Submission Sunday 9.23.18

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

[PANK] Call for Folio Submissions: Latinx and Latinidad (Deadline November 1)

The only thing more vast than our twenty-one sovereign states and territories is the rich diversity of the Latinidad experience. We want to celebrate this beauty in all its manifold forms for our first folio. We are seeking submissions from Latinx / Latina / Latino writers for this special feature. As always, we remain open to all voices and the ways in which they emerge. Fiction, CNF, poetry, hybrid writing, graphic narrative, visual art, and multimedia work are all welcome.

John Gosslee, Chris Campanioni, and Maya Marshall edit PANK. At the end of 2015, John Gosslee purchased PANK Magazine after the founders announced they planned to close the riskiest magazine on the literary scene. They co-edit the magazine to continue the original vision of the founding editors and the rich history that’s published so many innovative voices.

The Masters Review Summer 2018 Flash Fiction Contest (Deadline September 30 – $3000)

Send us your stories under 1000 words! We love a good piece of flash fiction. The winner will receive $3000 and publication. Our love of flash fiction runs deep. And throughout our years of reading work by emerging writers we’ve seen some incredible pieces of small and powerful fiction. We are proud to now offer a contest dedicated solely to flash. So here it is: a home for your very best small fiction. Send us big worlds in tiny packages, large ideas with a low word count. Dazzle us with your best fiction under 1000 words.

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, submissions info, and interviews with established authors, all with the hopes of bridging the gap between new and established writers.

Embark Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15)

Embark is a literary journal designed for novelists and featuring exclusively novel beginnings—those crucial first pages that must engage the reader’s attention and often receive more polishing than any other part of the book. We believe that crafting the opening of a novel is an art in itself, and that reading beginnings can be both inspiring and delightful. If you prefer novels to short stories, love collecting first sentences, and enjoy reading the opening pages of any book that comes to hand, Embark is for you! And if you’re a writer working on your first or fifth or fifteenth book, Embark offers you a chance to share your latest project with fellow writers and readers.

Issues of Embark are released quarterly on this website. Every issue includes ten novel beginnings, each accompanied by a brief Author’s Statement that might offer a summary of the plot, the intentions behind the novel, a meditation on its theme—whatever the author feels is most important or meaningful about the project.

Boston Review Aura Estrada Short Story Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1500)

Aura Estrada (1977–2007) was a promising young Mexican writer and student, and the wife of Francisco Goldman. This prize is meant to honor her memory by supporting other burgeoning writers.

Deadline: October 1, 2018
Judge: Alexander Chee
Prize: $1,500

Boston Review is a political and literary forum—a public space for discussion of ideas and culture. Independent and nonprofit, animated by hope and committed to equality, we believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world.

Pochino Press Call for Zine Submissions (Themes: Ancestors, Place, and Memory, The Land Lives Forever – Deadline October 15)

Pochino Press offers a multi-media stage for change makers and culture creators. Our mission is to publish works that illuminate stories, which originate in the intersections where hybrid cultures not only meet, but form a new sensibility.​Pochino Press is seeking short stories, essays, and poems, as well as illustration, photography, and visual art for a small zine publication to be released in late November 2018, in print and electronic versions.
 
After the success of Ancestors, Place and Memory, Our Stories Will Never Die, in 2015, we are now opening a we are excited to announce a second call for vol.2. This year’s zine will focus on the same concept of Ancestors, Place, and Memory with a different theme that focuses on our connections to Land. We welcome submissions of finished, unpublished works with these themes to be considered for a zine published and distributed in Oakland, CA and online.

Southern Indiana Review 2018 Mary C. Mohr Awards (Deadline October 1 – $2000)

Southern Indiana Review will award three prizes of $2000 each and publication in SIR for works of creative nonfiction (personal or scholarly); fiction (flash fiction, short story, novella, or stand-alone novel excerpt); or poetry written in English.

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 editors invite submissions of drama, fiction, interviews, nonfiction, and poetry September 1—November 15 & February 1—April 15 for our annual fall and spring issues.

Cherry Tree Call for General Submissions and Literary Shade (Deadline October 1)

Founded in 2014, with its debut issue released on February 15, 2015, Cherry Tree: A National Literary Journal @ Washington College is an annual literary magazine featuring poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and literary shade by emerging and established writers from across the United States, and all over the world. Washington College undergraduates participate in all facets of the production of this print journal. All work submitted to our poetry, fiction, or nonfiction categories will be considered for inclusion in the Literary Shade feature section of our upcoming print issue. If you’re not yet familiar with our Literary Shade feature, which we debuted in Issue 3, here’s a brief description of what we’re keeping a lookout for:

In the great tradition of Jennie Livingston’s documentary, Paris is Burning, we are looking for impeccably-crafted shade. But not just ordinary shade: we’re especially interested in poems, short stories, or essays that throw shade at the institutions that have whitewashed our literature and history, be they laws or events or texts authored by dead old cisgender white supremacist misogynistic homophobes. We believe that shade—subversive wit, withering critique—can empower. And we want to read the shadiest shade around.

The 2019 A Public Space Fellowships (Deadline October 15)

We are pleased to announce that applications will open on September 15 for the 2019 A Public Space Fellowships. ​The aim of these fellowships is to seek out and support writers who embrace risk in their work and their own singular vision. Writers who have not yet contracted to publish a book are invited to apply. Three fellowships will be awarded, which will include:

—six months of editorial support from A Public Space editors to prepare a piece of prose for publication in the magazine;
—a $1,000 honorarium;
—the opportunity to meet with members of the publishing community, including agents, editors, and published writers;
—the opportunity to participate in a public reading and conversation in New York City with A Public Space editors and contributors.

A Public Space is an independent nonprofit publisher of an eponymous award-winning literary, arts, and culture magazine, and APS Books. Under the direction of founding editor Brigid Hughes since 2006, it has been our mission to seek out overlooked and unclassifiable work, and to publish writing from beyond established confines.

Upcoming Deadlines 

The New Guard Volume VIII Machigonne Fiction and Knightville Poetry Contests (September 24 – $1500)
Sarabande Books Open Reading Month (Deadline September 30)
Boulevard Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
The Masters Review Summer 2018 Flash Fiction Contest (Deadline September 30 – $3000)
Dzanc Books Prizes: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Short Story Collection (Deadline September 30)
CRAFT Elements Contest: Setting, Dialogue, and Character (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
Boston Review Aura Estrada Short Story Contest (Deadline October 1 – $1500)
Cherry Tree Call for General Submissions and Literary Shade (Deadline October 1)
Southern Indiana Review 2018 Mary C. Mohr Awards (Deadline October 1 – $2000)
The Missouri Review 28th Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (Deadline October 1 – $5000)
Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)
The 2019 A Public Space Fellowships (Deadline October 15)
Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship (Deadline October 15 – $59,000)
Pochino Press Call for Zine Submissions (Themes: Ancestors, Place, and Memory, The Land Lives Forever – Deadline October 15)
South 85 Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline October 31)
Kenyon Review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 1)
[PANK] Call for Folio Submissions: Latinx and Latinidad (Deadline November 1)
New England Review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 30)
The Normal School Call for Submissions (Deadline December 1)
Embark Call for Submissions (Deadline December 15) 
Red Bike Review Short Fiction Contest (Deadline December 31 – $1500)
Black Heart Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: We’ll Always Have Paris (Or Will We?) – Deadline December 31
Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)

Submission Sunday 9.2.18

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

Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship (Deadline October 15 – $59,000)

The American poet Amy Lowell died in 1925. Her will established an annual scholarship to support travel abroad for gifted American-born poets. The scholarship is administered by the Trustees under her will at the law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston, Massachusetts.

Any poet of American birth who is able and willing to spend one year outside the continent of North America. There is no age requirement, and there is no requirement that applicants be enrolled in a university or other education program. While many recent winners have been published poets, there is no requirement that applicants have previously published their work. The 2019-2020 Scholarship award will be approximately $59,000, adjusted for inflation. If there are two winners, each will receive the full amount.

The Normal School Call for Submissions (Deadline December 1)

The Normal School is a bi-annual print and online journal featuring nonfiction, fiction, poetry, criticism, journalism, author interviews, and multi-media texts. We are nestled happily into the California State University at Fresno like a comfy spore in a benign and mighty lung. We dig quirky, boundary-challenging, energetic prose and poetry with innovations in content, form, and focus, which isn’t actually as high-falutin’ as it sounds. We’re just sort of the lit mag equivalent of the kid who always has bottle caps, cat’s eye marbles, dead animal skulls, little blue men and other treasures in his pockets. We also actively seek to publish and promote work by historically under-represented and marginalized voices.

