their careers.

During the four-month program, the writers in this fellowship will benefit from career mentorship and editorial guidance while also receiving financial support. The learning process must be financially viable for emerging writers if it is intended to open the gates to writers traditionally locked out of opportunities in media.

The fellows will focus on personal essay writing, cultural reportage, and criticism. During their time in fellowship, writers will be expected to pitch, report, and write with the added benefit of panel discussions with editors and writers from throughout the industry, and assigned readings. Mentorship within the program will focus on teaching writers how to thrive as freelancers as well as on staff at media organizations; this mentorship will hopefully continue well after the fellowship itself is concluded.

Narratively Call for Submissions

Created in September 2012, Narratively is a digital publication and storytelling studio that prides itself on looking beyond the news headlines and clickbait, focusing instead on ordinary people with extraordinary stories. Our network of over 2,000 talented storytellers have experience at the most celebrated publications on earth and they come to Narratively with the passion projects they care about most—having combed our world’s big cities and hidden corners for the characters and narratives that mainstream media aren’t finding—the underdogs and overlooked tales that enlighten us, connect us, and capture our imagination. Each Narratively piece is presented in the most appropriate medium, from longform and shortform writing to short documentary films, photo essays, audio, and comics.

Cosmonauts Avenue Fiction Contest (Deadline August 22 – $500)

Cosmonauts Avenue is an online monthly literary magazine. We publish fiction, poetry, nonfiction, interviews, and more, from writers around the world, in English and in translation. Submissions are free and always will be. This is one way we hope to remain accessible to all writers, whether new or emerging or established. We are committed to providing a platform for folks who are marginalized in the literary community, including but not limited to people of color, ciswomen, trans men and women, nonbinary people, members of the LGBQA community, and differently abled people. We want to elevate underrepresented voices and include a wide range of identities and experiences. We want work that pays careful attention to craft while remaining urgent and surprising. As Beyoncé might say, we want your most flawless work. We can’t wait to read it. We believe in you.

Siena Art Institute Summer Residency (Deadline September 30)

The Siena Art Institute’s Summer Residency Program awards accomplished professional artists & writers the opportunity to stay for a month in the beautiful historic city of Siena, in the heart of Tuscany, Italy.  

The month-long Summer Residency Program grants resident artists a studio space at the Siena Art Institute & a private 1-bedroom apartment in the historic city center of Siena, as well as flight compensation for getting to and from Italy.  Summer Residents are granted uninterrupted time to pursue their own independent projects, as well as the opportunity to explore the area of Siena, and interact with the local community.   

Upcoming Deadlines
 

Cosmonauts Avenue Fiction Contest (Deadline August 22 – $500)
The Texas Observer Sixth Annual Short Story Contest (Deadline August 22 – $1000)
The Matador Review Call for Submissions (Deadline August 31)
Tahoma Literary Review Call for Submisisons (Deadline August 31)
Graywolf Press Poetry and Poetry Translation Call for Manuscripts (Deadline August 31)
The Gulf Coast Barthelme Prize for Short Prose and Prize in Translation (Deadline August 31 – $1000)
Lunch Ticket Diana Wood Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction and Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multi-Lingual Texts (Deadline August 31 – $250)
LUMINA 2017 Nonfiction Contest (Deadline September 1 – $750)
Black Warrior Review Twelfth Annual Contest (Deadline September 1 – $1000)
The Fourth River Call for Submissions (Theme: Juvenscence – Deadine September 1)
Hendrick's Gin Tiny Tales Contest (Deadline September 5)
Bitch Media Fellowships for Writers (Deadline September 15)
Columbia Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline September 30)
Siena Art Institute Summer Residency (Deadline September 30)
University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prizes for Fiction and Poetry (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
Buzzfeed Emerging Writers Fellowship Program (Deadline October 1)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
apt Call for Submissions (Deadline October 15)
Stonecoast Review Call for Submissions (Deadline October 16)
Lunch Ticket Call for Submissions (Deadline October 31)
cream city review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 1)
The Indianola Review Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)

Submission Sunday 8.7.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Hendrick's Gin Tiny Tales Contest (Deadline September 5)

The world’s smallest book-to-movie deal. You are heartily encouraged to showcase your CREATIVITY by joining our monumentally MINISCULE story competition. The rules are quite simple. Or perhaps we should say, the rule is SIMPLE, as there is only one: write a story in three sentences or less. You may submit as many entries as your brain can concoct.

Our panel of tiny story EXPERTS ('tiny' referring to the stories, not the experts) will select THREE entries, each of which shall be produced as an animated film to be debuted on the internet with great fanfare and panache.

Tahoma Literary Review Call for Submisisons (Deadline August 31)

Tahoma Literary Review is a journal published three times a year in both print and e-reader formats. We are based in the Pacific Northwest, but we are international in scope. In our first two years of existence, work published in our journal has been selected for Best American Poetry, Best Small Fictions, Best Gay Fiction, and we have had several pieces nominated for the Pushcart Prize by their editorial staff. In addition, many of the stories and poems we have published are included in anthologies and collections.

We at Tahoma Literary Review  are committed to producing a literary journal from the professional writer’s perspective; we feel that writers deserve fair compensation for the weeks or months it takes to compose a publishable poem or story. A major goal of Tahoma Literary Review is to show that writers and publishers can support each other not only artistically, but also financially.

Lunch Ticket Diana Wood Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction, Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multi-Lingual Texts, and Call for Submissions (Deadlines August 31 and October 31 – $250)

Lunch Ticket is a twice-yearly literary and art journal published by the MFA community of Antioch University of Los Angeles, a program that is devoted to the education of literary artists, community engagement, and the pursuit of social justice. Although the editors of Lunch Ticket share the Antioch MFA program’s mission and values, our commitment is to publish the best literary writing and visual art, regardless of subject matter or theme.

Lunch Ticket publishes its main issues twice-yearly, in June and December. Our reading periods for Lunch Ticket are February 1-April 30 and August 1-October 31. We are proud to host two prizes, the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Nonfiction and The Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multi-Lingual Texts. Both prizes are open for submissions in February and August. 

The Matador Review Call for Submissions (Deadline August 31)

The Matador Review is an online literature and art quarterly based in Chicago, Illinois. We publish poetry, fiction, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, and visual art. The only reason you should not submit here is if your work has "one layer." We want literature and art that requires a degree of peeling and discovering.

We call ourselves an "alternative" magazine; that is to say: our purpose is to promote work that is thought-provoking and unconventional; we want the controversial and the radical, the unhinged and the bizarre; we want the obsessive, the compulsive, the pervasive, the combative, and the seductive. We believe that every work of quality art has a home where it belongs, and for the "alternative," The Matador Review is a home.

University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prizes for Fiction and Poetry (Deadline September 30 – $1000)

The Juniper Prize for Fiction is awarded annually to two original manuscripts of fiction: one short fiction and one novel. University of Massachusetts Press publishes the winning manuscripts and the authors receive a $1,000 award upon publication.

The Juniper Prize for Poetry is awarded annually to two original manuscripts of poems. One prize will recognize a first publication. The second prize will be open to previously published poets as well as poets who have not yet published a book of poetry. University of Massachusetts Press publishes the winning manuscripts and the authors receive a $1,000 award upon publication.

cream city review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 1)

cream city review is Milwaukee’s leading literary journal devoted to publishing memorable and energetic pieces that push the boundaries of literature.  Continually seeking to explore the relationship between form and content, cream city review features fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, visual art, reviews of contemporary literature and author interviews.Published biannually, cream city review is a volunteer-based, non-profit journal which has attracted readers and submissions from around the world. Approximately 4,000 submissions are received each year from both unpublished and established writers.

Graywolf Press Poetry and Poetry Translation Call for Manuscripts (Deadline August 31)

Graywolf Press is a literary press that publishes about thirty books annually, mostly collections of poetry, memoir, essays, novels, and short stories. Our editors are looking for high quality literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that combine a distinct voice with a distinct vision.

Graywolf Press will be open to manuscripts of poetry and poetry in translation from August 1-31, 2016. All authors are welcome to submit; however, poets who are eligible for one of the prizes listed below should consider submitting to the appropriate prize with one of our partner organizations. First books of poetry, for example, are also eligible for the Walt Whitman Award.

Bitch Media Fellowships for Writers (Deadline September 15)

Bitch Media is a nonprofit, independent, feminist media organization dedicated to providing and encouraging an engaged, thoughtful feminist response to mainstream media and popular culture. We are best known for publishing the magazine Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, which started as a zine distributed out of the back of a station wagon in 1996. Today, in addition to the quarterly magazine, we publish daily online articles, and weekly podcasts. We house a community lending library at our HQ in Portland, Oregon, and work with students and educators through our Bitch on Campus program. 

We strive to be a fresh, revitalizing voice in contemporary feminism, one that welcomes complex arguments and refuses to ignore the contradictory and often uncomfortable realities of life in an unequivocally gendered world. Submissions are open from August 1st-September 15th, 2016 for the 2017 Bitch Media Fellowships for Writers, a series of three-month intensive writing fellowships whose goal is to develop, support, and amplify emerging, diverse voices in feminist, activist, and pop-culture media. The program will be directed by Bitch cofounder Andi Zeisler. 

Upcoming Deadlines
 

2016 Indiana Review 1/2 K Prize (Deadline August 15 – $1000)
The Texas Observer Sixth Annual Short Story Contest (Deadline August 22 – $1000)
The Matador Review Call for Submissions (Deadline August 31)
Tahoma Literary Review Call for Submisisons (Deadline August 31)
Graywolf Press Poetry and Poetry Translation Call for Manuscripts (Deadline August 31)
The Gulf Coast Barthelme Prize for Short Prose and Prize in Translation (Deadline August 31 – $1000)
Lunch Ticket Diana Wood Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction and Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multi-Lingual Texts (Deadline August 31 – $250)
The Fourth River Call for Submissions (Theme: Juvenscence – Deadine September 1)
Hendrick's Gin Tiny Tales Contest (Deadline September 5)
Bitch Media Fellowships for Writers (Deadline September 15)
University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prizes for Fiction and Poetry (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
apt Call for Submissions (Deadline October 15)
Lunch Ticket Call for Submissions (Deadline October 31)
cream city review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 1)
The Indianola Review Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)

Submission Sunday 7.24.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

The Texas Observer Sixth Annual Short Story Contest (Deadline August 22 – $1000)

The 2016 Texas Observer Short Story Contest is now open for submissions. The winner receives a $1,000 cash prize and publication in print and online in The Texas Observer. This year’s guest judge is Amelia Gray, author of three story collections and a novel. 

What does Gray look for in a short story? “The best stories have something that needs to be said urgently: now, today, this very moment,” she says. “It's easy to tell when a story has gotten a little old in the writer's mind; rather than presenting a perfect statue from which you've just brushed away the last bits of dust, try unearthing something fresh.”

WILDNESS Call for Submissions 

WILDNESS is an online literary and arts journal that seeks to promote contemporary fiction, poetry and non-fiction that evokes the unknown. Founded in 2015, each thoughtfully compiled issue strives to unearth the works of both established and up-and-coming writers and artists. We publish our online edition every two months. A print anthology will be released once a year.

The Gulf Coast Barthelme Prize for Short Prose and Prize in Translation (Deadline August 31 – $1000)

Gulf Coast is now accepting entries for the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation for an extra three weeks. In 2016, the contest is open to poetry in translation. The winner receives $1,000 and publication in the journal. Two honorable mentions will each receive $250. All entries will be considered for paid publication on our website as Online Exclusives.

 The Barthelme Prize for Short Prose is open to pieces of prose poetry, flash fiction, and micro-essays of 500 words or fewer. Established in 2008, the contest awards its winner $1,000 and publication in the journal. Two honorable mentions will receive $250, and all entries will be considered for paid publication on our website as Online Exclusives.

Meridian Call for Submissions 

Meridian is a semiannual literary magazine produced at the University of Virginia in conjunction with the university’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, whose students serve as the magazine’s editors. Founded in 1998, Meridian has featured the works of numerous Pulitzer Prize Winners, National Book Award Winners, and established writers including Charles Wright, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Seamus Heaney, Ann Beattie, John Casey, George Garrett, Heather McHugh, Richard Bausch, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Cathy Song, and Eric Pankey. However, as a magazine edited by young writers, we value nothing more than showcasing tomorrow’s talent, often publishing a new author’s first story or poem. So don’t let the big names fool you. We welcome–and carefully read–every submission we receive.

Meridian poetry and prose has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and New Stories from the South. Our stories have also been short-listed for the O. Henry Prize, and our fine authors and poets have gone on to win many awards. Meridian also features regular author interviews, book reviews, photography, and artwork. The magazine’s current print run is about 300 issues, with an additional 2,000 people receiving an ePub version of the magazine.

2016 Indiana Review 1/2 K Prize (Deadline August 15 – $1000)

FINAL JUDGE: AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

Submissions to the 2016 1/2K Prize is now OPEN until August 15th! Winner receives $1,000 and publication in Indiana Review. All entries are considered for publication. The reading fee for one entry is $20 and includes a year subscription to the journal.

Now in its thirty-eighth year of publication, Indiana Review is a non-profit literary magazine dedicated to showcasing the talents of emerging and established writers. Our mission is to offer the highest quality writing within a wide aesthetic. As a biannual literary review, IR considers previously unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art. IR is edited and managed by Indiana University graduate students and funded mainly by subscriptions, grants, and partial university support.

Works by contributors to IR have been awarded the Pushcart Prize and reprinted in The Pushcart Prize Anthology: Best of the Small Presses, as well as in Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Additionally, we are recognized as one of the top 15 most challenging fiction markets by Duotrope.

Thread: A Literary Publication Call for Submissions 

Thread: A Literary Publication publishes short personal essays and photographs by established and emerging writers and photographers. The pieces range in length from 100 to 1800 words for Thread,and 100 words or less for Stitch, a new section featuring flash nonfiction pieces.

Starting in September 2016, Stitch will publish one flash piece a month and in 2017, Thread will move to a two-issue-a-year publishing schedule with a Spring issue (April) and one in Fall (October). We do not publish fiction, short stories or poetry. There are no submission fees. Contributors, including myself, are offering their work for the love of the art and the joy of publication.

Thread covers a variety of themes relating to human experience across the decades; thoughtful, well-told stories from the lives of a diverse range of people.

SmokeLong Quarterly Call for Submissions 

SmokeLong Quarterly was established in 2003 by our founder Dave Clapper. We are dedicated to bringing the best flash fiction to the web on a quarterly basis, whether written by widely published authors or those new to the craft. The term “smoke-long” comes from the Chinese, who noted that reading a piece of flash takes about the same length of time as smoking a cigarette. All the work we publish is precisely that—about a smoke long.

We publish flash fiction that is 1000 words or less. Submissions are open 365 days a year. We never charge reading fees. SmokeLong stories have been recognized by the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Web, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. They have also been anthologized in places such as Norton’s Flash Fiction International and Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Flush Fiction. When funding permits, we host a Kathy Fish Fellow and writer-in-residence for emerging writers.

Hedgebrook Writers in Residence Program (Deadline July 26)

Hedgebrook (Women Authoring Change) is on Whidbey Island, about thirty-five miles northwest of Seattle. Situated on 48-acres of forest and meadow facing Puget Sound, with a view of Mount Rainier, the retreat hosts writers from all over the world for residencies of two to six weeks, at no cost to the writer.