New England Review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 30)

By publishing new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that is both challenging and inviting, New England Review encourages artistic exchange and thought-provoking innovation, providing publishing opportunities for writers at all stages in their careers.

The selection of writings in each issue presents a broad spectrum of viewpoints and genres, including traditional and experimental fiction, long and short poems, translations, criticism, travel writing, essays on the arts and literature, and rediscoveries. New England Review exists in a place apart from mass culture, where speed and information overload are the norm. At NER, serious writing is given serious attention, from the painstaking selection process through careful editing and publication, where finally the writer’s words meet up with a curious and dedicated readership.

Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)

Begun by Donald Barthelme and Phillip Lopate, Gulf Coast is the nationally-distributed journal housed within the University of Houston's English Department, home to one of the US's top ranked creative writing programs. The journal spent its nascent years (1982-1985) as Domestic Crude, a name that nodded to the major industry of the Houston area. It was a 64-page (magazine-formatted) student-run publication, with editorial advising coming from Mr. Lopate, who also contributed work to the first issues.

In 1986, the name Gulf Coast premiered. It stuck. After some experimenting, the journal found its dimensions and, eventually, its audience. The journal has since moved beyond the student body of the University of Houston and into the larger world. Our readership of the print journal currently exceeds 3,000, with more and more coming to our ever-expanding website. The print journal comes out each April and October.

Gulf Coast is still student-run. We seek to promote and publish quality literature in our local and national communities while simultaneously teaching excellence in literary publishing to graduate and undergraduate students. While we are committed to providing a balanced combination of literary approaches and voices, all of the editorial positions are two-year terms, thus ensuring a regular turnover in the specific personality and style of the journal.

Sarabande Books Open Reading Month (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.

Sarabande publishes ten to twelve books each year, including selections for the Mary McCarthy prize in fiction, the Kathryn A. Morton prize in poetry, and the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature. In 2016, the McCarthy prize will be judged by Stacy D'Erasmo, and the Morton will be judged by Dean Young. Sarabande authors and titles have won or been short-listed for, among many others, the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, LA Times Book Prize, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, Lambda Literary awards, Story Prize Spotlight award, and several PEN/American honors, including the PEN/Hemingway. 

Cobalt 2018 Earl Weaver Baseball Prize (Deadline September 15 – $100)

Earl Weaver, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996, was manager of the Baltimore Orioles for 17 years (1968-1982 and 1985-1986). The legend, who died in 2013, once said that baseball is all "pitching, defense, and the three-run homer." This contest is dedicated to The Earl of Baltimore.

The 2018 Baseball Issue will be edited by Publisher/Chief Baseball Officer Andrew Keating, who will also select finalists. Regardless of genre, each work should have baseball as a central theme or key component.

We are looking for creative non-fiction/essays that come hard and straight down the pipe; fiction that throws us a curveball; and poetry that reinvigorates our love for the game. Any written work (including scholarly essays) on the amazing game of baseball is welcomed!

Kenyon Review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 1)

Building on a tradition of excellence dating back to 1939, the Kenyon Review has evolved from a distinguished literary magazine to a pre-eminent arts organization. Today, KR is devoted to nurturing, publishing, and celebrating the best in contemporary writing. We’re expanding the community of diverse readers and writers, across the globe, at every stage of their lives.

With a bold new design, the Kenyon Review has transformed itself from one of America’s most important literary magazines, publishing groundbreaking work by both Nobel Prize–winning authors and daring new voices, to a fresh, exciting, and timely multi-platform publication, reaching out to a diverse audience.

CRAFT Elements Contest: Setting, Dialogue, and Character (Deadline September 30 – $1000)

What makes your fiction stand out? When we read stories, we often note their strength in a certain element of craft. Perhaps the setting—a place the reader has never been or is very familiar with—is perfectly rendered. Perhaps the dialogue brings the characters to life but also reveals subtext. Perhaps a character is drawn so well that the reader cannot forget the character, even weeks after reading the story. 

For this contest, we will be reading the stories though the lens of craft, and selecting winners based on the strength of the story in each of the following craft categories: Setting, Dialogue, and Character. One story will be awarded in each category, and each of the three authors will receive $1000 and publication. Finalists will also be noted in each category. So send us that story that really shines in one (or all!) of these categories. We can’t wait to read your fiction!

Upcoming Deadlines 

Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose Literary Prizes (Deadline September 5 – $1000)
Cobalt 2018 Earl Weaver Baseball Prize (Deadline September 15 – $100)
The New Guard Volume VIII Machigonne Fiction and Knightville Poetry Contests (September 24 – $1500)
Sarabande Books Open Reading Month (Deadline September 30)
Boulevard Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
Dzanc Books Prizes: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Short Story Collection (Deadline September 30)
CRAFT Elements Contest: Setting, Dialogue, and Character (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
The Missouri Review 28th Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (Deadline October 1 – $5000)
Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)
Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship (Deadline October 15 – $59,000)
South 85 Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline October 31)
Kenyon Review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 1)
New England Review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 30)
The Normal School Call for Submissions (Deadline December 1)
Red Bike Review Short Fiction Contest (Deadline December 31 – $1500)
Black Heart Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: We’ll Always Have Paris (Or Will We?) – Deadline December 31
Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts Call for Submissions (Deadline March 1)

Submission Sunday 8.19.18

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

Boulevard Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers (Deadline September 30 – $1000)

We are thrilled to announce the debut of our inaugural nonfiction contest. $1,000 and publication in Boulevard awarded to the winning essay by a writer who has not yet published a book of fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction with a nationally distributed press.

Boulevard was founded in 1984 in New York City and incorporated in 1985 as a nonprofit by writer Richard Burgin. Its first issue, published January 2, 1986, featured fiction by Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, poetry by Kenneth Koch, and interviews with renowned composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich and an essay on John Dos Passos and the Soviet Cinema. By its third issue in 1987, Boulevard had attained national bookstore distribution, which continues into the present.

Boulevard has published works by generations of important writers and critics, including John Ashbery, Ann Beattie, Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Jennifer Egan, Donald Hall, Alice Hoffman, David Mamet, Joyce Carol Oates, Carl Phillips, Francine Prose, Gerald Stern, Mark Strand, and others. Poet laureate Daniel Hoffman has called Boulevard “One of the half-dozen best literary journals.”

Persimmon Tree Call for Submissions

Persimmon Tree, an online magazine, is a showcase for the creativity and talent of women over sixty. Too often older women’s artistic work is ignored or disregarded, and only those few who are already established receive the attention they deserve. Yet many women are at the height of their creative abilities in their later decades and have a great deal to contribute. Persimmon Tree is committed to bringing this wealth of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art to a broader audience, for the benefit of all.

We are looking for work that reveals rich experience and a variety of perspectives. Each issue of the magazine will include several fiction and nonfiction pieces, poetry by one or more poets, and the work of one or more visual artists. The magazine is published quarterly, in association with Mills College.

Western Humanities Review Call for Submissions

Established in 1947, Western Humanities Review is a journal of contemporary writing published by the University of Utah’s Department of English. Recent issues have included the work of Carol Maso, Stanley Corngold, Thalia Field, Shelley Jackson, Laird Hunt, Susan Steinberg, Michael Martone, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Kazim Ali, and Ilya Kaminsky.

Work first published in WHR has been reprinted or cited in the Pushcart Anthology, O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, Best American Essays, and on Poetry Daily. Western Humanities Review accepts unsolicited submissions of original poetry, fiction, nonfiction, hybrid work, audio/visual work, and essays year round.

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

Judge: Colum McCann

The three prizewinners and seven honorable mentions will be considered for representation by William Morris Endeavor; ICM; the Wylie Agency; Aragi, Inc.; 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. We accept all genres of literary fiction.

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.

South 85 Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline October 31)

South 85 Journal is a semi-annual online literary journal run by the Converse College Low-Residency MFA Program.  We publish fiction, non-fiction, poetry, reviews, and art by new, emerging, and well-established writers and artists. While we consider all quality work that follow the submission guidelines, we are especially interested in pieces that demonstrate a strong voice and/or a sense of place. So, write like mad, and if it’s good, we want to see it.

The A3 Review's August Contest (Theme: Ball – Deadline August 25 – £175)

The A3 Review is an international magazine that behaves like a map. The prompt for this month's Contest is: Ball. Beach balls, tennis balls, volley balls, and yes, balls. Write about the last time you had a ball? (Not to be confused with bawl. Or, perhaps, yes. Confuse them.) The ball's in your court. Send us poems, short stories, essays and images inspired by ball. Tell an entire life story through sports and the different balls you or a character have played with: cricket, golf, net, volley, bowling, soccer. And juggling. Write a poem about learning to juggle.

Be inspired by John Berryman's "The Ball Poem" to explore existential themes. Or write about throwing a ball for your dog to catch, and be inspired by "Old Man Throwing a Ball" by David Baker. Be on the ball! You could write about medicine balls and Swiss balls at the gym or snooker balls in the pub.

Tell the story of a crystal ball and the time you had your fortune told. What's it like to be the belle of the ball? Or to be at a ball, at all. Write a brief essay on the role of the ball in Cinderella. Write about two characters who meet at a ball, or about ball gowns and the person who makes them. We'd like stories and poems about a glamorous ball, but make sure they're a bit radical. This, after all, is a free-for-all. Other prompts include: snowball, eyeball, and meatball!

Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose Literary Prizes (Deadline September 5 – $1000)

Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose is an annual national literary journal seeking works from writers during its fall reading period each year. We publish fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction of both contest winners and other writers in May of each year. The literary journal is produced by the faculty in the Department of English at Fairfield University.

We are thrilled to announce that Lia Purpura will judge the 2019 Dogwood Literary Awards in poetry and nonfiction. Lia Purpura is the author of eight collections of essays, poems, and translations, most recently a collection of poems, It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (Penguin.) On Looking (essays, Sarabande Books) was finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her awards include Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright Fellowships, as well as four Pushcart Prizes, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Nonfiction, and others.  Her work appears in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Orion, The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, Agni, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore, MD, is Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop’s MFA program. $1,000 will be awarded for the best poem, essay, and story entered into the contest, and all submissions are considered for publication.

Black Heart Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: We’ll Always Have Paris (Or Will We?) – Deadline December 31)

Paris, City of Lights, city of love and romance. Mythical, magical Paris. Foreign, exotic Paris. Political, passionate Paris. What’s your myth about Paris? What’s your reality? What do you think of when you think of Paris? Tell us a story, set near the Seine, the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Champs-Élysées – anywhere, so long as it features Paris past, present, future… or only in your dreams.

Black Heart Magazine is an independent online literary magazine, transmitting tenacious text around the world at the speed of wifi. Since 2004, our site has been combating clichés and skipping straight to supercharged stories with a simple catchphrase: we heart art. Join us, if you dare. We publish the best in short-form modern literature, from pulp and literary fiction to poetry, along with all manner of literary commentary to keep readers informed and entertained. You’ll find new writing by both up-and-coming and established authors, and we nominate pieces annually for Best of the Net as well as the Pushcart Prize.

Upcoming Deadlines 

The A3 Review's August Contest (Theme: Ball – Deadline August 25 – £175)
The Matador Review Call for Submissions (Deadline August 31)
Sustainable Arts Foundation Awards (Deadline August 31 – $5000)
Proximity Call for Submissions (Theme: Aging – Deadline August 31)
Black Warrior Review 2018 Contest (Deadline September 1 – $500/$1000)
Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose Literary Prizes (Deadline September 5 – $1000)
The New Guard Volume VIII Machigonne Fiction and Knightville Poetry Contests (September 24 – $1500)
Boulevard Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers (Deadline September 30 – $1000)
Dzanc Books Prizes: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Short Story Collection (Deadline September 30)
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition (Deadline October 1 – $1000)
The Missouri Review 28th Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (Deadline October 1 – $5000)
Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)
South 85 Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline October 31)
Red Bike Review Short Fiction Contest (Deadline December 31 – $1500)
Black Heart Magazine Call for Submissions (Theme: We’ll Always Have Paris (Or Will We?) – Deadline December 31

Submission Sunday 8.5.18

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

Dzanc Books Prizes: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Short Story Collection (Deadline September 30)

The Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction recognizes daring, original, and innovative novels. A $5,000 advance  and publication in Fall 2019 by Dzanc Books will be awarded to the  winner. Finalists will be compiled in-house and passed along for  evaluation to this year’s judges:John Domini (Movieola! and The Sea-God’s Herb), Emily Geminder (Dead Girls), and Alice Hatcher, author of The Wonder That Was Ours, which was chosen as the winner of last year’s Prize for Fiction.

The Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize celebrates imaginative and inventive writing in book-length collections. Past winners include Kirstin Allio (Clothed, Female Figure), Anne Valente (By Light We Knew Our Names), Jen Grow (My Life as a Mermaid), and Chaya Bhuvaneswar (White Dancing Elephants, coming October 2018). The winning submission

The Dzanc Books Nonfiction Prize is awarded annually for the most innovative and inspiring book-length work of nonfiction--including but not limited to memoir, essays, polemical writing, historical writing, and biography.will be awarded a $2,500 advance and publication in Fall 2019 by Dzanc Books.

Psychopomp Magazine Call for Submissions (Fee-free until August 15)

Psychopomp Magazine is a quarterly, online publication that exists to showcase stories and art that challenge genre and form conventions with particular attention to work that deals with conceptions of passages, rites of passage, transitions, juxtapositions, and the betwixt and between. We also run an annual fiction contest.

Psychopomp (Greek – psuchopompos – “Guide of Souls”): n. Creatures, angels, spirits, or deities who are responsible for escorting the dead to the afterlife. Their role is to provide safe passage. In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator btw. the conscious and unconscious realms.

The Psychopomp Magazine staff is committed to publishing original fiction that dares to redefine traditional storytelling and genre borders. While we like stories that treat the concepts of passages, transitions, and the state of being betwixt and between, we are open to all work regardless of theme. We are generally not looking for traditional realist fiction or pure hard genre. With that said, we are certainly open to publishing more traditional literary work or more hard genre (no fan fiction) so long as it’s really, really good. The best way to get a feel for what we publish is to read our issues. In addition to publishing fiction, we are also dedicated to showcasing art that echoes our themes.

Gold Line Press Chapbook Competitions (Deadline August 15 – $500 + 10 copies)

Gold Line Press and Ricochet Editions are small presses run by students and alumni of the University of Southern California’s PhD Program in Creative Writing. This year’s chapbook judges are Eve Ewing and Hanif Abdurraqib (nonfiction), Tongo Eisen-Martin (poetry), and Dodie Bellamy (fiction). Manuscripts must be 20-30 pages in length for poetry entries, and 7,500-15,000 words for fiction and nonfiction entries. We seek works of prose that are purposefully planned as chapbooks: novellettes, carefully curated collections of vignettes, short stories, essays, or other projects that take the chapbook format as an instrumental element of their design.

Fiction Advocate AFTERWORDS... Call for Pitches

…AFTERWORDS are uncommon books that blend personal essay and literary criticism. In the tradition of Rebecca Mead on Middlemarch, and Geoff Dyer on DH Lawrence, each volume features an acclaimed writer interrogating a book they adore to create a distinctive new work of art.

Fiction Advocate is an independent publisher based in San Francisco, CA. Our mission is to discover and promote new approaches to storytelling. We use fiction, criticism, and hybrid forms to destabilize literary conventions and introduce people to alternative ways of being real. Our founders have worked for Little, Brown and Company, Simon & Schuster, Oxford University Press, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and the Barack Obama administration. Our award-winning books have been recognized by The New Yorker, Bookforum, and NPR. Contributors to our web site have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award, among other honors.

Black Warrior Review 2018 Contest (Deadline September 1 – $500/$1000)

Nonfiction Judge: Kate Zambreno

Fiction Judge: Laura van den Berg

Poetry Judge: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

Flash Judge: Jennifer S. Cheng

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.

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.

Electric Literature Recommended Reading Commuter Call for Submissions (Deadline August 8)

The Recommended Reading Commuter is our new home for poetry, flash, graphic, and experimental narratives. It publishes weekly on Monday morning, and has already showcased the likes of Noy Holland, Lulu Miller, Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Shelly Oria and Nelly Reifler, and more. For this submissions period, submit up to 3 flash fiction prose pieces, either standalone or connected. The total word count should not exceed 1,500 words.