Six writers are in residence at a time, each housed in a handcrafted cottage. They spend their days in solitude – writing, reading, taking walks in the woods on the property or on nearby Double Bluff beach. In the evenings, they gather in the farmhouse kitchen to share a home-cooked gourmet meal, their work, their process and their stories. The Writers in Residence Program is Hedgebrook’s core program, supporting the fully-funded residencies of approximately 40 writers at the retreat each year.

Our selection process occurs once a year in the fall, with a late July deadline for submissions. Notifications are made by the beginning of December. Through a completely anonymous, three-round process, approximately forty writers are invited for residencies of two weeks to six weeks. Our residency season runs from February through October.

Upcoming Deadlines
 

Hedgebrook Writers in Residence Program (Deadline July 26)
2016 Indiana Review 1/2 K Prize (Deadline August 15 – $1000)
The Texas Observer Sixth Annual Short Story Contest (Deadline August 22 – $1000)
The Gulf Coast Barthelme Prize for Short Prose and Prize in Translation (Deadline August 31 – $1000)
The Fourth River Call for Submissions (Theme: Juvenscence – Deadine September 1)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
apt Call for Submissions (Deadline October 15)
The Indianola Review Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)

Submission Sunday 7.10.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Rattle Poetry Prize (Deadline July 15 – $10,000)

The annual Rattle Poetry Prize offers $10,000 for a single poem to be published in the winter issue of the magazine. Ten finalists will also receive $200 each and publication, and be eligible for the $2,000 Readers’ Choice Award, to be selected by subscriber and entrant vote. Additional poems from the entries are frequently offered publication as well. In 2015 we published 23 poems that had been submitted to the contest from almost 4,000 entries.

With the winners judged in a blind review by the editors to ensure a fair and consistent selection, an entry fee that is simply a one-year subscription to the magazine—and a large Readers’ Choice Award to be chosen by the writers themselves—we’ve designed the Rattle Poetry Prize to be one of the most inspiring contests around. Past winners have included a retired teacher, a lawyer, and several students. It’s fair, it’s friendly, and you win a print subscription to Rattle even if you don’t win.

Squawk Back Call for Submissions 

We read year round. All first-time submitters will hear back from us within two weeks. Those previously published in Squawk Back will wait a bit longer, as their submissions do, unfortunately, go to the bottom of a pile, owing to that we try very hard to feature new contributors in every issue.

We primarily publish fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. We do not publish plays or screenplays, but we may consider monologues. We will consider excerpts from unpublished novels, poetry collections &c, but please do not submit entire books.

Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1000)

Guest Judge: Anthony Marra, winner of the 2016 National Magazine Award for Fiction. The three prizewinners and seven honorable mentions will be considered for representation by William Morris Endeavor; ICM; the Wylie Agency; Regal Literary; Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency; Markson Thoma Literary Agency; Inkwell Management; Sterling Lord Literistic; Aitken Alexander Associates; Barer Literary; the Gernert Company; and the Georges Borchardt Literary Agency.

In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola launched Zoetrope: All-Story, a quarterly magazine devoted to the best new short fiction and one-act plays. It has received every major story award, including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, while publishing today's most promising and significant writers: Mary Gaitskill, David Mamet, Ha Jin, Elizabeth McCracken, Yiyun Li, Don DeLillo, Andrew Sean Greer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Woody Allen, Yoko Ogawa, David Means, Susan Straight, Charles D'Ambrosio, David Bezmozgis, Neil Jordan, and Haruki Murakami among them. 

InfectiveINk Call for Submissions 

InfectiveINk.com is the expansion and consumption of the fiction section at NaughtyGirlx.com. NGX was dedicated to humour and found that the majority of the fiction we rejected was really quite good, but did not meet our humour requirement. Turning away wonderful stories soon became tiresome, and the seed of Infection was born. We would be a repository for all sorts of fiction, all genres and styles - the idea was then warped into something that would keep us compelled long into the future.

Instead of focusing on genre or style, we inspect themes and universes. We hope to release anthologies that read like quirky experimental novels - all based on the same prompt, featuring perhaps the same characters, but with varied genres and styles.

Gigantic Sequins Fifth Annual Flash Fiction & Poetry Contests (Deadline July 15 – $100)

Gigantic Sequins is happy to be your favorite black & white print literary arts journal. GS was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Philadelphia, and currently lives primarily in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with outposts throughout the US in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, & more. We're known for the quality fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, art, & comics we print as well as our unique design & aesthetic. 

Our editors like to publish writers & artists who have their hands in various sorts of figurative creative cookie jars, as well as writers & artists at a variety of different stages in their careers. We publish two issues each year, one in the summer and one in the winter. Our all-volunteer staff helps cultivate a space for writing & art that reaches beyond the printed literary arts & into other parts of our neighborhoods. We aim to be the print literary arts journal on your shelf that starts a lasting conversation. You can't dog-ear the best poem in your favorite online literary journal, so support this independent literary arts venture & others like it.

Slice Call for Submissions

Slice magazine welcomes submissions for short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We're looking for anyone with a fresh voice and a compelling story to share—basically any work that really knocks our socks off. We're not drawn to experimental or heavy-handed genre fiction. The best way to get a sense of Slice's content is to read the magazine. At the core, Sliceaims to bridge the gap between emerging and established authors by offering a space where both are published side-by-side. In each issue, a specific cultural theme becomes the catalyst for articles and interviews from renowned writers and lesser known voices alike. Along with these pieces, we publish fiction and poetry that isn’t bound by the theme—we simply look for works by writers who promise to become tomorrow’s literary legends. We offer all contributors ofSlice a monetary award for their work ($250 for stories and essays and $75 for poems).

Slice publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by emerging writers who haven't appeared in previous issues of the magazine. This way, we continue to pave space for brand new voices readers may not have encountered yet.

Verse 2016 Tomaž Šalamun Prize (Deadline July 15 – $1000)

The Tomaž Šalamun Prize honors the great Slovenian poet whose work and example inspired several generations of poets around the world. Because Tomaž was especially supportive of emerging poets, the Tomaž Šalamun Prize is open to poets of any age who have published no more than two full-length poetry collections. (Publishing multiple chapbooks or books in other genres is not a disqualification.) 

$1000 plus publication in Verse for a chapbook-length portfolio (20-40 pages) – Judge: Dara Wier

Previous publication is not a requirement. Translations into English are acceptable if the author is still living and has not published more than two full-length collections. Prose poetry and hybrid forms are also acceptable.

The Coachella Review Call for Submissions

Welcome to The Coachella Review—a literary arts journal nestled in the Coachella valley, but with an eye towards writers and readers around the globe. As a vibrant online multimedia magazine, TCR is free to all and aims to showcase the best of what is possible on the web, where visual and auditory arts can coexist with poetry and prose in lively ways that enrich the reader’s interaction with a magazine. Located close to Los Angeles, we also have a keen interest in screenplays and one-act plays, and a relationship with the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Basically, if you can imagine it and make it, we are probably interested in checking it out! Our only criteria is quality. Knock us over, because that’s why we’re here. The Coachella Review accepts original work that is vibrant, thoughtful, and precise. Whether your work is innovative or traditional, we strive to celebrate writing that holds readers in awe. 

Upcoming Deadlines

American Chordata Call for Submissions (Deadline July 15)
Verse 2016 Tomaž Šalamun Prize (Deadline July 15 – $1000)
Fairy Tale Review Prose & Poetry Contest (Deadline July 15 – $1000)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
The Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers (Deadline July 15 – $2000)
Gigantic Sequins Fifth Annual Flash Fiction & Poetry Contests (Deadline July 15 – $100)

Submission Sunday 6.12.16

Submission Sunday is taking a summer vacation and will return on Sunday, July 10!

Hardwick Gazette Essay Contest (Deadline August 11 – A cornerstone of the fourth estate)

If you have the passion for writing, journalistic integrity, good business acumen, and want the opportunity to pursue the noble profession of being a newspaper publisher in the majestic hills, valleys and mountains of Vermont, this essay contest is for you. 

Grand and only prize: The Hardwick Gazette, located in Hardwick, Vermont.
Entry fee: $175
Essay guidelines: 400 words or less about the entrant’s skills and vision for owning a paid weekly newspaper in the new millennium.

For 127 years, The Hardwick Gazette has been a newspaper of record in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. This rural region of New England is full of life, history, character, and citizens who are fierce defenders of democracy and never shy about sharing their opinions. First published in 1889, The Hardwick Gazette was bought by Ross Connelly and his late wife, Susan Jarzyna, in 1986. Ready for retirement, he wants to assure the newspaper lives on by holding this contest to find the new owner.

The Fourth River Call for Submissions (Theme: Juvenscence – Deadine September 1)

The Fourth River welcomes submissions that explore the relationship between humans and their environments, both natural and built, urban, rural or wild. We are looking for writing that is richly situated at the confluence of place, space and identity—or that reflects upon or makes use of landscape and place in new ways.

 

The Fourth River is pleased to announce the submissions call for print Issue 14, due out Spring 2017. The issue will include a themed feature that explores what it means to be young in our environments, whether urban or rural, human-made or natural. With this feature, we hope to emphasize and celebrate the ways in which the place we begin shapes the person we become.

 

For the Juvenescence feature, we are seeking fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual artwork that highlights the experience of being young: of searching, discovering, and learning from, of leaving or settling into our natural and/or human-made worlds. Submission period is July 1st-September 1st. General submissions will also open at this time for prose, poetry, and artwork with a focus on nature and place.

The Louise Meriwether First Book Prize (Deadline July 31 – $5000)

In 1970, Louise Meriwether published her novel of life in the post–Harlem Renaissance era, Daddy Was a Number Runner. Nearly fifty years later it is still considered a classic. Following Paule Marshall’s 1959 Brown Girl, Brownstones, Daddy Was a Number Runner is one of the first contemporary American novels featuring a young black girl as the protagonist. The book inspired the careers of writers like Jacqueline Woodson and Bridgett M. Davis, among many others.

In order to celebrate Meriwether’s achievements and continue her legacy, the Feminist Press has partnered with TAYO Literary Magazine to launch a contest seeking the best debut books by women and nonbinary writers of color.

First time authors, submit your complete manuscript, either fiction, including novels and short story collections, or narrative memoir, of 50,000 to 80,000 words, and you could receive $5,000 and a publishing contract from the Feminist Press! Final judges include Tayari Jones and Ana Castillo.

Grist: The Journal for Writers Call for Submissions

A resource for the discussion and demonstration of the writer’s craft, Grist: The Journal for Writers seeks high quality submissions from both emerging and established writers. We publish craft essays and interviews as well as fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—and we want to see the best work you have to offer, regardless of form, style, or subject matter. We prefer writing that is accessible, and experimental work that shows an awareness of what is being subverted and why. We also value fiction and poetry that is aware of the history that has come before it. We read between June 15th and September 15th.

New Rivers Press American Fiction Short Story Award 2016 (Deadline June 15 – $1000)

New Rivers Press will publish approximately twenty short stories in American Fiction Volume 16: The Best Unpublished Stories by Emerging Writers. We seek well crafted, character driven literary fiction in any genre. $1,750 in prizes for short fiction ($1000 1st Place, $500 2nd, $250 3rd; each of the selected story authors will receive national publication and distribution, author discount, and two complimentary copies.). Publication date is set for October 2017. Finalist judge is TBA. Maximum 10,000 words per story. Reading Fee of $16 for each online submission from February 1 to June 15, 2014 at Submittable website. 

After an 11-year pause, New Rivers Press revived its American Fiction anthology series with American Fiction, Volume 11: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers, an anthology of stories selected through a national competition. We published Volume 11 in 2010, Volume 12 in 2012, Volume 13 in October of 2014, and Volume 14 in 2015. Volume 13 was named winner of the Midwest Independent Publishers Award for Fiction Short Stories/Anthology in 2014. We are currently in production with Volume 15, which will be released in October 2016. The series was originally carried by Birch Lane Press/Carol Publishing Group. Past judges have included Charles Baxter, Ann Beattie, Ray Carver, Wallace Stegner, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich, Clint McCown, Josip Novakovich, Michael White, Elizabeth Strout, and Steve Almond.

The Offbeat Flash Fiction/Prose/Creative Nonfiction Contests (Deadline August 15 – $250)

Calling the zany, the thought-provoking, the humorous, and the quirky—we want to read your writing! The Offbeat, a literary journal specializing in undisputedly unique works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and sequential art, is accepting submissions. We cater to the bizarre, the whimsical, and the outlandish. Show us writing that falls off the beaten path in an intriguing way!

We ask for different. We DO NOT mean unnecessarily explicit content produced purely for the purpose of being shocking. We are interested in quality. No matter where you come from or what you do, we want to hear from you!

Fantasy Magazine and Lightspeed Call for Submissions (Special Issue: People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! – Deadline June 15)

Welcome to People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! We're looking for original, unpublished fantasy stories of up to 7500 words written by People of Colo(u)r. The stories can be set in this world with fantastical elements or they can take place in another world entirely. Please avoid timeworn cliches like the White Savior, the Magical Negro, and the Woman Who Is Only A Sex Object. Voice matters—we are looking for voices we haven't heard before, rhythms and narrative structures we don't see often enough in fantasy literature. Story matters—take us on a journey. Make sure there's a strong turning point, that the stakes are high. We look forward to reading your work! 

Arts & Letters Unclassifiables Contest (Deadline July 31 – $500)

Our 2nd annual Unclassifiables contest is open May 1st to July 31st. Challenged by Diaghilev to astonish him (“Etonnez-moi!”), Cocteau responded with an “unclassifiable” ballet: music by Satie, sets and costumes by Picasso, book by himself. The year: 1910. In this age of branding and marketing, can such “unclassifiable” works survive? What is gained—or lost—when boundaries are blurred?

This contest is for unclassifiable works: works that blur, bend, blend, erase, or obliterate genre and other labels. Works of up to 5000 words considered. Judged by Michael Martone.

Arts & Letters is a national literary journal operating out of the MFA program at Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia. One of the premier journals of the Southeast, Arts & Letters attracts young, fresh voices as well as established writers, publishing the likes of R.T. Smith, Denise Duhamel, Donald Hall, Bret Lott, Maxine Kumin, Sonja Livingston, Dinty Moore, Bob Hicok, Xu Xi, Lia Purpura, Mark Jarman, and David Kirby.

Upcoming Deadlines

Vermont Studio Center (VSC) Fellowships (Deadline June 15)
december magazine 2016 Curt Johnson Prose Award (Deadline June 15 – $1500)
New Rivers Press American Fiction Short Story Award 2016 (Deadline June 15 – $1000)
Fantasy Magazine and Lightspeed Call for Submissions (Special Issue: People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! – Deadline June 15)
2016 New American Press Fiction Prize (Deadline June 24 – $1000 plus publication contract)
Rabbit Catastophe Press Real Good Poem Prize (Deadline June 30 – $2000) 
Matrix Magazine / Lit POP Awards (Deadline July 1)
American Chordata Call for Submissions (Deadline July 15)
Fairy Tale Review Prose & Poetry Contest (Deadline July 15 – $1000)
The Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers (Deadline July 15 – $2000)
Arts & Letters Unclassifiables Contest (Deadline July 31 – $500)
The Louise Meriwether First Book Prize (Deadline July 31 – $5000)
2017 PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship (Deadline August 1)
Proximity Magazine Personal Essay and Narrative Journalism Prizes (Deadline August 1 – $200)
Hardwick Gazette Essay Contest (Deadline August 11 – A cornerstone of the fourth estate)
The Offbeat Flash Fiction/Prose/Creative Nonfiction Contests (Deadline August 15 – $250)

Submission Sunday 5.29.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Matrix Magazine / Lit POP Awards (Deadline July 1)

The POP Montreal International Music Festival and Matrix Magazine have once again collaborated to bring you North America's most innovative and exciting literary competition. We are looking for your best stories and poems. Winners will have their work published in Matrix, and receive free travel to POP Montreal for a night in their honor. Our 2016 judges are Sam Lipsyte (Fiction) and Brenda Shaughnessy (Poetry).

The winners, one from each category, will receive a round-trip ticket to POP Montreal from September 21–25, 2016, a VIP pass to POP Montreal, free accommodation at a hotel, fall publication in Matrix Magazine with full honorarium, and will participate in a presentation at a special Matrix Lit POP event during the festival.

The Wax Paper Call for Submissions

The Wax Paper is a broadsheet publication open to all forms of written word, image, and collected conversation. The first priority of The Wax Paper is to expand our understanding of the people we share the world with, and in doing so, expand our understanding of ourselves. Pieces will be selected on their ability to illuminate the humanity and significance of the subjects that inhabit the work.

The Wax Paper was inspired by the life of Louis “Studs” Terkel. Our name is taken after his first radio show, The Wax Museum, a groundbreaking program, emblematic of his democratic fondness of variety, in which arias were played alongside folk ballads. We look to populate The Wax Paper with pieces that share the spirit inherent in Studs’ written work.  Work that required patient observation, remained steadfast in its empathy, and displayed genuine vitality.

Studs Terkel’s voice and the voices he collected are a necessary antidote to the rising flood of overtures and platitudes gushing from advertisers, politicians, corporations, and zealots. Their whispers and broadcasts are often seductive and well-crafted. They tickle our fleeting desires and exploit our fears. The Wax Paper stands in direct opposition to their messages. We will oppose them by publishing pieces created with careful observation, empathy, and vitality.

Fairy Tale Review Prose & Poetry Contest (Deadline July 15 – $1000)

Fairy Tale Review is thrilled to announce our third annual contest, with awards for poetry and prose—Kelly Link will serve as our judge for prose, and Traci Brimhall will judge poetry. The selected winners of the prose and poetry contests will each receive $1,000 and publication in The Translucent Issue, which will be released in 2017. All non-winning submissions will be considered for publication as well. 

Founded in 2005 by Kate Bernheimer, Fairy Tale Review is an annual literary journal dedicated to publishing new fairy tales and to helping raise public awareness of fairy tales as a diverse, innovative art form. Work from Fairy Tale Review has been selected for inclusion in The O. Henry Prize Stories Anthology, Best New American Voices,Best American Fantasy, and listed as “Notable” in Best American Short Stories, among other honors. Fairy Tale Review is edited by MFA students enrolled in the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

True Story Call for Submissions

The Creative Nonfiction Foundation is pleased to announce that, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, we’re starting a new monthly magazine, set to debut this fall. Each issue of True Story will feature one exceptional work of creative nonfiction, which will be distributed in print and digitally (though not available online).

Submissions should be between 3,500 and 7,000 words long, on any subject, in any style. Surprise us! The only rules are that all work submitted must be nonfiction and original to the author, and we will not consider previously published work. We’ll pay $300 on publication and give you 10 free copies of “your” issue.

2016 New American Fiction Prize (Deadline June 24 – $1000 plus publication contract)

New American Press is an independent literary publisher committed to bringing readers the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translations from across the United States and around the world. We believe that books have the potential to offer readers new and compelling visions of being in the world, and we’re committed to bringing those visions to life with careful attention to each book’s design, production, and distribution.

We publish between three and five full-length books each year, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translated works. Annually, we award a New American Fiction Prize and a New American Poetry Prize, each for a full-length book that we publish and tell all our friends about. All full-length fiction manuscripts are welcome, including novels, novellas, collections of stories and/or novellas, novels in verse, linked collections, as well as full-length collections of flash fiction and short-shorts. Full-length fiction manuscripts tend to be at least 100 pages. There is no maximum length. Final judge is GINA FRANGELLO, whose forthcoming novel, Every Kind of Wanting, will be released on Counterpoint in September 2016. 

Entropy Call for Submissions (Theme: On Weather) 

What does mild weather do to a person? How does weather mirror us? Who are the people who live in the tornado belt? What happens during a long, cold, snowy winter? Where do you find shelter during a torrential rain? When is the first time you saw hail? What was happening that day, that week? How is wind formed and tunneled through mountain passes? What happens when a low pressure system meets a high pressure system? What happens during an El Nino year, a blustery day, a blackout during a heat wave?

Entropy seeks submissions for a new Sunday series, “On Weather.” We are looking for essays, prose poems, possibly even fiction in which the weather plays a role, either in the forefront or background. While we are open to any style or form, for this particular series we are leaning more toward the essay form.

Nowhere Magazine 2016 Spring Travel Writing Contest (Deadline June 1 – $1000)

Award-winning literary travel magazine, Nowhere, is accepting submissions for the 2016 Spring Travel Writing Contest. We are looking for young, old, novice and veteran writers to send us stories that possess a powerful sense of place. Stories can be fiction, nonfiction or essay, but please indicate which genre at the top of your manuscript. Entries should be between 800-5,000 words and must not have been previously chosen as a winner in another contest. Previously published work is accepted, but again, please indicate this. Every submission will be read blind, so anyone can win…

The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Nowhere Magazine. Up to ten finalists will also be published. Brush off your manuscripts or write something new and send it to the only literary travel magazine going… We look forward to reading your work!

Vermont Studio Center (VSC) Fellowships (Deadline June 15)

The Vermont Studio Center was founded by artists in 1984. Our location--situated along the banks of the Gihon River in the historic village of Johnson, Vermont--was chosen with the intention of fostering creativity through community, collaboration, and quiet reflection supported by the unspoiled beauty of the northern Green Mountains.

Over the last 30 years, VSC has grown to become the largest international artists' and writers' residency program in the United States. Our mission is to provide studio residencies in an inclusive, international community, honoring creative work as the communication of spirit through form. VSC holds three annual fellowship deadlines: February 15th, June 15th, and October 1st. We also offer occasional special fellowships at other times.

Upcoming Deadlines

The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction (Deadline May 29 – $5000)
Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
One Story Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Harvard Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Hourglass Literary Magazine Short Story, Essay, and Poem Competition (Deadline May 31 – $1000)
American Short Fiction Contest (Deadline June 1 - $1000)
Lockjaw Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Hypertext Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
The Carolina Quarterly Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Hidden River Arts Fiction & Drama Awards (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
Boulevard Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
The Los Angeles Review Call for Submissions (Theme: #fuckit – Deadline June 1)
Nowhere Magazine 2016 Spring Travel Writing Contest (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
The Iowa Review Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
Vermont Studio Center (VSC) Fellowships (Deadline June 15)
december magazine 2016 Curt Johnson Prose Award (Deadline June 15 – $1500)
2016 New American Fiction Prize (Deadline June 24 – $1000 plus publication contract)
Rabbit Catastophe Press Real Good Poem Prize (Deadline June 30 – $2000) 
Matrix Magazine / Lit POP Awards (Deadline July 1)
American Chordata Call for Submissions (Deadline July 15)
Fairy Tale Review Prose & Poetry Contest (Deadline July 15 – $1000)
The Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers (Deadline July 15 – $2000)

Submission Sunday 5.15.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

American Short Fiction Contest (Deadline June 1 - $1000)

We are excited to announce that the American Short Fiction Contest is now open for submissions. This year we are honored to have Victor LaValle as our guest judge. All entries must be single, self-contained works of fiction, between 2,000-6,500 words.

Issued triannually, American Short Fiction publishes work by emerging and established voices: stories that dive into the wreck, that stretch the reader between recognition and surprise, that conjure a particular world with delicate expertise—stories that take a different way home. Stories published by American Short Fiction are anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Non-Required Reading, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and elsewhere.

Lockjaw Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)

To begin, obviously yes of course we want Your Best Work. But mostly we want Your Strange Work, Your Uncertain Work, the thing you made that made you feel differently about yourself for a while after you made it. We want ephemera. Work that feels like ruins. Not unpolished or unfinished due to a lack of effort or resolve, but work that feels like it was finished, was perfect, has since decayed. Work that is both human and alien. Sharp knives, cold water. Beauty under glass. Soft and stark and complex and pitiless, all at the same time. Easy, right? No problem.

We have a strong preference for the experimental and postmodern, though we value clarity and coherence. We like weirdness, but not exclusively for its own sake. Unless the writing is killer. Unless the image is unshakable. Unless the sound won’t get out of our heads. We’re not by any means snobs, but this project isn’t looking for straight science fiction, or romance, or fantasy, or anything that has its own special shelf in a bookstore or label in a record shop. We’re more than happy to suggest other journals that may really want your historical fiction, though.
 

Boulevard Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets (Deadline June 1 – $1000)

Boulevard's mission is to publish the finest in contemporary fiction and poetry as well as definitive essays on the arts and culture, and to publish a diversity of writers who exhibit an original sensibility. It is our conviction that creative and critical work should be presented in a variegated yet coherent ensemble—as a boulevard, which contains in one place the best a community has to offer.

The Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers (Deadline July 15 – $2000)

The Short Story Award for New Writers is open from May 15 – July 15, 2016 and will award $2000 to the winner of the best piece of fiction by an emerging writer. Second and third place prizes will be $200 and $100, respectively, and all three stories will earn publication on the site and agency review by Amy Williams of The Williams Agency, Victoria Marini by GELFMAN SCHNEIDER / ICM PARTNERS and Laura Biagi from Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc. in New York.

The Masters Review is an online and in print publication celebrating new and emerging writers. We are on the lookout for the best new talent with hopes of publishing stories from writers who will continue to produce great work. We offer critical essays, book reviews by debut authors, contest deadlines and submissions info, and interviews with established authors, all with the hopes of bridging the gap between new and established writers.

The Carolina Quarterly Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)

The Carolina Quarterly publishes a variety of poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and artwork three times a year. Approximately 1,000 copies are distributed to readers locally and to individual subscribers, public and university libraries, and bookstores in the United States and overseas. Back issues are sold throughout the year. Free online access to the full-text of our issues is available to every UNC student.

The Carolina Quarterly has been publishing established and emergent writers for 65 years. Recent issues have featured the works of Lauri Anderson, James Gordon Bennett, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Sean Bishop, Nicole Terez Dutton, Aaron Gwyn, K.A. Hays, Caitlin Horrocks, Stuart Nadler, Ben Purkert, Valerie Sayers, Ken Taylor, Matthew Volmer, G.C. Waldrep, Jerald Walker, and more. Pieces published in The Carolina Quarterly have appeared in New Stories from the South, Best of the South, Poetry Daily, O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prizes, and Best American Short Stories.

American Chordata Call for Submissions (Deadline July 15)

American Chordata is a biannual magazine of bright voices in fiction, nonfiction essay, and poetry, as well as art and photography. We are founded on the belief that a good literary magazine can celebrate sophisticated design and earnest expression on the same 5.5 by 8.5 page. We seek work that is brave, illuminating, and emotionally detailed. 

One Throne Magazine Call for Submissions

One Throne showcases the foremost in writing, which includes all genres and spans all styles. We are open to submissions of unpublished short fiction and creative nonfiction (2,500 words – 7,500 words), and poetry. One Throne does not believe in borders in literature—it’s all one kingdom. Some magazines may talk about publishing the best literary fiction, or the best science fiction, or the best Canadian or American writing, etc. To us, all those borders are totally artificial and we don't respect them whatsoever. Great writing is great writing, regardless of subject matter (in the case of genres) or where the writer comes from, or anything else. The literary world is one kingdom, one throne. Our magazine publishes the best writing from that one kingdom.

We were founded at Dawson City, Yukon in 2014. In our first year, two of our stories were named "Notable" in two Best American anthologies (Best American Essays and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy). Another story was subsequently made into the first chapter of a novel that was bought by HarperCollins India. We've published short stories by two Caine Prize finalists, another short story by a 2014 Shirley Jackson Award finalist, poetry by a Pushcart Prize winner, and poems by each of the joint-winners of the 2015 Brunel African Poetry Prize. We pride ourselves on probably being the most diverse literary magazine on the planet. Most of our issues carry writing from at least three continents, with women and minority groups equitably represented. Beauty is also important to us, and every poem or story is accompanied by its own dedicated art.

2017 PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship (Deadline August 1)

The Emerging Voices Fellowship is a literary mentorship that aims to provide new writers, who are isolated from the literary establishment, with the tools, skills, and knowledge they need to launch a professional writing career. By the end of the Emerging Voices Fellowship, a writer will leave with:

• Seven months of guidance from a professional mentor and written notes on their current writing project.
• An author photo and bio.
• A logline—the small summation of the project in progress.
• A clear action plan for finishing their project.
• Writing life, and craft tips, and advice from notable authors.
• An editing guide from a professional copy editor.
• Insider knowledge of publishing from agents, publishers, and editors.
• Submission guide for literary journals, agents, residencies, and fellowships.
• Improved reading technique from a professional voice coach.
• Public reading experience for a variety of audiences.



Upcoming Deadlines

Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $1000)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Joy – Deadline May 16)
Literary Death Match's 250-Word Bookmark Contest (Deadline May 18 – $100)
The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction (Deadline May 29 – $5000)
Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
One Story Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Harvard Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Hourglass Literary Magazine Short Story, Essay, and Poem Competition (Deadline May 31 – $1000)
American Short Fiction Contest (Deadline June 1 - $1000)
Lockjaw Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Hypertext Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
The Carolina Quarterly Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Hidden River Arts Fiction & Drama Awards (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
Boulevard Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
The Los Angeles Review Call for Submissions (Theme: #fuckit – Deadline June 1)
The Iowa Review Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
december magazine 2016 Curt Johnson Prose Award (Deadline June 15 – $1500)
Rabbit Catastophe Press Real Good Poem Prize (Deadline June 30 – $2000) 

Submission Sunday 5.1.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

The Los Angeles Review Call for Submissions (Theme: #fuckit – Deadline June 1)

The Los Angeles Review, a semi-annual literary journal established in 2003, is the voice of Los Angeles, and the voice of the nation. With its multitude of cultures, Los Angeles roils at the center of the cauldron of divergent literature emerging from the West Coast. Perhaps from this place something can emerge that speaks to the writer or singer or dancer or wild person in all of us, something disturbing, something alive, something of the possibility of what it could be to be human in the 21st century. 

The theme for Vol. 21 is: #fuckit. Forget thinking outside of the box, we want you to #fuckit. Screw it, break it, Tweet it, or simply walk away. This theme moves sexuality away from physicality, where words do not always represent their actions. So give us your best go, and remember, it’s not always about sex. There is more than one way to #fuckit.

december magazine 2016 Curt Johnson Prose Award (Deadline June 15 – $1500)

december magazine was founded in Iowa City in 1958 by a group of poets, writers, and artists who declared, “We are humanists…far more concerned with people than dogmatic critical or aesthetic attitudes.” december was a pioneer in the “little” magazine and small press movement, publishing cutting-edge fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and art. By 1962, the founding editors had left Iowa City; one of them, Jeff Marks, took december to Chicago and turned it over to Curt Johnson, an award-winning short story writer and novelist. Johnson edited and published december for the next 46 years until his death in 2008.