Electric Literature is a nonprofit dedicated to making literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. We are committed to publishing work that is intelligent and unpretentious, to elevating new voices, and to examining how literature and storytelling can help illuminate social justice issues. Our writers and readers are engaged with current events as well as arts and culture.

Sustainable Arts Foundation Awards (Deadline August 31 – $5000)

Artists and writers with at least one child and a strong portfolio of polished work are welcome to apply. We are inspired by anyone who is making creative work while raising a family. Given the intense demand for these awards (we typically receive over 3,000 applications), and the fact that the awards are based on demonstrated excellence in your discipline, we don’t recommend that artists or writers who are beginning their creative careers apply to this program.

This year, we will make awards of $5,000 each to twenty artists and writers. Additionally, we will name ten award finalists. Our awards offer unrestricted cash, and recipients can use the funds as they see fit. Our program is an award program that rewards excellence in a creative field (note that this is different from a grant program, in which the application is focused on a proposal for new work). Our selection process is focused almost entirely on the strength of the submitted portfolio.

Narratively Call for Personal Essays

Narratively publishes a wide range of short memoir/personal essays, and we’ve recently divided them up into four categories. I’m sharing those four categories in the hope of giving writers a clearer idea of what we’re looking for, and maybe sparking some new ideas.

SECRET LIVES: These stories focus on obscure or unusual jobs or pursuits, taking readers behind the scenes of these experiences, showing them what it’s like to live another life. Most importantly, they tell a story and show the shared humanity in even the oddest of jobs.

THE DEFINING MOMENT: These stories are similar to Secret Lives pieces, but they zero in on one key moment that defines how the writer thinks about their job or their unique situation. Think of these as having all of the elements of the Secret Lives stories listed above, but distilled into the one moment that you would use to describe your experience. These are usually moments of change, or dramatic incidents that cause the writer to reevaluate their relationship to the job or role they’re writing about.

IDENTITY: These are stories about events in your life that shift your perception of what it means to be you. They’re about how your identity (or identities) (such as race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, etc.) informs the way you move through the world, and intersects with your everyday experiences. They’re stories about “what it’s like to be you,” but illustrated through gripping narrative and active scenes (that part is important! We don’t publish meditations/topical essays — there has to be a narrative).

FAMILY MYSTERIES: These stories a cross between memoir and investigative journalism, stories where writers set out to uncover and untangle a family secret.

Upcoming Deadlines 

Electric Literature Recommended Reading Commuter Call for Submissions (Deadline August 8)
Mill House Residency (Bend, Oregon – Deadline August 15)
Chalk Hill Artist Residency (Sonoma, California – Deadline August 15)
Psychopomp Magazine Call for Submissions (Fee-free until August 15)
Gold Line Press Chapbook Competitions (Deadline August 15 – $500 + 10 copies)
The Matador Review Call for Submissions (Deadline August 31)
Sustainable Arts Foundation Awards (Deadline August 31 – $5000)
Proximity Call for Submissions (Theme: Aging – Deadline August 31)
Black Warrior Review 2018 Contest (Deadline September 1 – $500/$1000)
The New Guard Volume VIII Machigonne Fiction and Knightville Poetry Contests (September 24 – $1500)
Dzanc Books Prizes: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Short Story Collection (Deadline September 30)
The Missouri Review 28th Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (Deadline October 1 – $5000)
Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)
Red Bike Review Short Fiction Contest (Deadline December 31 – $1500)

Submission Sunday 7.22.18

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

 
Vermont Studio Center Displaced Artists Fund

Vermont Studio Center’s Displaced Artists Fund exists to assist visual artists and writers displaced due to natural disasters, climate change, or political turmoil or threat by providing residencies in a safe and supportive community of creative peers.

By providing a creative community of refuge in Vermont, these residencies restore normalcy to studio practice, ease the isolation that often accompanies displacement, and extend VSC’s founding spirit of “artists supporting artists” to those most in need. 

Artists and writers from anywhere in the world who have been directly affected by natural disaster and U.S.-based international artists displaced by political turmoil or threat may apply for Displaced Artist Fund residencies. These residencies are 4- to 6-weeks in duration.

The Matador Review Call for Submissions (Deadline August 31)

The Matador Review is an online literature and art quarterly based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in January 2016, our purpose is to promote "alternative work" from both art and literature, and to encourage respect for online publications. In a world of print, we celebrate the digital decision.

The Matador Review strives to be a cultural conservationist for the alternative world. In each issue, we offer a selection of work from both emerging and established artists, as well as exclusive interviews and reviews from creators who are, above all else, provocative.

For us, "alternative" is a way of voice and experience. It is the distinction from what is conventional, and it advocates for a progressive attitude. The Matador Review binds itself to these tenets, fostering a habitat for the unfamiliar and unsung.

New York Times Call for "Rites of Passage" Essays

The editors of Rites of Passage, a column that will appear regularly in Styles, want to read your essays about notable life events that sparked change. A “rite of passage” can be big or small, though sometimes it’s the less obvious moments that carry even greater meaning: Making the final payment on your student loan debt and what it represented; finding a first gray hair and deciding not to pluck it; a first crush after a spouse’s death. These essays should be written as personal narratives, so please make sure to tell us how the event unfolded and what it meant to you. Send a completed essay of 1,200-1,500 words to ​rites@nytimes.com.

Red Bike Review Short Fiction Contest (Deadline December 31 – $1500)

Red Bike Press is an indie publishing house located in San Luis Obispo, California, an idyllic spot on California’s Central Coast about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Red Bike Press will release its first book titles very soon! Dates to be announced. It is our ultimate goal to unearth, publish and promote literary gems. Red Bike Press is not currently accepting book manuscript submissions.

Red Bike Press will also publish Red Bike Review, a literary magazine committed to discovery fresh voices and shining a light on underrepresented segments of the writing community. The first issue of Red Bike Review will be published in spring 2019. In furtherance of our goal to give ear to undiscovered writing talent, we proudly sponsor the Red Bike Review Short Fiction Contest.  The inaugural contest which will accept submissions through December 31, 2018.

Redivider Call for Submissions

Issue 15.2 (Spring 2018) will be the final print issue. 16.1 (Autumn 2018) will be our very first digital issue. This change is sparked by the urgency we―as with much of the publishing industry―feel towards the overall accessibility and diversity of our publication. Publishing our issues online will allow the voices of our contributors to reach more readers as our web content will be free for all. Additionally, we will drop submission fees most of the year to become more accessible to contributors.

Redivider is a newly online journal of art and literature produced by and representing the graduate students in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College in Boston. Published three times a year, we welcome art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions from new, emerging, and established artists and writers. Each spring, we host the Beacon Street Prize (a nod to our beginnings as the Beacon Street Review), and in the fall we host the Redivider Blurred Genre Contest. Winners of these contests receive cash prizes, and their work is featured online in a subsequent issue of our journal! And if you’re wondering about the name—it’s a palindrome!

The New Guard Volume VIII Machigonne Fiction and Knightville Poetry Contests (Deadline September 24 – $1500)

The New Guard Volume VIII Contests in Fiction and Poetry are in full swing! We're excited to read your work! Judged by Rick Moody and Patricia Smith. The New Guard is a contest-centered, independent literary review, publishing 35+ emerging writers each year. We proudly publish in print, with the exception of our online feature, BANG!, a page on this site that publishes three short works by a single writer for a full month at a time.

The New Guard is here to showcase newcomers alongside established writers, and to juxtapose tradition with experiment to create a new dialogue. We publish all finalists and semi-finalists of our contests in our print-only journals, and we strive to feature at least forty debut writers in each issue. The Writer's Hotel and MFA in A Day make up the editorial arm of The New Guard literary review. Via The Writer's Hotel, we host a conference in NYC each June, The Writer's Hotel NYC Writers Conference and we also work with writers to develop their writing via our online component, Private Study. We are writers for writers' sake.

Proximity Call for Submissions (Theme: Aging – Deadline August 31)

At Proximity, we’re curious about the shape-shifting nature of our proximity to one another. We’re fascinated by the things that connect us, across real and imagined boundaries, across time and place. We believe that tangible connections — the kind that root us in a specific place, time, or culture — are living wells of fresh ideas, offering new perspectives and a better understanding of the way we live our lives. We hope the stories here, however different from your own, will resonate with and enlighten you. We hope they will expand your view of the world while grounding you in your own community, that they will encourage laughter, conversation, difficult-but-important questions, and even, on occasion, a really good cry.