Before Johnson died, he extracted a promise from Craig Sautter, one of his friends and co-authors, to find someone to carry ondecember’s legacy. That promise led to Gianna Jacobson, a journalist-turned-fiction writer, who acquired the assets ofdecember in late 2012. She plans to carry on Johnson’s mission – publishing exceptional, thought-provoking poetry, prose, and art; championing the work of unheralded writers and artists and celebrating fresh work from seasoned voices; and promoting and advocating for december’s writers in the literary and general communities.

december has a distinguished legacy of publishing the early work of little-known writers and artists, many of whom became major literary figures, including Donald Barthelme, Marvin Bell, Stephen Berg, Rita Mae Brown, Raymond Carver, Stephen Dunn, Donald Hall, Michael Harper, Donald Justice, Ted Kooser, Philip Levine, Joyce Carol Oates, Marge Piercy, William Stafford, C.K. Williams, Charles Wright, and James Wright.

TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics Call for Submissions

TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics is a national and international journal of creative and critical writing. The mission is to discover, support, and publish poems and other writing and art about poetry; to provide a forum in which the poetic tradition is practiced, extended, challenged, and discussed by emerging and established voices; and to encourage wide appreciation of poetry.

TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics publishes original poems, critical and creative essays about poetry and poetics, book reviews, and interviews. TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics strives to represent a wide range of poetry and poetics and publish the best of what comes across our digital transom.

The Iowa Review Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans (Deadline June 1 – $1000)

Founded in 1970 and edited by faculty, students, and staff from the renowned writing and literature programs at the University of Iowa, The Iowa Review takes advantage of this rich environment for literary collaboration to create a worldwide conversation among those who read and write contemporary literature.

This creative writing contest for U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel is hosted by The Iowa Review and made possible by a gift from the family of Jeff Sharlet (1942–69), a Vietnam veteran and antiwar writer and activist. The contest is open to veterans and active duty personnel writing in any genre and about any subject matter. 

Barrelhouse Books Call for Submissions

Barrelhouse Books is seeking its next full-length work of prose. We’re open to novels, memoirs, short story collections, essay collections, or hybrid prose forms. There are no particular style restrictions. We tend to like books that are character-driven and intelligent. Books that push boundaries. Books that challenge rather than placate their readers. Books that embrace complication. Books that make us feel things. Books with an honest, singular vision.

But it’s kind of like dating, you know? We could write up a whole list of likes and dislikes, triangulate our taste preferences, but at the end of the day there’s a certain amount of chemistry involved, a certain amount of magic. At the end of the day we want what everyone wants: to fall in love.

THE WHITE REVIEW Call for Submissions

THE WHITE REVIEW is a quarterly arts journal published in print and online. The current print issue is available to buy in bookshops and via the website, or by subscription. The website is updated with new, usually web-only content in the first week of each month.

The journal was conceived as an arts and literary journal specialising in artistically or educationally meritorious works of new or emerging artists and writers. Its aim is the promotion of the arts and literature and of advancing education in arts and literature. It takes its name and a degree of inspiration from LA REVUE BLANCHE, a Parisian magazine which ran from 1889 to 1903. 

We are open to publishing work unconstrained by form, subject or genre with the proviso that it be seriously minded and accessible to a non-specialised readership, with an emphasis on contemporary arts and literature. We are an arts and literature magazine but are interested in all the various fields of human endeavour: law, finance, architecture, music, science, sociology etc. Academic submissions are not encouraged.

Literary Orphans Call for Submissions 

The writing on Literary Orphans is a mood more than a style. It’s the nervous glances back at your apartment when you go for a walk without your cell phone. It’s the nostalgia you have for squeaking cassette tapes and Soviet ICBMs. It’s an analog dream in a digital era. The writing on Literary Orphans is an exorcism of the mind of its contributors, and reading the work here is putting up your fists and getting confrontational with solitude–solitude in a world where neon signs are out and LCD billboards are in, a world where you can’t think for following because everyone is doing all the thinking for you.

The primary mission of Literary Orphans is to function as a collaborative writing and arts platform, designed to present original literary work of quality, illuminated by cutting-edge photography and art, to as large of an audience as possible.

Our secondary mission is to provoke and expand the minds of our audience through both textual and visual means; celebrating individualism with a belief that such exposure will instigate a flowering of personal agency and along with it, contribute to new and progressive understandings of social diversity across geographic spaces.

The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction (Deadline May 29 – $5000)

The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction is looking to unearth new, audacious, authentic and/or inauthentic voices from both Australia and the world.

This prize seeks work that is unlike any other. We want to hear from writers we’ve never read before, and we want writers we already know and love to challenge themselves to create work unlike any they’ve previously produced.

What is ‘experimental non-fiction’? A basic definition is that like all non-fiction it is writing based on facts, real events and real people with the aim of communicating information, truth and meaning — but that it tries to do so using unorthodox form, or style, or voice, or point-of-view, or etc. The best pieces of experimental non-fiction are those in which any unorthodox element adds to the meaning and authenticity of the subject matter.

Submissions to this prize need to be able to be read on the printed page. We applaud the current focus and fascination with boundary-pushing non-fiction that is published online, but we still believe there’s scope to further experiment on the page, using facts, maybe-facts, words from life, journals, journalism, collage, theory, photography, illustration, tricks, arguments, etc. The essay, as the end of experience, is a malleable form, and we want to celebrate that with this prize.

Upcoming Deadlines

Fugue Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
Story Call for Submissions (Theme: Identity – Deadline May 1)
Assay Call for Submissions (Theme: Best American Essays – Deadline May 1)
Southwest Review David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction (Deadline May 1 – $1000)
The Los Angeles Review Awards in Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, & Poetry (Deadline May 1 – $1000)
Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $1000)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Joy – Deadline May 16)
Literary Death Match's 250-Word Bookmark Contest (Deadline May 18 – $100)
The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction (Deadline May 29 – $5000)
Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
One Story Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Harvard Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Hourglass Literary Magazine Short Story, Essay, and Poem Competition (Deadline May 31 – $1000)
Hypertext Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Hidden River Arts Fiction & Drama Awards (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
The Los Angeles Review Call for Submissions (Theme: #fuckit – Deadline June 1)
The Iowa Review Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans (Deadline June 1 – $1000)
december magazine 2016 Curt Johnson Prose Award (Deadline June 15 – $1500)
Rabbit Catastophe Press Real Good Poem Prize (Deadline June 30 – $2000) 

Submission Sunday 4.17.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Hypertext Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)

Hypertext Magazine opened its virtual doors in 2010. Our editors live all over the United States – from Chicago to Boston to Los Angeles and Dallas. We think of ourselves as small but scrappy as hell (but we think a lot of things that may or may not be true). Most of our editors cut their fictional teeth in the Columbia College Chicago Department of Creative Writing, nurtured by dedicated professors and an innovative teaching approach – an approach that celebrates diverse voices and caters to alternative learning styles – developed by John Schultz (Story Workshop).

We’ve published writers from all over the globe and we’re currently looking for folks whose writing presents the world in new and startling ways. We want to see writers take chances, push forms. In fiction and essays, we’re looking for stories with a whole lot of life pumping through them, stories from and about all ages and types of people, stories that change the way we view the world. We’re looking for carefully crafted writing that amazes and inspires.

In addition to fiction, essays, and interviews, Hypertext is looking for serial fiction, graphic novels, and editorial cartoons. If you have ideas for any of these forms, just email us and your idea will be considered. We’ve left this pretty open-ended. That’s how Hypertext feels right now. It’s evolving. It’s not perfect. And we hope it stays that way.

PEN Center USA WeHo Writing Craft Scholarships (Deadline April 18)

PEN Center USA will award WeHo Writing Craft Scholarships, to three writers who are residents of West Hollywood. Participants must apply and will be selected based on the strength of their writing sample and their short answer responses.

The Scholarship Includes:

• Eight-week Master Class in fiction/nonfiction
• Three one-day PEN Center USA Craft Sessions
• A one-on-one editing session with a professional editor
• Participate in a culminating final reading held at Book Soup

Eligibility:

• You must be a resident of West Hollywood
• Over 21 years old
• Have reliable transportation
• Must fulfill all scholarship components

Narrative Jazz Call for YA Nonfiction Pitches (Deadline April 20)

Narrative Jazz will be a branded series of Creative Nonfiction/Narrative Nonfiction books for young adults (age 13+), developed by book publisher Jess M. Brallier, with plans to publish the first of many books in Spring 2018 with a major house.

The list will be diverse, including its authors, subjects, and readers.  Narrative Jazz is currently soliciting pitches for 200-page (50-60,000 words) books of the widest range, including memoirs, history, science, contemporary issues, etc.  Imagine, for example, books such as Unbroken, Wild, Stiff, Without a Map, My Lesbian Husband, Soldier Girls, etc., written for the YA reader.

Silver Birch Press Call for Anthology Submissions: Nancy Drew (Deadline April 30)

Since her 1930 appearance in The Secret of the Old Clock, amateur sleuth Nancy Drew has inspired generations of girls — including this one — with her moxie, intelligence, determination, but most of all independence. After 86 years, Nancy Drew is as popular as ever — with avid fans around the world.

Let’s celebrate this female icon and role model with the NANCY DREW ANTHOLOGY: A Collection of Poetry, Prose, Art & Photography Featuring Everyone’s Favorite Female Sleuth. WHAT: Poetry, prose, paintings, drawings, photographs, and other work inspired by Nancy Drew.

Opossum: A Literary Marsupial Call for Submissions 

OPOSSUM is a literary magazine animated by music. We live on the internet and aspire to the printed page and pressed vinyl. SOON! Send us your stories, poems, and essays, your work pulsing with beats, haunted by melodies. We pay $250 for short stories and essays, and $100 for poems and flash fiction and non-fiction.

Why OPOSSUM? In November, 2015, after the flood waters of October had passed, as we were thinking out how to do this thing, John Edgar had a dream in his bed in San Marcos, TX, that he was representing a magazine called OPOSSUM on the book fair floor of a well known literary conference. The next day, in Portland, OR, Jon Ross opened an old cookbook at random to a recipe for Baked Opossum. Subsequently, a majestically large Opossum moved into the woods behind John Edgar’s house, and Jon Ross’s cat, Kiki, began spending her nights surveilling a ghostlike creature who’d moved in under his porch. Opossums love persimmons. The rest is history.

Queen Mob's Tea House Short Story Contest (Deadline April 25) 

Queen Mob’s Teahouse is looking for work for our first short story contest. The theme is With(out) Salvation. Write about: gods, adventure, growth, hope, lost dreams, the future, the past, redemption or despair. But don’t feel limited. Stories pushing the boundaries of narrative form are welcome; queerness is encouraged; challenge our notion of what salvation can even be.

The winner will be published in Queen Mob’s Teahouse as well as in Berfrois and receive a cash prize. Second and third prize will be publication in Queen Mob’s Teahouse. All submissions will be considered for publication in Queen Mob’s Teahouse.

The Indianola Review Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)

We are a quarterly print journal with a mission: To produce a great product, promote well-wrought, important, and entertaining literature, and, above all, to provide an accessible, writer-friendly platform. We understand how difficult it is, as writers, to navigate the literary realm—in a world of increasingly common "submission fees," lengthy response times, and standardized declines, The Indianola Review is setting itself apart from the pack. We don't charge for standard submissions and never will, nor will we send you emails asking for money. If writers pay us for submissions, using our premium categories, we'll provide unheard of benefits—such as 48-hour response windows for poetry, and 96-hour responses for prose. We offer feedback as time allows, and offer guaranteed feedback on ALL contest submissions. We will always pay our writers, writers we discover from our submissions pool, not from our list of friends or back-room solicitations. We offer competitive compensation to our contributors, and our number-one priority as we grow is to put ourselves in a position to offer pro-paying rates. The Indianola Review exists to serve writers and provide a valuable and worthwhile literary experience.

Hidden River Arts Fiction & Drama Awards (Deadline June 1 – $1000)

An annual prize of $1,000 from Hidden River Arts, a literary arts organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will be given in the following categories: (1) to the best unpublished short story or novel excerpt (2) the best unproduced full-length play.

The William Van Wert Memorial Fiction Award
Eligible: Any previously unpublished short story or novel excerpt of 25 pages or less. Any submission that includes more than 25 pages will be disqualified. All novel excerpts must include a synopsis and outline of the whole novel, and an explanation of where the submitted portion fits into the overall structure of the work. Submissions of excerpts without a synopsis and outline will be disqualified.

The Hidden River Arts Playwrighting Award
Eligible: Any previously unpublished and unproduced full-length play. (And yes, full-length musical plays are also accepted!)

Upcoming Deadlines

PEN Center USA WeHo Writing Craft Scholarships (Deadline April 18)
Narrative Jazz Call for YA Nonfiction Pitches (Deadline April 20)
Queen Mob's Tea House Short Story Contest (Deadline April 25)
Ninth Letter's 2016 Literary Awards (Deadline April 29 – $1000) 
Redivider Beacon Street Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Arcadia 2016 Dead Bison Editors' Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Silver Birch Press Call for Anthology Submissions: Nancy Drew (Deadline April 30)
Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline April 30)
Sarabande Books 2016 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Deadline April 30 – $2000)
Fugue Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
Story Call for Submissions (Theme: Identity – Deadline May 1)
Assay Call for Submissions (Theme: Best American Essays – Deadline May 1)
Southwest Review David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction (Deadline May 1 – $1000)
The Los Angeles Review Awards in Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, & Poetry (Deadline May 1 – $1000)
Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $1000)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Joy – Deadline May 16)
Literary Death Match's 250-Word Bookmark Contest (Deadline May 18 – $100)
Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
One Story Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Harvard Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Hourglass Literary Magazine Short Story, Essay, and Poem Competition (Deadline May 31 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 4.3.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.


Southwest Review David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction (Deadline May 1 – $1000)

Named for the late David Nathan Meyerson (1967-1998), a therapist and talented writer who died before he was able to show to the greater world the full fruits of his literary potential, the prize consists of $1,000 and publication in SWR. With the generous support of Marlene, Marti, and Morton Meyerson, the award will continue to honor David Meyerson's memory by encouraging and taking notice of other writers of great promise.

Begun in 1915 and located on the campus of Southern Methodist University,  Southwest Review is the third oldest, continuously published literary quarterly in the United States. Selections from  Southwest Review have been reprinted in volumes of The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, The Best American Poetry, New Stories from the South, and elsewhere.

Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Joy – Deadline May 16)

Too often the moments that move us to write are bleak ones—stories of loss, hardship, or learning through painful interactions. For this issue we’re looking for well-crafted narratives that explore the brighter moments in life, those that teach and enlighten us through their beauty or humor.

Your tale of joy need not revolve around ecstatic delight or a once-in-a-lifetime moment; we are equally interested in thoughtfully-written pieces about finding pleasure in small things or unexpected places, and in works that highlight moments of joy in the midst of otherwise difficult circumstances. We also welcome less common approaches to this topic: the science of happiness, the history of some particularly joyful event, pop-cultural manifestations of bliss, and so on.

Essays must be vivid and dramatic; they should combine a strong and compelling narrative with an informative or reflective element and reach beyond a strictly personal experience for some universal or deeper meaning. They should approach the topic of joy sincerely—we’re not looking for a bitter or ironic take on happiness—but should at the same time avoid sentimental, uncomplicated “feel-good” stories. We're looking for well-written prose, rich with detail and a distinctive voice; all essays must tell true stories and be factually accurate.

Isthmus Call for Submissions 

Isthmus is a print journal of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published biannually in Seattle, Washington. Our goal is to produce a thoughtful, memorable reading experience that showcases a range of styles and perspectives. We hope to bring a little of Seattle to the world and a little of the rest of the world to Seattle.

Full Frontal's Mentorship Program (Deadline April 10) 

Our intention with this mentorship program is to open up the process to people who have traditionally been excluded from writers' rooms by unconscious or deliberate bias. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee is a weekly late-night comedy series hosted by Samantha Bee, formerly the longest-serving correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Full Frontal offers a unique satirical take on weekly news and explores other important stories in-depth that have been largely overlooked by more traditional media outlets.

Assay Call for Submissions (Theme: Best American Essays – Deadline May 1)

2016 is the 30th anniversary of the Best American Essays series and we can’t think of a better gift than attention paid to this institution that forms so much of who we are as a genre. Essay Daily started things off so well with their Advent project in December—and if you haven’t checked it out, you’ll want to. Best American Essays, as a literary series and foundational element of our genre, is such a rich source of conversation. As we also celebrate BAE’s anniversary and Nick’s project, we will devote a section of the magazine in both 3.1 (Fall 2016) and 3.2 (Spring 2017) to interrogating BAE as the standard-bearer of the genre, the pedagogy of teaching with it, analysis of individual pieces, and any other place creativity strikes.

We’re looking for full scholarly articles, we’re looking for informal discussions, we’re looking for pedagogical theory, lesson plans, assignments, and more. The introductions to BAE have long been considered the beginnings of nonfiction theory–where does that put us as a genre? If you’re not sure what you’re working on is something we’d be interested in, please ask us!

The Los Angeles Review Awards in Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, & Poetry (Deadline May 1 – $1000)

Red Hen Press and The Los Angeles Review are pleased to announce the inception of a brand new bi-annual award series. A prize of $1,000 and publication in The Los Angeles Review will be given to four authors each issue for exceptional writing in each genre.

The Los Angeles Review, a semi-annual literary journal established in 2003, is the voice of Los Angeles, and the voice of the nation. With its multitude of cultures, Los Angeles roils at the center of the cauldron of divergent literature emerging from the West Coast. Perhaps from this place something can emerge that speaks to the writer or singer or dancer or wild person in all of us, something disturbing, something alive, something of the possibility of what it could be to be human in the 21st century.

Poetry Magazine Call for Submissions

Poetry regularly presents new work by the most recognized poets, but its primary commitment is still to discover new voices. In recent years, over a third of the poets published have been new to the magazine. Annual translation issues deepen readers’ engagement with foreign-language poetry, and regular Q&A features present conversations with poets about their work. Poetry is also known for its enlivening “Comment” section, featuring book reviews, essays, notebooks, and “The View from Here” column, which highlights artists and professionals from outside the poetry world writing about their experience of poetry. 

Community of Writers at Squaw Valley Writers Workshops (July 25–August 1, 2016 – Deadline April 12)

These workshops assist serious writers by exploring the art and craft as well as the business of writing. The week offers daily morning workshops, craft lectures, panel discussions on editing and publishing, staff readings, and brief individual conferences. The morning workshops are led by staff writer-teachers, editors, or agents. There are separate morning workshops for Fiction and Narrative Nonfiction/Memoir. In addition to their workshop manuscripts, participants may have a second manuscript read by a staff member who meets with them in individual conferences. Nonfiction or memoir submissions should be in a narrative form. Travel, self-help, how-to, and scholarly works will not be considered. 

Upcoming Deadlines

The Carson McCullers Center Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers (Columbus, GA – Deadline April 1) 
Full Frontal's Mentorship Program (Deadline April 10) 
Community of Writers at Squaw Valley Writers Workshops (July 25–August 1, 2016 – Deadline April 12)
New Ohio Review Call for Submissions and 2016 Prizes (Deadline April 15)
Proximity Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: Reunion – Deadline April 15)
Ninth Letter's 2016 Literary Awards (Deadline April 29 – $1000) 
Redivider Beacon Street Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Arcadia 2016 Dead Bison Editors' Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline April 30)
Sarabande Books 2016 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Deadline April 30 – $2000)
Fugue Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
Story Call for Submissions (Theme: Identity – Deadline May 1)
Assay Call for Submissions (Theme: Best American Essays – Deadline May 1)
Southwest Review David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction (Deadline May 1 – $1000)
The Los Angeles Review Awards in Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, & Poetry (Deadline May 1 – $1000)
Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $1000)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Joy – Deadline May 16)
Literary Death Match's 250-Word Bookmark Contest (Deadline May 18 – $100)
Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
One Story Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Harvard Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Hourglass Literary Magazine Short Story, Essay, and Poem Competition (Deadline May 31 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 3.20.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Fiction Attic Press Call for Anthology Submissions

Seeking great stories for our forthcoming anthology, Tall Tales: Weird & Wonderful Stories From Fiction Attic Press. Sure, we like realism, but for this anthology, we are looking for stories that surprise and delight us, stories that take us somewhere completely unexpected. Think Julio Cortazar, Ursula LeGuin, Kelly Link, George Saunders…and you!

Stories should be between 1500 and 5,000 words. The winning story will receive $50 and publication. All stories will be considered for publication in the anthology. (We will be publishing a total of 20 stories). See also the Flash Fiction, First Novel, and Debut Story Collection contests.

Florida Review 2016 Editors' Awards (Deadline March 31 – $1000)

Welcome to The Florida Review, the literary journal published twice yearly by the University of Central Florida. Our artistic mission is to publish the best poetry and prose written by the world's most exciting emerging and established writers. 

Literary Orphans Call for Submissions 

The primary mission of Literary Orphans is to function as a collaborative writing and arts platform, designed to present original literary work of quality, illuminated by cutting-edge photography and art, to as large of an audience as possible.

Our secondary mission is to provoke and expand the minds of our audience through both textual and visual means; celebrating individualism with a belief that such exposure will instigate a flowering of personal agency and along with it, contribute to new and progressive understandings of social diversity across geographic spaces.

Literary Orphans has its roots as a short fiction and art magazine, and within that Derridean binary, fiction comes first. Yeah. If we're forced to pick sides we'd leave art on the Titanic, but we'd still love it, too; really, and we'd have horribly bad nightmares while we spent a blissful life raising fiction up to be an astronaut. 

Ninth Letter's 2016 Literary Awards (Deadline April 29 – $1000) 

Ninth Letter is pleased to announce our fourth annual Literary Awards competition! We'll be accepting entries from March 4, 2016 to April 29, 2016 for our Literary Awards in three categories: Fiction, Poetry, and Creative Nonfiction. The winner selected in each category will receive a $1000 prize and publication in our Fall/Winter 2016-17 issue (vol. 13, no. 2).

Ninth Letter is a collaborative arts and literary project produced by the Graduate Creative Writing Program and School of Art & Design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Edited and designed by faculty and students as part of the core curricula of both programs, the journal's mission is to present original literary writing of exceptional quality, illuminated by cutting-edge graphic design. Our electronic version, based here at ninthletter.com, exists as a complement to our print publication rather than as a digital replica. In addition to providing information about about our journal and our educational mission, this site also features original digital art, as well as audio and video podcasts of material related both to the print publication and to arts and humanities events in Urbana-Champaign and the surrounding region.

Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Writing Competition (Deadline March 31 – $250)

Carrot Ranch Communications and the Congress of Rough Writers invite you to participate in a flash fiction competition where everyone wins. "Four Paws for Noah" is a fundraiser for Noah Ainslie, a nine-year-old boy with Autism who is in the process of receiving a service dog. Appa, Noah’s dog friend, will ease Noah’s transitions from subject to subject, space to space and improve his access to the joys of childhood through anxiety intervention. All submission fees directly support Noah and Appa on their journey through a better life together. You can read more about this dynamic duo on their GoFundMe page.

The first prize winner of this competition will receive $250 to grease their pockets, publication on the Carrot Ranch Communications website as well as publication in the newly launched Carrot Ranch e-newsletter. Two runners up will also be selected for publication and public praise.

Hourglass Literary Magazine Short Story, Essay, and Poem Competition (Deadline May 31 – $1000)

Hourglass Literary Magazine is an annual and bilingual magazine which is being published in print and digital form in English as well as the languages of the region (BCMS).

The magazine’s annual contest calls for participation by authors writing in English and in the BCMS languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro. The contest is international in format, and there are no geographical restrictions so long as the submissions are in one of the languages specified.

We want to achieve intercultural mélange, first and foremost literary, that is: we will pose a series of questions on the pages of Hourglass Literary Magazine, such as: what are poetics and formal solutions and (pre)dominant themes of authors who write in English, that is languages ​​of the region (BCMS)?! What remained of post-modernism, textual acrobatics and semantic gymnastics (John Barth, Robert Coover, Ronald Sukenick etc.)? “Return to tradition”? How “Beat” generation echoes in works of contemporary writers? From Borges, through the novel and the emergence of the novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote to Danilo Kis – interpolation? Where do we write from? What do we write about when we write about love?

Proximity Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: Reunion – Deadline April 15)

For its 11th issue, Proximity is looking for true stories that explore the theme of REUNION, in personal essays, images, reportage, and multimedia. REUNION, n: the act of two or more people coming together after a separation; the process of being brought together again as a unified whole. 

To reunite can be an act of homecoming, reconnection, or reconciliation. We’re looking for true stories that explore reunions among people, reunions of ideas, personal reunions of belief or identity. We’re seeking a diverse collection of true stories that approach the theme of REUNION from diverse and creative perspectives, and we encourage nonfiction storytelling in a wide range of forms. Do you have a REUNION story to share? We want to read it (or see it, or take a listen).

Proximity Magazine Personal Essay and Narrative Journalism Prizes (Deadline August 1 – $200)

As we prepare for Issue 12, we are celebrating our third year of publication with the launch of Proximity’s annual contest. Out of respect (and love) for the wide spectrum of creative nonfiction, we’ve decided to split this contest in two, affording us the opportunity to recognize the best in both personal and documentary storytelling. We’re pleased to announce the following two prizes and their judges: Paul Lisicky and Bronwen Dickey.

Prize Issue Theme: INSIDE | OUT

Who is inside and who is outside? This is a question that can resonate for writers on every level: the literary, the social, the political. A respected poetry anthology grapples with an insider who controversially poses as an outsider. An American presidential election is awash in words like ‘walls,’ ‘them’, ‘us.’ Hundreds of thousands of people are trying to reach new countries by boat, by foot, by whatever means, unwanted and unsafe in both their homes and their destinations.

We’re interested in true stories that push our understanding of what it means to be INSIDE and what it means to be OUTside. Where do you feel IN and where do you feel OUT, and what does this even mean? Show us where you’re lost, you’re unknown, you’re on the outside looking in–or deep-dive into spaces in which you’re deeply known but can see the barriers that creates for others. We’re not looking for perfect pictures; we’re looking for authentic and complex portraits of personal experiences being INSIDE | OUT in America and beyond. Take us inside issues, cultures, and sub-culture; push and play with form; find unique ways into unique subjects.

Upcoming Deadlines

Granta Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
Florida Review 2016 Editors' Awards (Deadline March 31 – $1000)
The James Franco Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Writing Competition (Deadline March 31 – $250)
The Masters Review Anthology Awards for New Writers (Deadline March 31 – $500)
The Carson McCullers Center Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers (Columbus, GA – Deadline April 1) 
New Ohio Review Call for Submissions and 2016 Prizes (Deadline April 15)
Proximity Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: Reunion – Deadline April 15)
Ninth Letter's 2016 Literary Awards (Deadline April 29 – $1000) 
Redivider Beacon Street Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Arcadia 2016 Dead Bison Editors' Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline April 30)
Sarabande Books 2016 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Deadline April 30 – $2000)

Submission Sunday 3.6.16

Patricia Highsmith from The Guardian

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

The Carson McCullers Center Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers (Columbus, GA – Deadline April 1) 

Named in honor of Carson's parents, The Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers was inspired by McCullers' experience at the Breadloaf Writer's Conference in Vermont and, especially, the Yaddo Arts Colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. To honor the contribution of these writers' residences to McCullers' work, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians awards fellowships for writers to spend time in McCullers' childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. The fellowships are intended to afford the writers in residence uninterrupted time to dedicate to their work, free from the distractions of daily life and other professional responsibilities.

The Marguerite and Lamar Fellowship for Writers will be offered for the fall semester of 2016, the fellowship to begin the first of September and to end the first of December. During this period of time, the Smith/McCullers Fellow will reside in a spacious private apartment in Carson McCullers' childhood home, the Smith-McCullers House. The Fellow will be provided with a stipend of $5000 to cover costs of transportation, food and other incidentals. Fellowship recipients will be required to introduce or advance their work through reading or workshop/forum presentations. The Fellow will work with the McCullers Center Director to plan a presentation near the end of the residency. 

Redivider Beacon Street Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)

Redivider is a nationally distributed journal of new art and literature produced by and representing the graduate students in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College in Boston. Published twice a year, we welcome art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions from new, emerging, and established artists and writers. Redivider strives to showcase the very best previously unpublished art and literature we can find; to actively engage the broader literary community, and to support and nurture that community in our pages and beyond; to welcome and serve historically underrepresented voices, including those marginalized due to class, gender, race, and sexuality; and, above all, to give good art and literature a good home.

We launched the Beacon Street Prize in 2012, in honor of our 10th anniversary, and writers and readers responded with such enthusiasm that we now hold it annually. Welcoming submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, the 2016 contest will open February 15 and close April 30. The $20 entry fee includes a complementary one-year print subscription to Redivider, and will qualify each short story, essay, or poem $1,000 each and publication in Issue 14.1 (our Winter 2016 issue).

apt Call for Submissions (Deadline October 15)

apt is a literary journal featuring challenging writing that combines the cerebral and the visceral. We published twenty-four online issues between 2005-2010. In 2011, we moved to an hybrid print/online format. We publish work online every week and a print issue every winter/spring. 

Our journal is not called apartment. Nor is it an acronym. Please don’t call it apartment magazine. Please don’t call it ay-pee-tee. We chose the name apt for its definition: 1/appropriate or suitable in the circumstances (i.e., apropos), 2/quick to learn (i.e., astute) 3/having a tendency to do something (i.e., likely to enact change). Further, we don’t capitalize the name. We won’t stand on ceremony about it if you capitalize the name, but if you’re asking for our preference, we prefer it lowercase.

Sarabande Books 2016 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Deadline April 30 – $2000)

Stacy D’Erasmo is judging our 2016 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. The prize includes a $2,000 cash award, publication of a collection of short stories, novellas, or a short novel, and a standard royalty contract. 

Sarabande Books was founded in 1994 by Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner to publish poetry, short fiction, and essay; to disburse these works with diligence and integrity; and to serve as an educational resource for readers, students, and teachers of creative writing. First titles appeared in 1996, and the press currently has more than 220 titles under contract or in print, many of them prize-winning. Sarabande authors and staff members conduct an estimated 225 readings, workshops, and lectures per year, and they strive to make their programs and services accessible to all.

New Ohio Review Call for Submissions and 2016 Prizes (Deadline April 15)

New Ohio Review is a publication of Ohio University's Creative Writing Program.

We accept literary submissions in any genre; however we do not accept unsolicited translations. We do not reprint previously published work. Our reading periods are September 15th to December 15th, and January 15th to April 15th, but we will consider work year-round from subscribers.

New Ohio Review’s contributors receive a payment of $10/page for prose and $15/page for poetry, $30 minimum, in addition to two copies of the issue and a one-year subscription.

Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $1000)

Since 1971, Ploughshares has been committed to promoting the work of up-and-coming writers. Over the years, Ploughshares has helped launch the careers of great writers like Edward P. Jones, Sue Miller, Mona Simpson, Tim O’Brien, and many more. 

In the spirit of the journal’s founding mission, the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest recognizes work by an emerging writer in each of three genres: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. One winner in each genre per year will receive $1,000 and publication in the literary journal.  We consider writers “emerging” if they have not published or self-published a book.

Rabbit Catastophe Press Real Good Poem Prize (Deadline June 30 – $2000) 

Judge: Kiki Petrosino

Introducing our first annual single poem contest.  $2,000 for the winning poem, plus 25 original limited edition broadsides and publication in Rabbit Catastrophe Review. Finalists may also be published in RCR. Send up to three (30 line limit for each individual poem) REAL GOOD POEMS. A fee of $20 includes a one year subscription to Rabbit Catastrophe Review. It also includes you in the RabCat community. All members receive feedback on their regular, non-contest submissions to RCR.

Rabbit Catastrophe Press in dedicated to publishing writers marginalized from mainstream literary communities. If you are queer, of color, trans, differently abled, or otherwise commonly excluded, we encourage you to submit. Any optional, personal information is welcome in your cover letter and will be kept confidential. While our goal is to find and celebrate an exceptional poem, we want to make it clear that Rabbit Catastrophe is a welcoming place for all writers.

Juniper Summer Writing Institute Scholarships and Grants (Amherst, MA – Deadline March 15)

Every summer, the Juniper Institute gathers a community of writers to explore the creative process and develop new approaches to the craft of writing. Hosted by the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Juniper is a weeklong immersion in the writer’s life, June 19-26, 2016. It is time out for you and your writing, time for wild invention, and to become part of a diverse community of acclaimed and emerging writers from all walks of life.

The Juniper Summer Writing Institute is an inclusive literary space that welcomes adult writers from different genres at all stages of their careers. Acceptance to the Institute is based upon the strength and promise of the writing sample.

The Institute awards five work-study* scholarships of 50% tuition remission, several sponsored scholarships in the amount of $500 (each offered by one of our wonderful literary scholarship sponsors), and one full tuition scholarship sponsored by The Valley Advocate. We especially encourage applicants of diverse life experiences and backgrounds, and those who have experienced socioeconomic disadvantage or discrimination.

Upcoming Deadlines

The Kerouac Project Writer-in-Residence Position (Orlando, FL – Deadline March 13)
Colorado Review Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)
Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (Deadline March 15)
Fourth Genre 2016 Steinberg Essay Prize (Deadline March 15)
Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA – Deadline March 15)
The Missouri Review 9th Annual Miller Audio Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000 and more)
Juniper Summer Writing Institute Scholarships and Grants (Amherst, MA – Deadline March 15)
Realmwalker Publishing Group Inaugural “Write This Speculative Fiction Novel” Contest! (Deadline March 15 – $5000 advance for the novel plus a three book deal)
Granta Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
The James Franco Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
The Masters Review Anthology Awards for New Writers (Deadline March 31 – $500)
The Carson McCullers Center Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers (Columbus, GA – Deadline April 1) 
New Ohio Review Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
Redivider Beacon Street Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Arcadia 2016 Dead Bison Editors' Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline April 30)
Sarabande Books 2016 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Deadline April 30 – $2000)

Submission Sunday 2.21.15

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers (Deadline February 29 – $2500)

One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train Stories is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, New Stories from the Midwest, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South, Best of the West, New Stories from the Southwest, and Best American Short Stories. This handsome triannual continues to actively champion emerging writers. Forty percent of all the stories presented in the last year were their authors' first stories accepted for print publication. We know how much goes into writing a story you care about, and it is our great pleasure to read your work. Glimmer Train tries to set the bar for treating writers with respect.

Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop at UC San Diego (Deadline March 1)

Clarion is an intensive six-week summer program focused on fundamentals particular to the writing of science fiction and fantasy short stories. It is considered a premier proving and training ground for aspiring writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Instructors are among the most respected writers and editors working in the field today. Over one third of our graduates have been published and many have gone on to critical acclaim. The list of distinguished Clarion alumni includes Ed Bryant, Octavia Butler, Bob Crais, Cory Doctorow, George Alec Effinger, Nalo Hopkinson, James Patrick Kelly, Vonda McIntyre, Kim Stanley Robinson, Martha Soukup, Kelly Link, Bruce Sterling, and many others.

Clarion participants are selected from applicants who have the potential for highly successful writing careers and who submit writing samples with an application. Some have already been published. Though most come from the United States, students from countries worldwide frequently participate. Clarion students range in age from late teens to those in mid-career, and represent a wide variety of academic and working backgrounds.

The James Franco Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)

This project is about visibility of underrepresented artists and narratives. Not JF.

We have a desire for diverse literature and are questioning literary journals and the publishing industry. What happens when work is considered blindly? What happens when editors are asked to question where their tastes came from?

It seems to us at The James Franco Review, that more needs to be done than just make a commitment to diversity. We need to reimagine literary spaces. The whole publishing system needs to be queered. So a queer living in Seattle took that on and a roving cast of editors help run with it.

Colorado Review Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)

The Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction was established in 2004 in memory of Liza Nelligan, a writer, editor, and friend of many in Colorado State University’s English Department, where she received her master’s degree in literature in 1992. By giving an award to the author of an outstanding short story each year, we hope to honor Nelligan’s life, her passion for writing, and her love of fiction. The Nelligan Prize is offered annually. The winner receives a $2,000 honorarium and the story is published in the fall/winter issue of Colorado Review.

Little Patuxent Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)

Little Patuxent Review (LPR) is a biannual print journal with an associated blog, featuring writers and artists from the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond. The mission of LPR Enterprises, Inc. is to promote the tradition of literary and visual arts by creating a spirited magazine, website and social media presence that reflects and draws upon the creativity and diversity of the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond, as well as promoting the literary and visual arts throughout community and educational venues.

Luna Luna Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: Relationships & Love – Deadline March 1)

Luna Luna Magazine is a hybrid lifestyle magazine, dreamer's diary and arts journal. While we regularly publish features, essays and interviews on everything from sexuality and witchcraft to career and body positivity, we are intrinsically dedicated to featuring the literary and visual arts. Our content is divided into the light, the dark, and general lifestyle.

Here, readers can indulge in their good and bad sides, in the quiet conversations, the confessions, the uncomfortable, the indulgent and the beautiful. We aim to capture everything that makes our world so powerful: beauty, light, nuance, oddities, opulence, magic and desire.

Literary Death Match's 250-Word Bookmark Contest (Deadline May 18 – $100)

We’re thrilled to announce Literary Death Match's 250-Word Bookmark Contest judged by the inimitable Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket, a.k.a. LDM SF, Ep. 4 champion). The winner will receive $1,000. The two runners-up (runner-ups?) will receive $100. (It's runners-up, by the way.) All finalists will be invited to read at LDM events near where they live. We've created this contest for two reasons:

1. Our live events average 10,000 attendees annually. We want these people leaving our around-the-globe shows with award-winning stories they're certain to read. (Everyone can spare 250 words worth of reading.)

2. LDM is in the midst of a pivot. We're hell bent on creating brilliant content beyond our live shows. This contest will serve as a fundraiser and any proceeds beyond the prize money and printing fees will go towards build LDM's new web site, and help us create digital content for all the world to see. 

The rules are simple: write a story that is no longer than 250 words. You're thinking: but my story is 263 words long! That's okay, right? Nope. It won't fit on the bookmark. 250, please! (Though if your story is perfect and it's 255, we'll see what we can do with the kerning.)

Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (Deadline March 15)

As part of the residency program (May 24 – July 12, 2016), each artist is invited to live in one of fives homes that are nestled on 5 acres surrounded by the panoramic mountain views. Adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park, where the Sonoran and Mojave deserts meet, each home provides quiet seclusion. The region, know for its strange Joshua Trees and giant rock formations called Inselbergs, is a land of surprising variety and complexity; it is a land of extreme fragility. To the close observer, a tiny flower bud or the lizard's frantic dash reveals this desert as a place of beauty and life.

All 2016 chosen artists will receive a scholarship/stipend to be used to deter costs of participating in the program. The residency provides studio spaces and accommodations; scholarship funds can be used toward other expenses such as art materials, transportation, food, etc. Depending on available scholarship funds, 2016 scholarships will amount to between $700- $1,000 per artist.

Upcoming Deadlines

Tin House Call for Submissions (Theme: Sex, Again? – Deadline February 28)
Okey-Panky Call for Submissions (Deadline February 29)
Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers (Deadline February 29 – $2500)
Slice Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)
Four Way Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)
Little Patuxent Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)
Hunger Mountain Annual Writing Contests (Deadline March 1 – $1000)
Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop at UC San Diego (Deadline March 1)
Luna Luna Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: Relationships & Love – Deadline March 1)
The Stockholm Review of Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline March 5)
The Kerouac Project Writer-in-Residence Position (Orlando, FL – Deadline March 13)
Colorado Review Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)
Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (Deadline March 15)
Fourth Genre 2016 Steinberg Essay Prize (Deadline March 15)
Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA – Deadline March 15)
The Missouri Review 9th Annual Miller Audio Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000 and more)
Realmwalker Publishing Group Inaugural “Write This Speculative Fiction Novel” Contest! (Deadline March 15 – $5000 advance for the novel plus a three book deal)
Granta Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
The James Franco Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
The Masters Review Anthology Awards for New Writers (Deadline March 31 – $500)
Arcadia 2016 Dead Bison Editors' Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)
Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline April 30)

2. LDM is in the midst of a pivot. We're hell bent on creating brilliant content beyond our live shows. This contest will serve as a fundraiser and any proceeds beyond the prize money and printing fees will go towards build LDM's new web site, and help us create digital content for all the world to see. 

The rules are simple: write a story that is no longer than 250 words. You're thinking: but my story is 263 words long! That's okay, right? Nope. It won't fit on the bookmark. 250, please! (Though if your story is perfect and it's 255, we'll see what we can do with the kerning.)

Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (Deadline March 15)

As part of the residency program (May 24 – July 12, 2016), each artist is invited to live in one of fives homes that are nestled on 5 acres surrounded by the panoramic mountain views. Adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park, where the Sonoran and Mojave deserts meet, each home provides quiet seclusion. The region, know for its strange Joshua Trees and giant rock formations called Inselbergs, is a land of surprising variety and complexity; it is a land of extreme fragility. To the close observer, a tiny flower bud or the lizard's frantic dash reveals this desert as a place of beauty and life.

All 2016 chosen artists will receive a scholarship/stipend to be used to deter costs of participating in the program. The residency provides studio spaces and accommodations; scholarship funds can be used toward other expenses such as art materials, transportation, food, etc. Depending on available scholarship funds, 2016 scholarships will amount to between $700- $1,000 per artist.

Submission Sunday 2.7.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Harvard Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)

In 1986 Stratis Haviaras, then Curator of the Woodberry Poetry Room of the Harvard College Library, founded a quarterly periodical called Erato. The purpose of this publication was to publicize the activities of the Poetry Room and create a new forum for discussion of current literary matters and events. The first issue of Erato, which was four pages long, featured a poem by Seamus Heaney, a short piece on Louis Simpson, and a news item from Harvard University Press. Tipped into the issue were three loose-leaf pages of book reviews, including reviews of works by Joseph Brodsky, Marguerite Duras, and Richard Ford.

In the more than two decades since it was launched, Harvard Review has emerged as a major American literary journal. Contributors to the journal include such well-known figures as Arthur Miller, John Updike, Jhumpa Lahiri, J. M. Coetzee, Seamus Heaney, Gore Vidal, Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyakaa, Andrea Barrett, and Joyce Carol Oates, as well as those making their literary debut. Harvard Review publishes short fiction, poetry, essays, drama, and book reviews. Writers at all stages of their careers are invited to apply; however, we can only publish a very small fraction of the material we receive. 

The Masters Review Anthology Awards for New Writers (Deadline March 31 – $500)

Every year The Masters Review opens submissions to produce our anthology, a collection of ten stories written by the best emerging authors. Our aim is showcase ten writers who we believe will continue to produce great work. The ten winning writers are nationally distributed in a printed book with their stories and essays exposed to top agents, editors, and authors across the country. Our third volume was awarded the Silver Medal for Best Short Story Collection through the INDIEFAB Awards in 2015, and our fourth volume published this fall. The deadline to submit to Volume V is March 31. Guest judge: Amy Hempel.

DUM DUM Zine Call for Submissions 

DUM DUM Zine publishes experimental lit and art that embraces all creative forms. When we’re not publishing our annual zine, we’re constantly searching for new multi-platform literature and art to share online.

In the past we’ve featured hybrid fiction and poetry, text message interviews, experimental music and art reviews, prank email chains, crowd-sourced community photo projects, and even serialized radio plays. We are looking for submissions that embody, even transcend, these categories, maybe even creating a hybrid of each! Show us what you’ve got! We want you to become part of our growing collective of Dummies.

The Missouri Review 9th Annual Miller Audio Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)

The winner of each genre (poetry, prose, documentary, humor) receives a prize of $1000 and publication of their award-winning audio piece on The Missouri Review's website and podcast. More than slick production or fancy bells and whistles, we are looking for good, exciting, and compelling writing for all four of our categories. Don’t let the technological aspect scare you—if you can operate an iPhone, you can do it!

The Missouri Review, founded in 1978, is one of the most highly-regarded literary magazines in the United States and for the past thirty-four years we’ve upheld a reputation for finding and publishing the very best writers first. We are based at the University of Missouri and publish four issues each year. Each issue contains approximately five new stories, three new poetry features, and two essays, all of which is selected from unsolicited submissions sent from writers throughout the world. 

Okey-Panky Call for Submissions (Deadline February 29)

Okey-Panky—Electric Literature's weekly online magazine of short, darkly comic, ironic, and experimental fiction, essay, poetry, and graphic narrative—is open for submissions! The word limit is 1500, and there is no submission fee. Put it on your calendar: the mailbox fills up fast. We publish something new every Monday morning. Contributors are paid $100.

Arcadia 2016 Dead Bison Editors' Prize (Deadline April 30 – $1000)

A prize of $1,000 and publication in Arcadia is given annually for a short story, a work of nonfiction, and a group of poems. Using the online submission system, submit up to 25 pages of fiction or nonfiction and 10 pages of poetry with a $15 entry fee by April 30. The runner-up in each category will also be published. More details on the specific genres can be found on our submission page. 

An independent literary endeavor that's published eclectic art and literature from our home in Oklahoma since 2009, we seek out and put in print the best, regardless of its origin. We're members of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses and and adhere to their Contest Code of Ethics. Entries from friends or family of Arcadia editors will not be considered. Our selection process consists of two rounds. Assistant editors select a number of drafts based on votes, and editors select the winner, runner-up, and eight finalists from those drafts. All stories are read at least twice, and many of those are read more. We're honored to have the chance to read so much fine work.  

Four Way Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)

Four Way Review is a biannual electronic literary journal from non-profit, independent literary publisher Four Way Books. In 2012, we celebrated the Review’s inaugural issue and the 20th anniversary of Four Way Books.

Four Way Review accepts poetry and fiction from both established and emerging authors. We look for work that demonstrates fine attention to craft while retaining a powerful and compelling voice.  We want writing that showcases the imagination’s unique ability to refine the raw materials of human experience.
 