Proximity is looking for true stories that explore the concept of aging, either your own experience or how you are dealing with the aging of those around you — grandparents, parents, old friends, your dog, or even a beloved possession. Aging as a process. Aging as a place. Aging across cultures or belief systems. We're looking for in-depth stories that analyze and reflect upon your own feelings about aging and how your community or culture approaches it.  And don’t forget: Proximity seeks a strong sense of place, so keep that in mind as you send us your essays, images, reportage, and multimedia around the theme of AGING.

Mill House Residency (Bend, Oregon – Deadline August 15)

Writing By Writers is pleased to offer a two-week, dog-friendly, residency in Bend, Oregon, November 2-16, 2018, for up to 6 writers.  The Mill House Residency is open to fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers and poets.  Writers may apply as an individual, with a co-applicant to share a 2-bedroom cottage, or as a group of up to six.  All residents are provided with a 1 or 2-bedroom cottage.  Lodging is provided free of charge, however all residents are responsible for their own meals, transportation and personal needs while at the residency. Applications are due by August 15th and selections will be made by September 15th. Winners will be selected by Pam Houston. 

Upcoming Deadlines 

Cosmonauts Avenue 2018 Nonfiction Prize (Deadline July 23 – $500)
Sangam House 2019 Residencies (Bangalore, India – Deadline July 31)
PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship (Deadline August 1)
Prairie Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest (Deadline August 1 – $500)
Mill House Residency (Bend, Oregon – Deadline August 15)
Chalk Hill Artist Residency (Sonoma, California – Deadline August 15)
The Matador Review Call for Submissions (Deadline August 31)
Proximity Call for Submissions (Theme: Aging – Deadline August 31)
The New Guard Volume VIII Machigonne Fiction and Knightville Poetry Contests (September 24 – $1500)
The Missouri Review 28th Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (Deadline October 1 – $5000)
Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)
Red Bike Review Short Fiction Contest (Deadline December 31 – $1500)

Submission Sunday 7.8.18

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

PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship (Deadline August 1)

The Los Angeles-based PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship is a seven-month literary fellowship that provides new writers who are isolated from the literary establishment with the mentorship, tools, skills, networking opportunities, 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 short summation of the project in progress.
• A clear action plan for finishing this project.
• Writing life, and craft tips, from notable visiting authors.
• An editing guide from a professional copy editor.
• Insider knowledge of publishing from agents, publishers, and editors.
• An individualized 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.
• An understanding of how to be an effective workshop participant.
• Lifetime membership in PEN America.
• An introduction to the Los Angeles literary community.

The Emerging Voices Fellowship runs from January to July. Participants need not be published, but the fellowship is directed toward poets and writers of fiction and creative nonfiction with clear ideas of what they hope to accomplish through their writing.

Booth 2018 Nonfiction Prize (Deadline July 15 – $750)

This Nonfiction Prize invites submissions of any and all creative nonfiction: essay, memoir, criticism, documentary, graphic/comics nonfiction, testimony, field notes, hermit crab, braided, experimental and so on.

Booth publishes one new piece or author every Friday, square on our home page. Also, we publish two print issues yearly, usually in winter and summer. Booth was established in 2009. Our staff is comprised of MFA faculty and students in the Butler University graduate writing program.

Coffin Bell Call for Submissions

Dark times call for dark literature. Coffin Bell is a new quarterly online journal of dark literature seeking poetry, flash fiction, short stories, and creative nonfiction exploring dark themes. When we say “dark themes,” we don’t necessarily mean traditional horror. Send us your waking nightmares, dark CNF, dystopian flash, cursed verse. Surprise us. Make us think in a new way. Give us a new fear. Make our skin crawl.

Catamaran Literary Reader Call for Submissions

Catamaran Literary Reader is a quarterly literary and visual arts journal. Catamaran features fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and fine art in a full size, full color magazine. The Catamaran nonprofit is based in the Tannery Arts and Digital Media Center, in Santa Cruz, California, and our nonprofit mission is to capture the vibrant and creative West Coast spirit in writing and art from around the world. Among the themes we address are nature and the environment, personal freedom, and the artistic spirit. We seek to present diverse voices in a creative, sophisticated format by publishing the best literary writing and fine art we can find.

The Missouri Review 28th Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (Deadline October 1)

$5,000 Fiction | $5,000 Nonfiction | $5,000 Poetry

Winners receive publication, invitation to a reception and reading in their honor, and a cash prize. Submit one piece of fiction or nonfiction up to 8,500 words or any number of poems up to 10 pages.

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. The Missouri Review maintains an “open submission” policy and read year round, sifting through approximately 12,000 submissions each year.  New, emerging, and mid-career writers whose work has been published in the Missouri Review have been anthologized over 100 times in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Travel Writing, Best American Poetry, The O. Henry Prize Anthology, and The Pushcart Prize.

Argot Magazine Call for Submissions

We’re interested in writing and visual art that spans the worlds of queer culture, the feminine narrative, marginalized communities, and politics and culture. Are you an engineer struggling to succeed in a sexist environment? A non-binary cosplayer who’s found your perfect nerd community? A teacher with lupus who constantly questions how much to divulge about your disability? We’re interested in the margins, in questions of alienation and community building, but it doesn’t stop there. Tell us about your activism, your healing moments, your isolation and danger. Is there something happening in your community that the world needs to know about? Are you on the frontlines of something weird, unique, and/or really important? Whether you’re a university student researching assault on campuses, an activist investigating the effects of fracking in local communities, or a writer researching the history of trans representation in science fiction, we want to hear from you.

Chances are, you have opinions and varied perspectives about what’s going on in the news and in your community we’re interested in being a platform for stories on what’s going on in pop culture and politics - with a unique sociological perspective. And please, send us your short stories, poetry, satire, comics, illustrations, and photo essays. Fiction, nonfiction, that poem you wrote for the woman you could hardly see there were so many stars in your eyes, but you still never sent it? Fill our inboxes with them. Classic, satirical, single panel illustrations, photography based travelogues of queers with disabilities - we want it all. This is a queer-focused website, and we have a strong preference for work created by queer writers and artists.

Chalk Hill Artist Residency (Sonoma, California – Deadline August 15)

Chalk Hill Artist Residency provides artists of all media with live and work space on the Warnecke Ranch and Vineyard. Located in Sonoma County wine country, an hour and a half north of San Francisco, the Ranch is a stunning natural environment boasting oak-covered hills, redwood and bay groves, bass-filled lakes, hiking trails and private access to the Russian River.

During the residency, artists stay in a 3 bedroom 1920’s farm house and studio spaces are provided in repurposed barns. Although there is ample opportunity to be quietly absorbed in creative work, the residency is community oriented - the house and studios are located in the vineyards of the100-year-old family ranch. The residency supports Sonoma County arts and culture by organizing seasonal Open Studios, Outsider Artist Programs, Workshops, Lectures, and Fundraising events for local non-profits. 

Chalk Hill Residency is an opportunity to be inspired by a uniquely beautiful natural setting. We offer the space and time to pursue creative work on a working ranch within the context of an organization that is dedicated to supporting its local art community. 

Sangam House 2019 Residencies (Bangalore, India – Deadline July 31)

The word sangam in Sanskrit literally means “going together.” In most Indian languages, sangam has come to mean such confluences as the “flowing together of rivers” and “coincidence.” The intention of Sangam House is to bring together writers from around the world to live and work in a safe, peaceful setting, a space made necessary on many levels by the world we now live in. Our residency programs are designed for writers who have published to some acclaim but not yet enjoyed substantial commercial success. Sangam House seeks to give writers a chance to build a solid and influential network of personal and professional relationships that can deepen their own work, in effect, expanding and diversifying literature. We believe that literature can and must remain a thriving force of illumination for our times.

Assembling writers from various cultural backgrounds broadens the scope of each individual’s work. Exposure to regional and national trends in literature, to multiple political and economic obstacles and varied social and cultural milieus enhances each writer’s understanding of his/her work, as well as his/her own notions of identity and home. We recognize the dearth of such opportunities in South Asia and strive to encourage the work of those writing in all languages, regional and dominant. Such a unique environment enriches the work of its participants and the texture of international literature. Our program also facilitates interaction between the visiting writers and the local communities. Cultivating such an intersection infuses the local communities with inspirations and new ideas, while allowing each participating writer to deepen his or her understanding of the diverse emotional and social climates in which literature is conceived and received.

Upcoming Deadlines 

The Wild: Artist In Residence Call for Applications (Amalfi Coast – Deadline July 9)
The Los Angeles Review Summer 2018 Literary Awards (Deadline July 14 – $1000 plus publication)
Booth 2018 Nonfiction Prize (Deadline July 15 – $750)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)
Cosmonauts Avenue 2018 Nonfiction Prize (Deadline July 23 – $500)
Sangam House 2019 Residencies (Bangalore, India – Deadline July 31)
PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship (Deadline August 1)
Prairie Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest (Deadline August 1 – $500)
Chalk Hill Artist Residency (Sonoma, California – Deadline August 15)
The Missouri Review 28th Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (Deadline October 1 – $5000)
Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)

Submission Sunday 6.24.18

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

The Wild: Artist In Residence Call for Applications (Amalfi Coast – Deadline July 9)

At The Wild: Artist In Residence, we provide artists with space and support by sharing our remarkable land, inspiring accommodations, professional studios, vibrant community, resources and experience. We collaborate with artists to create an inclusive, immersive, career propelling platform and archive from their residency in our wild places. Wandering through the wilds of 'The Divine Coast' and UNESCO World Heritage Site, immersed in the natural and cultural wonders of this vertical landscape, a small group of creative thinkers will be invited to make pilgrimage to the winding cliffs near one of the smallest villages in Italy. Beyond these wilds, we explore Ravello, Atrani, La Valle Dragone, Maiori, Minori, Furore, Positano, and the famous il Sentiero Degli Dei: the Walk Of The Gods trail high above the Tyrrhenian Sea.

In the Wilds of Amalfi (October 1–8, 2018), we will immerse ourselves in the sensory pleasures of our natural surroundings and connect with the wild energies that nurture creation through educational wild plant hikes, farm visits, shared meals, and trips to the trails, towns, and beaches that dot this wild coast. While our schedule favours free time for internal and external exploration, our time together will serve to introduce like minds and form new connections, infusing our awareness with exponential perspective and sense of possibility.

The Feminist Press Louise Meriwether First Book Prize (Deadline June 30 – $5000 plus publication)

The prize was founded in 2016 to honor author Louise Meriwether by publishing a debut work by a woman or nonbinary author of color. The prize is granted to a manuscript that follows in the tradition of Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner, one of the first contemporary American novels featuring a young black girl as the protagonist. Meriwether’s groundbreaking text inspired the careers of writers like Jacqueline Woodson and Bridgett M. Davis, among many others. The prize continues this legacy of telling much-needed stories that shift culture and inspire new writers.

First time authors, submit your complete manuscript, either fiction or nonfiction (such as: novel, memoir, short story collection, biography, manifesto, or other work of nonfiction), of 30,000 to 80,000 words. One winner will be awarded a $5,000 advance (half at the time of the initial award and half upon publication) and a contract to publish their book with the Feminist Press in print and digital editions in spring 2020. We expect to work closely with the winner and provide editorial guidance on their manuscript.

The Suburban Review Call for Submissions (Deadline July 1)

The Suburban Review is a literary collective that worships creativity. We publish a quarterly digital journal of short fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and art. Send us work that will open our minds and hearts. Show us life, the world, the universe. Make us swoon, make us rage, make us laugh. We want your words.

We’re based in Narrm Melbourne but we’re interested in publishing the work of writers from all over Australia and the world. We praise creativity, adore the tongue-in-cheek, and love having our hearts broken again and again. 

Creative Nonfiction Call for Column Pitches

Have an idea for a literary timeline? An opinion on essential texts for readers and/or writers? An in-depth, working knowledge of a specific type of nonfiction? Pitch us your ideas; Creative Nonfiction is now accepting query letters for various sections of the magazine.

Please note that we are especially--though not exclusively--interested in pitches that overlap with our upcoming themes: Science & Religion (Fall 2017); Monsters or Dangerous Creations (Winter 2018); Starting Over (Spring 2018); Risk (Summer 2018). Queries only. Please do not send completed pieces. Please do not send attachments. Please send brilliant ideas and a solid plan for turning said brilliant ideas into brilliant pieces of writing.

Fifth Wednesday Journal Call for Submissions

Submissions to the fall 2018 issue of Fifth Wednesday Journal are now open. Please be aware that we are featuring writers of Mexican heritage in the issue. Residents of the United States and Mexico are encouraged to submit their work. We are committed to the proposition that immigration brings new creativity, new ideas, and new intellectual and cultural strength to every facet of our life as Americans. We know that those young residents now identified as DACA youth will continue this tradition. They have grown to adulthood in the United States; they are “Americans” who bring with them a diverse cultural history very closely linked with our own, one that adds its own richness to ours. We are seeking writing for the fall issue that will demonstrate the benefits of adhering to our tradition of inclusion and expansion of the meaning of citizenship.

Prairie Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest (Deadline August 1 – $500) 

Each year from May 15 to August 1, Prairie Schooner accepts submissions to the Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest, open to all types of creative nonfiction essays, up to 5,000 words. The entry fee is $18. Winner receives $500 and publication in the following Spring issue.

Prairie Schooner publishes short stories, poems, imaginative essays of general interest, and reviews of current books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Prairie Schooner is published in cooperation with the University of Nebraska Press and the Creative Writing Program of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department and is endowed by the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editorship and Fund for Excellence at Prairie Schooner.

Blood Orange Review Call for Submissions (Opens August 1)

Blood Orange Review publishes emerging and established writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Our editors look for compelling voices and work that demonstrates attention to craft. We want writing that changes us and challenges us to redefine our sense of perspective. We thrill when we publish someone for the first time, and though our journal is modestly sized and our selection is competitive, we encourage writers to submit.

Blood Orange Review was founded by Stephanie Lenox and H.K. Hummel, and its inaugural issue appeared online in April 2006. The first thirty issues encompass over 200 writers and artists. In 2008, Bryan Fry, an English Department faculty member at Washington State University, joined the editorial team and established a student internship, which allowed the journal to serve as an educational tool for students interested in editing.

Elsewhere Studios Residency Program Call for Applications (Paonia, CO – Deadline July 7)

The Residency Program provides space and time for artists. We welcome visual artists, writers, composer/musicians, performance artists at any stage of their careers as well as scientists, activists, teachers, students, or any kind of creative thinker interested in exploring and expanding their work in a unique and supportive environment. Elsewhere consists of artistically crafted and unique living and studio spaces. Time spans are individually based - 1 to 6 months, accommodating 4 to 6 artists at a time.

Elsewhere is a choose-your-own-adventure style residency. Situated in downtown Paonia, the spaces are versatile, providing residents with opportunities to connect and interact with other artists in the community, to create or participate in art exhibitions, and to teach classes or workshops. Elsewhere Studios is a not-for-profit organization and we aspire to keeping this experience accessible to all artists. Therefore, we have set the residency fees on a sliding scale starting at between $600 and $850 per month (depending on space).

Upcoming Deadlines 

The Feminist Press Louise Meriwether First Book Prize (Deadline June 30 – $5000 plus publication)
Radar Poetry Call for Submissions & Coniston Prize (Deadlines June 30 & September 1 – $1000)
The Suburban Review Call for Submissions (Deadline July 1)
Quarterly West 2018 Chapbook Contest (Deadline July 1 – $500)
Owl Canyon Press Short Story Hackathon (Deadline July 1 – $1000)
PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship (Deadline July 1 – $10,000)
NPR and the John Alexander Project Above the Fray Fellowship (Deadline July 1)
Elsewhere Studios Resdiency Program Call for Applications (Paonia, CO – Deadline July 7)
The Wild: Artist In Residence Call for Applications (Amalfi Coast – Deadline July 9)
The Los Angeles Review Summer 2018 Literary Awards (Deadline July 14 – $1000 plus publication)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)
Cosmonauts Avenue 2018 Nonfiction Prize (Deadline July 23 – $500)
Prairie Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest (Deadline August 1 – $500)
Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)

Submission Sunday 6.10.18

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

The Literary Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 15)

The Literary Review (TLR) publishes the best new fiction, poetry, and prose from a broad community of international writers and translators, both emerging and established, whose commonality is literary quality and urgency of voice and artistic conviction. It is this genuine community of readers, writers, and publishers that distinguishes us. Our editorial standard is to read with an open, discerning mind, and to publish carefully and vigorously. We connect our writers to readers. TLR has been published since 1957 by Fairleigh Dickinson University.