Vermont Studio Center Fellowship Awards (Deadline February 15)

The Vermont Studio Center was founded by artists in 1984. Our location--situated along the banks of the Gihon River in the historic village of Johnson, Vermont--was chosen with the intention of fostering creativity through community, collaboration, and quiet reflection supported by the unspoiled beauty of the northern Green Mountains.

Over the last 30 years, VSC has grown to become the largest international artists' and writers' residency program in the United States. Our mission is to provide studio residencies in an inclusive, international community, honoring creative work as the communication of spirit through form. 

Upcoming Deadlines

Barrelhouse Call for Blog Submissions (Theme: The Weirdest Love of All – Deadline February 14)
Vermont Studio Center Fellowship Awards (Deadline February 15)
The Journal Non/Fiction Collection Prize (Deadline February 15 – $1500)
SubTerrain Call for Submissions (Theme Issue: Secrets – Deadline February 15)
Fiction International Call for Submissions (Theme: Taboo – Deadline February 15)
Indiana Review and Indiana University Press Blue Lights Book Prize (Deadline February 15 – $2000 plus publication)
Tin House Call for Submissions (Theme: Sex, Again? – Deadline February 28)
Okey-Panky Call for Submissions (Deadline February 29)
Slice Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)
Four Way Review Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)
Hunger Mountain Annual Writing Contests (Deadline March 1 – $1000)
The Stockholm Review of Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline March 5)
The Kerouac Project Writer-in-Residence Position (Orlando, FL – Deadline March 13)
Fourth Genre 2016 Steinberg Essay Prize (Deadline March 15)
Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA – Deadline March 15)
The Missouri Review 9th Annual Miller Audio Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000 and more)
Realmwalker Publishing Group Inaugural “Write This Speculative Fiction Novel” Contest! (Deadline March 15 – $5000 advance for the novel plus a three book deal)
Granta Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
The Masters Review Anthology Awards for New Writers (Deadline March 31 – $500)

Submission Sunday 1.24.15

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Eleven Eleven: A Journal of Art & Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31)

Eleven Eleven is a biannual journal of literature and art published through the MFA Writing program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. The aim of our publication is to provide a forum for risk and experimentation and to serve as an exchange between writers and artists. Eleven Eleven was founded in 2004 by Youmna Chlala and Gayle Romasanta. 

We’ll be reading submissions for issue 21 from January 19 through January 31, or until we hit 200 submissions, whichever comes first. Eleven Eleven welcomes daring and insightful submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art and literary criticism and drama. We love translations and writing from outside the US. We also love recovery projects (archival work that draws attention to writers who may have fallen off the map – query us beforehand!).

Duckbill Anthology Call for Submissions

Duckbill Anthology is a literary journal founded by people who love to read, and love to write. We exist to be a home for writers of any age, background or gender — so long as their writing makes us sit up and take notice. Currently looking for flash fiction and poetry.

Duckbill is dedicated to showcasing the best short work being written today, regardless of a contributor’s publication history. We want writing that challenges us, that makes us think, that forces us to sit up and take notice. We want brevity, style and eloquence. We want you to unashamedly write in your own voice with no regard for what may, or may not, be trendy.

Found Polaroids Call for Submissions 

Over the course of several years, Kyler has been collecting polaroid images from different places. The result is this: Found Polaroids, a collection of over 6000 images. Found on this website is a curated cross-section of the wider collection. Each image has its own story and context, all of which are as of yet unknown to us. We hope you will become, as we have, transfixed on the ‘unknowable’: who were these people, what did they do, and more importantly where did they go? Their context and therefore their meaning has been forever lost. It was with this realization in mind that the concept moved from focusing on what can be learned from found Polaroid images to how can we now interpret them. Quality writing paired with these lovely images can be moving, and helps give life back to images that might otherwise find themselves in a waste bin.

We invite you to write a short story, or a number of stories (250-350 words each) based on one of the images found on the home page. The story must be relevant to an event, or based on the life of those in the photo—a story essential to the individual’s character, a defining moment—or must explain, beyond what we can observe, is happening in the image. If an image has previously been written about, please feel free to contribute an additional story. Your story can be entirely divergent, or can be one that builds on a previous submission. In this sense, not only are the images inspiring, but the previous stories become a source for creativity.

The Stockholm Review of Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline March 5)

The Stockholm Review of Literature is an online publication with immodest ambitions. It seeks to publish superlative literary fiction, poetry, essays and art, and it undertakes to promote the writers and artists that produce it. Welcoming submissions of previously unpublished, original work, The Stockholm Review of Literature expresses a preference in the following:

• Short Literary Fiction!
• Poetry Suited For Lunch Time Reading!
• De-centered And Uncanny Essays, Interviews and Book Reviews!

And mild to extreme distaste for the following:

• Sloppiness and pomposity.
• Adverbs.
• Terribly inspired things.
• Plagiarism.

Submissions received between January 2nd (17.01 GMT) – March 5th (17.00 GMT) will be considered for publications in issue 13. 

Creative Nonfiction Call for Instagram Micro Essays 

We're excited to announce that we're expanding the micro-essay contest to Instagram. Participating is simple. Follow us on Instagram (@creativenonfiction). Post an original photo. Write a CNF-worthy caption (note: IG limits captions to 2,200 characters). Add the hashtags #cnfgram and #tinytruth. And we'll do the rest.

What will we be looking for? The same thing we look for in #cnftweets and submissions to the magazine: “True stories, well told.” Find inspiration in an amazing place, an unforgettable character, a moment in time, or current events. Use a photo (note: it should be a photo that you yourself took) to tell half your story and a crafted caption to tell the rest. Every week we'll repost our favorite to our Instagram feed--and we'll share one in our newsletter monthly, and one on our website every third month.

SubTerrain Call for Submissions (Theme Issue: Secrets – Deadline February 15)

Poetry, fiction, nonfiction exploring the idea of secrecy. Personal, corporate, governmental, military -- secrecy is used to cement personal relationships, to guarantee state security, to harbour knowledge. Some consider secrecy one of the main sources of human conflict. We intend to open the doors on the subTerrain confessional.

subTerrain magazine is published 3 times a year from modest offices just off of Main Street in Vancouver, BC. We strive to produce a stimulating fusion of fiction, poetry, photography and graphic illustration from uprising Canadian, U.S. & international writers and artists.

Barrelhouse Call for Blog Submissions (Theme: The Weirdest Love of All – Deadline February 14)

Remember that time your prom date picked you up in his 1970 Chevy Nova and brought you to his house to meet his mom and you posed in your baby blue taffeta and terrible perm in front of the kitchen mural that was painted to look like the Rocky Mountains only this was western Connecticut? Remember how the shutter clicked and clicked and then she squealed at you to follow her into the back room because she had an “awesome idea” and you did because you were fifteen and also slightly stunned by perm chemicals and the overhead fluorescence? And remember then how she made you take off your prom dress and put on her wedding dress to stand next to her son, your date? “Stand a little to the left, honey. Aww, put your arm around him! Give her a big squeeze! Oh, this is the happiest day of my life!”

Yeah….that wasn’t weird at all.

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Barrelhouse Blog wants stories, essays and poems of real or imagined Weird Love, Bad Love, Awkward Love, Dress Up in Your Date’s Mother’s Wedding Dress Love. Make us cringe, make us squirm, make us laugh. Make us pity your poor prom date. 

The Journal Non/Fiction Collection Prize (Deadline February 15 – $1500)

The Non/Fiction Collection Prize is awarded annually to a book-length collection of short stories, essays, or a combination of the two. The prize (which in previous iterations was known as the Sandstone Prize and The Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction) carries a cash award of $1500 and publication with The Ohio State University Press under its standard contract.

Submissions will be read from December 14, 2015 to February 14, 2016. Manuscripts may be no fewer than 150 and no more than 350 typed double-spaced pages. Individual stories or essays that have been previously published may be included in the manuscript, but manuscripts previously published as a whole in any format (including electronic or self-published) are ineligible. Each submission must include a list of acknowledgments of previously published work (title and magazine/journal/anthology) included in the manuscript.

Upcoming Deadlines

Global Citizen and Ben Lovett Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31) 
The Citron Review Call for Submissions (The Queer Issue – Deadline January 31)
Little Tokyo Historical Society 2016 Short Story Contest (Deadline January 31 – $500)
Eleven Eleven: A Journal of Art & Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction (Deadline January 31 – $1000)
The American Short(er) Fiction Contest (Deadline February 1 – $1000)
MIEL Call for Anthology Submissions (Theme: Softness – Deadline February 1)
Barrelhouse Call for Blog Submissions (Theme: The Weirdest Love of All – Deadline February 14)
The Journal Non/Fiction Collection Prize (Deadline February 15 – $1500)
SubTerrain Call for Submissions (Theme Issue: Secrets – Deadline February 15)
Fiction International Call for Submissions (Theme: Taboo – Deadline February 15)
Indiana Review and Indiana University Press Blue Lights Book Prize (Deadline February 15 – $2000 plus publication)
Tin House Call for Submissions (Theme: Sex, Again? – Deadline February 28)
Slice Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)
Hunger Mountain Annual Writing Contests (Deadline March 1 – $1000)
The Stockholm Review of Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline March 5)
The Kerouac Project Writer-in-Residence Position (Orlando, FL – Deadline March 13)
Fourth Genre 2016 Steinberg Essay Prize (Deadline March 15)
Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA – Deadline March 15)
Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000 and more)
Realmwalker Publishing Group Inaugural “Write This Speculative Fiction Novel” Contest! (Deadline March 15 – $5000 advance for the novel plus a three book deal)
Granta Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)

Submission Sunday 1.10.16

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Pacific Standard Call for Submissions

Pacific Standard publications include a bimonthly print magazine and a daily website—PSmag.com—that tell stories about society's biggest problems, both established and emerging. By combining research that matters with ambitious narrative and investigative reporting, we reveal how people, governments, corporations, institutions, and cultural groupthink perpetuate questionable private behavior and bad public policy. We're also deeply interested in the scholars, revolutionaries, policymakers, and creatives fighting for a better and more just future.

We are a great home for writers who can tell deeply reported, gripping tales about issues in the public interest while plumbing the intellectual, theoretical, and empirical context that surrounds them. Every story we tell has a strong connection to one of our four core subject areas: economic, educational, environmental, and social justice. Our writers should want to make readers think about how society works—and about how it could be working better. All Pacific Standard and PSmag.com articles should be sophisticated and engaging, should shed light on the new or the innovative, and should wear their erudition lightly. Writers receive careful, thoughtful, collegial, and stringent editing, with the aim of making sophisticated ideas and research accessible to an educated public.

Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature Call for Submissions (Deadline April 30)

A huizache is a wild acacia tree native to Mexico whose reach is South and East Texas, where it irritates landowning farmers. No matter what they do to be rid of it, the resilient, beautiful tree grows and flourishes.

Huizache seeks works that challenge ethnic, gender, or social stereotypes. Though the magazine’s focus is Latino, it is not limited to it.

Urban Farmhouse Press Call for Submissions 

Urban Farmhouse Press is an independent literary press based out of the border cities of Windsor, ON Canada and Detroit, MI USA. We see our roots stretching back through the small magazines that gave rise to the great literary tradition embodied by magazines like Poetry and John T. Frederick'sthe Midland. It is from those Midwestern roots that we build a line of books that explores the breadth of human existence in the form of beautifully crafted works that speak to the complexities of life. 

We understand great literature comes from the people and not from on high and as such enjoy writing that feels real, rooted in the land, and tells us something about this world we all share. While all literature has a place it is written from, we believe that truly great literature speaks to the all of humanity in every place. As such we publish work that captures not only the physical places we inhabit but also the unique voices and psyches that arise organically from those places.

Slice Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)

Slice magazine welcomes submissions for short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We're looking for anyone with a fresh voice and a compelling story to share—basically any work that really knocks our socks off. We're not drawn to experimental or heavy-handed genre fiction. The best way to get a sense of Slice's content is to read the magazine. At the core, Slice aims to bridge the gap between emerging and established authors by offering a space where both are published side-by-side. In each issue, a specific cultural theme becomes the catalyst for articles and interviews from renowned writers and lesser known voices alike. Along with these pieces, we publish fiction and poetry that isn’t bound by the theme—we simply look for works by writers who promise to become tomorrow’s literary legends. We offer all contributors of Slice a monetary award for their work ($250 for stories and essays and $75 for poems).

Slice publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by emerging writers who haven't appeared in previous issues of the magazine. This way, we continue to pave space for brand new voices readers may not have encountered yet.

Indiana Review and Indiana University Press Blue Lights Book Prize (Deadline February 15 – $2000 plus publication)

Indiana Review and Indiana University Press are proud to present the Blue Light Books prize, awarded on alternating years to short story and poetry collections of outstanding merit. This year, Indiana Review and Indiana University Press will be accepting submissions of story collections.

The name for the collaboration was inspired by a blue light outside of the Indiana Review offices in Ballantine Hall. The IR offices are located at the end of a long hallway, and when the office is open, this blue light is turned on. This light has come to symbolize the journal’s openness and commitment to fostering a sense of community. It is this sense of community that brings Indiana Review and IU Press together and inspires us to showcase exceptional collections of short fiction and poetry from the larger literary community.

No Extra Words Flash Fiction Podcast Call for Submissions

No Extra Words is weekly podcast of great English language short stories under 2,000 words. Stories come from all over the world. Episodes typically feature 2 to 3 stories and we try to keep each episode around 15 minutes. The podcast is completely free to listen or subscribe to. Stories are used with permission and all remain the property of their respective authors. No Extra Words welcomes different voices and would love to read submissions by any flash fiction author. Please note that at this time we are scheduling episodes 3-6 months in advance.

There are only three submission guidelines. Stories should be:

1) Your own work to which you currently own rights. Previously published stories or those currently published online are welcome as long as you currently retain the rights to have your story podcasted.

2) A work of fiction. Stories may be based on factual events but should be fictionalized.  Stories may be in any genre except erotica or fanfiction (see intellectual freedom statement below.)

3) Short! This is a flash fiction podcast, so stories should be less than 2,000 words.  Priority is given to stories less than 1,000 words. There is no minimum word count for stories.

From January 15-February 15 2016 we will be accepting poetry submissions for the first time! 

Rawboned Call for Submissions

Distilled. Succinct. Terse. Rawboned publishes nonfiction shorts, flash fiction, poetry, and hybrids up to 750 words.  The magazine is published quarterly online. Our favorite pieces are compiled in an annual print journal.

Writing short is hard. We think shorts are worth writing, and worth reading. Rawboned exists to showcase your painstakingly hewn essays, your fictionalized distillations, your boiled down poetical reductions, your cracked open essential prose–we want the marrow of your story.

The Kerouac Project Writer-in-Residence Position (Orlando, FL – Deadline March 13)

The Kerouac Project provides four residencies a year to writers of any stripe or age, living anywhere in the world. In the past we have accepted writers with no formal writing education alongside those with MFA’s and impressive résumés. You will be judged on the quality of the writing sample you submit. Each residency consists of approximately a three month stay in the cottage where Jack Kerouac wrote his novel Dharma Bums. Utilities and a food stipend of $1,000 are included. As writer-in-residence, all you are required to do is live in the Kerouac House during your residency, work on your writing project, and participate in two events—a welcome potluck dinner for you, and a reading of your work at the Kerouac House. Should you desire them, the Kerouac Project can also offer opportunities for you to participate in other readings, lead workshops, and interact in other ways with the vibrant Central Florida literary community. 