Quarterly West 2018 Chapbook Contest (Deadline July 1 – $500)

Quarterly West is now accepting entries for the 2018 Chapbook Contest! We anticipate publishing 3-4 excellent chapbook manuscripts, to be availabile at AWP 2019, in Portland. Quarterly West is the online literary journal run and staffed by PhD creative writing  students at the University of Utah. We have been in business since 1976.

The contest winner will receive a cash prize of $500, publication, custom cover-design, and 20 author copies. A runner-up, as selected by the judge, will receive publication, custom cover-design, and 20 author copies. The editors will also select 1-2 accomplished manuscripts to receive publication, custom cover-design, and 20 author copies. As with last year, we’ve decided to stay away from genre classifications. That’s for you to decide. Send us poetry, short-fiction, non-fiction, or any combination or hybridization therein.

X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine Call for Submissions

X–R-A-Y Literary Magazine’s vision is to publish cutting-edge, smart, uncomfortable, entertaining, unforgettable prose that shines brighter than the skeleton in your body. We want prose that sees through skin and reveals something deeper. We work hard to give our readers the best authors on the planet. We want prose only. No poetry, please. Please keep fiction under 2,000 words.

Atticus Review Flash Creative Nonfiction Contest (Deadline June 17 – $275)

Atticus Review is happy to announce our first annual Creative Nonfiction Contest judged by Sarah Gerard. You may submit one piece of Flash CNF of up to 1000 words for consideration. Atticus Review is a daily online journal that publishes fiction, poems, and creative nonfiction, as well as graphic art, mixed media, music essays, and, on occasion, blog posts, interviews, and non-traditional book reviews.

The writing in Atticus Review is unashamed, unadorned, and unafraid. We want our contributors to dig deep into wounds to uncover words that touch the heart of the heartache — not to wallow, but rather to transcend despair through art and arrive at something hopeful. The stories we love are often lonely, and sometimes ugly, but we’re also deeply attracted to the bright, bold, and hope-infused.

We like hybrid, unconventional work that pushes boundaries, elevates and edifies on an intellectual level, that investigates the inscrutable essence of a thing, that avoids artifice to stand firmly in its unique voice. We are a platform, but not a pulpit. Moralizing is best kept at Sunday School. Judgement is best kept in court.

Sweet First Annual Poetry Contest (Deadline June 15 – $500)

Sweet is thrilled to announce its first annual Poetry Contest. Generally, we appreciate accessible poems that build towards a powerful ending, and you can always read published poems in previous Sweet issues on our website. We look forward to reading your work!

Sweet is about candy, cake, ice cream, chocolate—a cornucopia of desserts. There’s a reason “sweet” has come to mean “awesome” in slang. It comes back to the mouth, to pleasure. We don’t believe pleasure has to be light, as our issues show. But we also don’t want readers to go away thinking, “That was really hearty” or “What a healthy collection!” We want you to think, “Mmmm, sweeeeet.” We want you to find something here that you need, something perhaps not as practical as a potato, but just as vital.

The Literary Hatchet Call for Submissions

The Literary Hatchet is a journal devoted to provocative fiction, poetry and prose. We are interested in well-written but digestible works in any genre (except erotica). We will consider previously published material but prefer original works. We accept short fiction, flash fiction, first-person narratives, speculative fiction, short stories, poetry, photography, art, cartoons, and illustrations. We’re interested in new angles on old ideas, or topics that don’t get covered frequently. We like to showcase articles that don’t just sum up some issue but make us think and make us want to read further. The above is not exhaustive. If you don’t have an immediate idea for a piece, but you’d really like to write for us, let us know and be prepared to show us work you’ve done. We can always think of subjects!

Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)

Listening to Biggie is listening to the streets. There is something gritty and powerful in his bars, something real and dripping the kind of authenticity that makes songs and stories stand out and claim a corner of your brain. Listening to Biggie is hearing how things are done in the streets, and anybody with at least a day of street experience knows that the man understood what he was talking about. From Brooklyn to San Juan, I’ve heard his impact in music, and none told is as clear as he did. Violent, real, and raw; those are the qualities of Biggie’s music that we’d like to capture in story form. That’s right, we’re talking crime, horror, and bizarro, but with a Biggie flavor. Published by Clash Books and edited by Gabino Iglesias. Get to writing, mufuckas. Gimme the loot!

NPR and the John Alexander Project Above the Fray Fellowship (Deadline July 1)

The Above the Fray Fellowship is an international reporting fellowship created in memory of John Alexander, an extraordinary young journalist who died of sudden heart failure while on assignment in Chongqing, China, in 2007. This Fellowship is a collaboration between NPR and the John Alexander Project.

The Above the Fray Fellowship is designed to give a promising journalist the opportunity to cover important but under-reported stories internationally. The ideal candidate will be selected based on a proposal to report from a region lacking significant mainstream media attention. The Fellow will spend three months filing on-air and online stories for NPR. The fellowship is targeted for journalists early in their careers. Those with at least three but no more than five years of experience are eligible to apply.

Upcoming Deadlines 

The Literary Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 15)
Sweet First Annual Poetry Contest (Deadline June 15 – $500)
Slice Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 15 – Theme: Time)
Atticus Review Flash Creative Nonfiction Contest (Deadline June 17 – $275)
The Los Angeles Review Summer 2018 Literary Awards (Deadline June 30 – $1000)
Radar Poetry Call for Submissions & Coniston Prize (Deadlines June 30 & September 1 – $1000)
Quarterly West 2018 Chapbook Contest (Deadline July 1 – $500)
Owl Canyon Press Short Story Hackathon (Deadline July 1 – $1000)
PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship (Deadline July 1 – $10,000)
NPR and the John Alexander Project Above the Fray Fellowship (Deadline July 1)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)
Cosmonauts Avenue 2018 Nonfiction Prize (Deadline July 23 – $500)
Gimme the Loot: Stories Inspired by The Notorious B.I.G. Call for Submissions (Deadline October 1)

Submission Sunday 5.27.18

 

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

Cosmonauts Avenue 2018 Nonfiction Prize (Deadline July 23 – $500)

CA is thrilled to announce that our annual Cosmonauts Avenue Non-Fiction Prize is now open for submissions! Our judge (deep breath)... Ocean Vuong! What are we looking for? We love writing that is personal, necessary, darkly funny, unfunny, candid, unique, upsetting, untold, includes in-depth research into who bit Beyoncé, and writing that is deeply good and deeply you. The winner will receive $500 and publication in Cosmonauts Avenue.

Cosmonauts Avenue is an online, monthly literary journal run by women and non-binary folks dedicated to elevating and amplifying underrepresented voices. 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.

Eclectica Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)

Eclectica Magazine is a quarterly electronic journal devoted to showcasing the best writing on the World Wide Web. "Literary" and "genre" work appear side-by-side in each issue, along with pieces that blur the distinctions between such categories. Pushcart Prize, National Poetry Series, and Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as Nebula Award nominees, have shared issues with previously unpublished authors.

We pride ourselves on giving everyone (high schoolers, convicts, movie executives, etc.) an equal shot at publication, based solely on the quality of their work. Because we like eclecticism, we tend to favor the varied perspectives that often characterize the work of international authors, people of color, women, alternative lifestylists, and straight white men—but others who don't fit into these categories sometimes do surprise us. 

The Los Angeles Review Summer 2018 Literary Awards (Deadline June 30 – $1000)

The Los Angeles Review, an annual print and online 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. We invite both published and emerging writers to submit their work to our editors, and we thank you for being part of the Los Angeles Review. Douglas Manuel will judge in poetry, Doug Lawson will judge in fiction, Ron Koertge will judge in flash fiction, and Sarah Cannon will judge in nonfiction.

Owl Canyon Press Short Story Hackathon (Deadline July 1 – $1000)

Gene Hayworth and Keith Waters founded Owl Canyon Press in 2011, as a forum for new voices in fiction and literature in translation. In 2016, a small group of writers was presented with an informal short story challenge—given an opening and closing paragraph, craft an original short story connecting the two.  The challenge ultimately resulted in one of the short stories evolving into the novel Dog Logic, which was published in 2017 and is currently a finalist in the Foreword Review INDIES book of the year awards and motivated the launch of the 2018 Owl Canyon Press short story hackathon. Writers are invited to create and submit a short story consisting of 50 paragraphs. The contest provides the first and last paragraph and the short story writer crafts the rest.