Upcoming Deadlines

CutBank 2016 Magazine Literary Prizes (Deadline January 15 – $500)
Global Citizen and Ben Lovett Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31) 
The Citron Review Call for Submissions (The Queer Issue – Deadline January 31)
Little Tokyo Historical Society 2016 Short Story Contest (Deadline January 31 – $500)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction (Deadline January 31 – $1000)
The American Short(er) Fiction Contest (Deadline February 1 – $1000)
MIEL Call for Anthology Submissions (Theme: Softness – Deadline February 1)
Fiction International Call for Submissions (Theme: Taboo – Deadline February 15)
Indiana Review and Indiana University Press Blue Lights Book Prize (Deadline February 15 – $2000 plus publication)
Tin House Call for Submissions (Theme: Sex, Again? – Deadline February 28)
Slice Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)
Hunger Mountain Annual Writing Contests (Deadline March 1 – $1000)
The Kerouac Project Writer-in-Residence Position (Orlando, FL – Deadline March 13)
Fourth Genre 2016 Steinberg Essay Prize (Deadline March 15)
Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA – Deadline March 15)
Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000 and more)
Realmwalker Publishing Group Inaugural “Write This Speculative Fiction Novel” Contest! (Deadline March 15 – $5000 advance for the novel plus a three book deal)
Granta Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)

Submission Sunday 12.13.15

Happy Holidays from Chris, Jen, Megan, and Sacha! See you in the new year!

Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers (Deadline December 31 – $1500)

$1,500 and publication in Boulevard awarded to the winning story by a writer who has not yet published a book of fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction with a nationally distributed press. 

Boulevard's mission is to publish the finest in contemporary fiction and poetry as well as definitive essays on the arts and culture, and to publish a diversity of writers who exhibit an original sensibility. It is our conviction that creative and critical work should be presented in a variegated yet coherent ensemble—as a boulevard, which contains in one place the best a community has to offer. 

Story Call for Submissions (Theme: Identity – Reading Period January 1-May 1)

The forthcoming theme for 2016 is "Identity," material about the way we tell stories about ourselves and have ourselves storied by history and society, on such topics as gender, race, sex, family, culture, and bodies.

Story is interested in narrative of any shape and kind we can get onto the printed page. Surprise us with traditional and experimental forms of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We love short fiction, but we love hermit-crab essays, hybrid forms, research, lists, and charts too. Issues are themed and double-sided and feature the best narratives that speak to that theme in whichever size, shape, or genre they come.The editors are not only interested in fiction and nonfiction, but also innovative, human stories in any shape or form, and from as diverse a population as possible—Korean mathematicians, Iraq war veteran narrative poetry, musical scores from young girls in Mississippi, or the narrative analytics of big data. (We are also very much interested in research, essays, and interviews about how stories work to define and complicate our world.) As poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote, "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."

Hunger Mountain Annual Writing Contests (Deadline March 1 – $1000)

Hunger Mountain holds four annual contests: The Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize, The Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize, The Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, and The Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing. 

Hunger Mountain is both a print and online journal of the arts. We publish fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, visual art, young adult and children’s writing, and literary miscellany. Our print issue comes out annually in the spring, and our online content changes on a regular basis.

Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA – Deadline March 15)

The Djerassi Resident Artists Program has provided over 2,000 artist residencies, and currently serves approximately 90 artists each year, since 1979 – all free of charge. It is the largest artist residency program in the Western United States and considered among the best in the country. Each year dozens of artists from across the United States, and around the world, travel to the open hillsides and deep redwood forests of SMIP Ranch to take inspiration from the beautiful surroundings and seek refuge from the distractions of the world to concentrate on their creative projects. While in residence, the artists work in peaceful isolation within a supportive community of other artists and Program staff. They thrive on the intellectual stimulation and the collegial interaction in this intimate artist community.

Residencies are awarded competitively, at no cost, to national and international artists in the disciplines of choreography, literature, music composition, visual arts, and media arts/new genres. We seek applications from emerging and mid-career artists, for whom appointments as resident artists may make a significant difference to their careers, as well as from established artists with national and/or international reputations. Applicants are evaluated by panels of arts professionals in each category. Those selected are offered living and studio space for a 30 day session during the season which runs from mid-April through mid-November.

Fourth Genre 2016 Steinberg Essay Prize (Deadline March 15)

Opens January 1. We invite you to experience Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, a journal devoted to publishing notable, innovative work in nonfiction. Given the genre’s flexibility and expansiveness, we welcome a variety of works ranging from personal essays and memoirs to literary journalism and personal criticism. The editors invite works that are lyrical, self-interrogative, meditative, and reflective, as well as expository, analytical, exploratory, or whimsical. In short, we encourage submissions across the full spectrum of the genre. The journal encourages a writer-to-reader conversation, one that explores the markers and boundaries of literary/creative nonfiction. 

Obsidian Call for Submissions (Speculating Futures:  Black Imagination & the Arts – Deadline January 15)

The editors of Obsidian invite you to participate in the journal’s celebration of four decades of excellence in the arts by submitting original unpublished work for its first double-volume issue exploring the speculative genre. Selected works will appear in Obsidian's Fall 2016 double-issue edited by Sheree Renée Thomas and Nisi Shawl (short fiction, drama, poetry), Isiah Lavender III (essays), and Krista Franklin (visual and media art and paraliterature). 

 

All artists ask, “what if?” explore the consequences of “if this continues,” and contemplate “if only;” however, practitioners of the speculative arts or Afrofuturism, an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, fabulism, horror, and unclassifiable and interstitial creative works such as slipstream, ask the same question and respond with an answer that re-imagines whole worlds and goes beyond the known universe.

 

Afrofuturism and the speculative arts may transport audiences to a planet light-years away, to alternate histories and identities, or deep inside the jewel-toned caves of a far-distant past, another consciousness. Whether extrapolating science and society to imagine futuristic technology, art, and socio-political configurations, or conjuring new forms of magic, these genres imagine what might have been or what might be, opening the door to any possibility. Obsidian seeks original works that explore and reimagine Black thought, Black art, future and past. 

Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000 and more)

The Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize is a writing competition sponsored by the stage and radio series, Selected Shorts. This long-running series at Symphony Space in New York City celebrates the art of the short story by having stars of stage and screen read aloud the works of established and emerging writers. Selected Shorts is recorded for Public Radio and heard nationally.

The 2016 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize will be judged by T.C. Boyle, author of World’s End and The Harder They Come. The winning work will be performed and recorded live at the Selected Shorts performance at Symphony Space on Wednesday, June 8, 2016, and published on Electric Literature. The winning writer will receive $1000 and a free 10-week course with Gotham Writers.

Rivendell Writers' Colony Writer-in-Residence Fellowships

Rivendell Writers’ Colony, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, aims to inspire and educate the imagination by offering programs, workshops, and residencies to both published authors and aspiring writers. Rivendell nurtures spiritual growth and personal wellness by providing education and experiential programs for the mind, body, and spirit, while working to preserve the natural beauty of our Tennessee mountaintop.

Our purpose is to:

1. Bring together aspiring artists, writers, and the general public in an atmosphere of acceptance, collaboration, and creative fervor, with the ultimate goal of fostering great writing and art;
2. Provide educational experiences and opportunities to aspiring artists, writers, and the general public that will promote imagination, creativity, spirituality, and self-realization;
3. Relieve the financial burdens on aspiring writers and artists by providing subsidized residencies so that they may pursue their crafts;
4. Promote literacy and to share the joys of reading and writing with others; and
5. Share the beauty of nature and to educate the public on ways to preserve the natural environment and prudently utilize its resources.

We offer several fellowships for first-time residents to cover the cost of a two-week residency. Meals are not included. If selected for a fellowship, applicants may request a residency extending beyond the two weeks covered by the award.

Upcoming Deadlines

Kenyon Review Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)
Print-Oriented Bastards Call for Submissions (Winter Issue – Deadline December 15)
Geist 12th Annual Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest (Deadline December 15 – $500)
Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)
Gesture Literary Journal & Press Call for Submissions (Theme: Doubling – Deadline December 18)
Redivider Blurred Genre Contest (Deadline December 31 – $250)
Tupelo Press 2015 Dorset Poetry Prize (Deadline December 31 – $3000)
Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers (Deadline December 31 – $1500)
The 2016 Mississippi Review Prize (Deadline January 1 – $1000)
St. Petersburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline January 1)
CutBank 2016 Magazine Literary Prizes (Deadline January 15 – $500)
Global Citizen and Ben Lovett Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31) 
The Citron Review Call for Submissions (The Queer Issue – Deadline January 31)
Little Tokyo Historical Society 2016 Short Story Contest (Deadline January 31 – $500)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction (Deadline January 31 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 11.29.15

Sculpture by Courtney Brown

Our consultants can help you edit your drafts, prepare your submissions, and find places to submit! Contact us for customized submission assistance.

Global Citizen and Ben Lovett Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31) 

Global Citizen and Ben Lovett (Mumford & Sons / Communion Records) are teaming up and asking you, citizens of the world, to collaborate on our global album project, Metamorphoses. Join us in the fight towards ending extreme poverty.

You’re our co-writers and we’re inviting you to collaborate with some of the world’s most influential and talented artists. We need you to provide this movement with a voice through the submission of your personal lyrics, poems, stories, reflections and thoughts. Ben and his team will take the most poignant and powerful entries and incorporate them into original songs for our unique 12 track album. All material used will be credited to the citizen who contributed it.

Redivider Blurred Genre Contest (Deadline December 31 – $250)

Submissions for our first annual Redivider Blurred Genre Contest will open November 15 and close December 31. This contest explores the porous genre boundaries between flash fiction, flash nonfiction, and prose poetry. In doing so, we aim to nurture and celebrate commonality, difference, and distinction in literature. Each category will produce one winning entry, announced in February.

Redivider is a nationally distributed journal of new art and literature produced by and representing the graduate students in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College in Boston. Published twice a year, we welcome art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions from new, emerging, and established artists and writers. 

The Citron Review Call for Submissions (The Queer Issue – Deadline January 31)

For our Spring Issue, 2016, The Citron Review invites LGBTQIA writers to submit work in any genre for our first-ever queer issue. The idea: To celebrate these stories and amplify these voices. At Citron, we seek to be representative of the contemporary landscape — and this includes, brothers, sisters, and siblings of all genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. Everyone. 

To be considered for this issue writers must identify as LGBTQIA. There are no restrictions on content or theme, only that submissions are representative of the writer’s spirit. Normal submission guidelines apply with regard to length, etc. 

We’re new to all of this. In fact, we’re experimenting. We hope you’ll experiment with us, and we appreciate your support. And just to be clear, we welcome work from any writer, at any time during the year. We are not suspending our normal submission process during this period. Submissions will be accepted for consideration for Summer 2016 and beyond!

The American Short(er) Fiction Contest (Deadline February 1 – $1000)

We are thrilled to announce that Amelia Gray will be judging this year’s American Short(er) Fiction Contest. The prize recognizes extraordinary short fiction under 1,000 words. The first-place winner will receive a $1,000 prize and publication, and the second-place winner will receive $250 and publication. All entries will be considered for publication. 

Issued triannually, American Short Fiction publishes work by emerging and established voices: stories that dive into the wreck, that stretch the reader between recognition and surprise, that conjure a particular world with delicate expertise—stories that take a different way home. Stories published by American Short Fiction are anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Non-Required Reading, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and elsewhere.

Matter Call for Personal Essay and Feature Pitches (Curated by Ashley C. Ford – Deadline December 2)

In collaboration with Matter, I will be curating and editing a week of personal essays and reported features from emerging writers. We see this as an opportunity to share bold and novel writing from those who have been otherwise underrated or overlooked. Your submission should not be a completed essay or reported feature, but an idea for the piece you would work on in collaboration with myself and Matter. You will be compensated for your work at a competitive rate to be discussed upon acceptance of your pitch.

Geist 12th Annual Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest (Deadline December 15 – $500)

How it works:

1) Send us a story and a postcard—the relationship can be as strong or as tangential as you like, so long as there is a clear connection between the story and the image.

2) If you’re not sure where to look for a postcard, you can make your own or visit Wikimedia Commons.

3) The story can be fiction or non-fiction; maximum length is 500 words.

Gesture Literary Journal & Press Call for Submissions (Theme: Doubling – Deadline December 18)

Gesture Press & Journal seeks written and visual art from new and established artists on the theme doubling. The double can be an expansion or retraction of itself. It can be a mirror and what it reflects. What shows in the reflection: The horror of duality? The provocation of Castor and Pollux? The comfortable contradiction of Piscean fish swimming away from each other?

We seek the double says or withholds. We seek the catharsis and insight. We seek the site and the boundaries of the double; of what doubles; and of what can double. Send us your work that engages the doubling/twinning/mirroring. Send us your psychodrama doubling, symmetry, separation, and configuration.

Gesture was founded in 2011 with the intention to publish work that is not boring. Published biannually, we seek written and visual submissions from new and established artists. Gesture is the home for poetry, poetics, prose, theory, reviews, interviews, images, and interaction. We want work that does not intentionally concern itself with genre. Some may call this experimental. We call it exciting. As in, not boring. We want to feel a gesture and be electrified.

C&R Press Call for Submissions

C&R Press is now accepting full length poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and hybrid manuscripts for our 2016 and 2017 catalog. We love books. Literature matters in today’s world because it lets us explore and share the best of what we think, and who we can be. Good fiction, nonfiction and poetry grow understanding and imagination, take us into new lives and show us truths we never knew. For thousands of years, books are how content has been shared. Today, C&R Press is pushing into new media, while keeping the best of what has always made books great.

So we’re looking for talented authors and poets – both new and established – whose work we help refine, support, publish and promote. And, through their works, we’re looking to grow the reading public’s love of reading, writing, crafting and dreaming. Let other people say that books are dead, that their time is past. Since 2006 we’ve been helping writers and readers prove that idea wrong – and we’re just getting started. Long live books.

Upcoming Deadlines

Midwestern Gothic Call for Submissions (Deadline November 30)
The Bloedel Reserve Residency Program (Bainbridge Island, WA – Deadline November 30)
The Baltimore Review Winter 2015 Contest (Theme: Health – Deadline November 30 – $500)
Puerto Del Sol Call for Submissions (Deadline December 1)
Thin Air Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline December 1)
Oxford American Call for Submissions (Spring Issue – Deadline December 1)
The Los Angeles Review Call for Submissions (Theme: Ekphrasis – Deadline December 1)
Matter Call for Personal Essay and Feature Pitches (Curated by Ashley C. Ford – Deadline December 2)
Screencraft Short Story Contest (Deadline December 5 – $1000)
Westwind Fall 2015 Microwriting Contest (Deadline December 6)
Kenyon Review Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)
Print-Oriented Bastards Call for Submissions (Winter Issue – Deadline December 15)
Geist 12th Annual Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest (Deadline December 15 – $500)
Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)
Gesture Literary Journal & Press Call for Submissions (Theme: Doubling – Deadline December 18)
Redivider Blurred Genre Contest (Deadline December 31 – $250)
Tupelo Press 2015 Dorset Poetry Prize (Deadline December 31 – $3000)
The 2016 Mississippi Review Prize (Deadline January 1 – $1000)
St. Petersburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline January 1)
CutBank 2016 Magazine Literary Prizes (Deadline January 15 – $500)
Global Citizen and Ben Lovett Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31) 
The Citron Review Call for Submissions (The Queer Issue – Deadline January 31)
Little Tokyo Historical Society 2016 Short Story Contest (Deadline January 31 – $500)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction (Deadline January 31 – $1000)