Slice Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 15 – Theme: Time)

Slice, a New York-based literary nonprofit, was launched in 2007 by book editors Maria Gagliano and Celia Johnson and has since garnered rave reviews from some of today’s leading authors, editors, and agents. At the core, Slice aims to bridge the gap between emerging writers and the publishing world and, in the process, to spark conversations you might not otherwise hear. In each issue of our semi-annual literary magazine, 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 also explore the craft and the business of writing.

Petrichor Audio Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)

Petrichor from Audible is a project to create an audio-exclusive magazine delivering literary work produced by professional narrators and delivered to average listeners through fast and easy-to-access streaming.

pet·ri·chor
ˈpeˌtrīkôr
noun

a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.

It’s derived from a pair of chemical reactions:

• Some plants secrete oils during dry periods, and when it rains, these oils are released into the air.
• The second reaction that creates petrichor occurs when chemicals produced by soil-dwelling bacteria known as actinomycetes are released. These aromatic compounds combine to create the pleasant petrichor scent when rain hits the ground.

Petrichor simulates our sense of smell to change the way we perceive the environment around us. It leaves us with a lasting impression. We believe good writing is produced in a similar process by releasing the feelings we have produced for a long time. When combined with other elements, it can simulate our brains to understand and feel things in a different way. We are currently accepting unsolicited pieces in fiction only.

Hotel Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)

Hotel is open for submissions for the month of May.* Established in 2016, Hotel is a magazine for new approaches to fiction, non fiction & poetry. Hotel features work from established & emerging talent. Hotel provides the space for experimental reflection on literature’s status as art & cultural mediator.

We are looking to read short fiction, non-fiction & poetry. Submitted works will be considered for the paper hotel (issues #5 & #6), the online archive & a forthcoming collaborative print project with Dostoyevsky Wannabe that will anthologise selected works published on the Hotel site over the course of its history. 

We welcome (non-academic) essayistic work; thought pieces, fragments & interviews, alongside short fiction, non-fiction & poetry. Please send up to 3 pages of poems, 3000 words of prose, excerpts from longer works, & pitches for non-fiction pieces.

Radar Poetry Call for Submissions & Coniston Prize (Deadlines June 30 & September 1 – $1000)

Radar Poetry is an electronic journal published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. We publish poems from established and emerging writers and welcome international submissions. Our taste is eclectic; we encourage submitters to read our past issues before sending work. We are interested in the interplay between poetry and visual media. Each issue features pairings of poetry and artwork, selected by the editors and contributors. 

Radar Poetry offers an annual award, the Coniston Prize, for the best group of poems submitted by a female poet writing in English. The award is $1,000 and the deadline is September 1. The winner and all finalists are published each year in the October issue of Radar.

Upcoming Deadlines

LIT Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
Kweli Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
Hotel Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Petrichor Audio Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Eclectica Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
The Threepenny Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize (Deadline June 1 – $2500)
Slice Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline June 15 – Theme: Time)
The Los Angeles Review Summer 2018 Literary Awards (Deadline June 30 – $1000)
Radar Poetry Call for Submissions & Coniston Prize (Deadlines June 30 & September 1 – $1000)
Owl Canyon Press Short Story Hackathon (Deadline July 1 – $1000)
PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship (Deadline July 1 – $10,000)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)
Cosmonauts Avenue 2018 Nonfiction Prize (Deadline June 30 – $500)

Photo via BoBunny

Submission Sunday 4.29.18

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 Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize (Deadline June 1 – $2500)

We are excited to announce that we are now accepting submissions to our brand new Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize. The winner of the prize will receive $2,500 and publication in an upcoming issue of American Short Fiction. Submissions will be open until June 1, 2018. We’re kicking things off with a bang as our inaugural judge will be the incomparable ZZ Packer, whose writing has been hailed by everyone from John Updike to Oprah. George Saunders called Packer a wonderful writer “who somehow manages to indict the species and forgive it all at once.” We are so pleased and honored to have her as our first ever judge for this prize.

Bennington Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 15)

Bennington Review is a national biannual print journal of innovative, intelligent, and moving poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and film writing, housed at Bennington College.

We intend to reinforce the value of the bound print journal as an intimate, curated cultural space in which a reader can encounter and experience new work with a degree of immersion not wholly possible through other media. We hope to bring together writing that is as playful as it is probing, that simultaneously makes lasting intellectual and emotional connections with a reader. Bennington Review aims to contribute distinctive style and substance to the national literary conversation through publishing sharp, unexpected, original poetry and prose from a geographically broad and culturally rich spectrum of prominent, up-and-coming, and new voices.

Exposition Review Flash 405 Contest (Theme: Magnetism – Deadline May 5)

Flash 405 is Exposition Review’s multi-genre short form writing competition, awarding cash prizes and online publication to the winners. In an age where many things attract and repulse us (technology, food, sexuality, and politics, to name a few), it is a curious thing to explore and reflect on what our position is in relation to these elements that make up so much of our immediate world. Everything we navigate now seems incredibly polarized, albeit with mostly good reason, the idea of being magnetized by known and unknown forces leaves an entire field for the many versions of ourselves to live in.

In essence, magnetism defines the way most of us sort of passively define our universe in both tangible and intangible ways. Push and pull, give and take, karma and serendipity; the act of catch and release. How do you place yourself, an object moving through the current of a largely uncontrollable, and charged pulse?”

BOMB Biennial Poetry Contest (Deadline May 6 – $1000)

Each year BOMB hosts a literary contest to recognize the talents of an emerging writer, selected by a distinguished guest judge in the field. This year’s winner will receive a $1,000 prize and publication in BOMB’s literary supplement, First Proof.

We are pleased to announce that this year’s poetry contest will be judged by Dawn Lundy Martin. The poet, essayist, and conceptual video artist is the author of four books of poems, most recently Good Stock Strange Blood (Coffee House Press, 2017), which Maggie Nelson called “a real-time excavation of what poetry can and can’t do; how the past is never past; how to stand in the blur, the ‘griefmouth’ of personal and collective pain and somehow—against all odds—make thought, make fury, make song.” Martin is a professor of English in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, and a writer-in-residence at Bard College.

The Georgia Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 14)

The Georgia Review—the University of Georgia’s journal of arts and letters—grew out of discussions in 1944 between John Donald Wade, then chair of the English Department, and Harmon Caldwell, the school’s president, as a solution to the “sad and swift submergence” of college graduates’ “intellectual vitality,” as Wade put it, especially in Georgia. The Review’s first issue, published in 1947, announced a magazine “turning on subjects of special interest to Georgians, and all, as nearly as feasible, written by Georgians or people associated with Georgia,” but the once regional journal broadened its reach over the decades to come.

The Georgia Review seeks to create a lasting environment for literature by supporting writers at every stage of their careers. Committed to the art of editorial practice, the Review collaborates with authors of essays, stories, poems, and reviews in pursuit of works of enduring appeal that engage with the evolving concerns and interests of readers from around the world. Our aim in curating content is not only to elevate literature, publishing, and the arts, but also to promote diversity and to help facilitate socially conscious partnerships in our surrounding communities.

Storm Cellar Force Majeure Flash Contest (Deadline May 16 – $300)

Force Majeure: a great and unexpected power. We're looking for the best small things, any form, any content, any fine and wonderful creation.

Storm Cellar is a literary journal of safety and danger. We place a special emphasis on the Midwest, but even more emphasis on amazing writing and art. We aim to display aesthetic ambition as well as the work of authors and artists who are under-represented in the Anglophone literary world. We want everybody to get weird and enlightened and learn and fall in love and have superpowers. We want to surprise and delight and horrify and provoke. Storm Cellar is not a distraction but a cure for boredom.

Territory Call for Submissions (Theme: Journeys)

Territory is a literary project about territories and the maps that will always fail to capture them. It’s about the naive dream of objectivity, and how we use the act of representation to both hide and broadcast our subjectivities.

For our ninth issue, Journeys, we are looking for work that reimagines and reinterprets these stories, work that challenges the primacy they have on our narratives, work that engages with the geography of movement or with the movement of geography. Consider the many possible journeys and their maps:

A-to-B, acid trips, The Aeneid, The Age of Discovery, The Apollo Program, ascensions & descents, circuits, diaspora, Don Quixote, dromomania, Easy Rider (1969), El Camino de la Muerte / Yungas, exile, exodus, exploration, geodesics, globalization, the Great Migration, Hajj & Umrah, Hawaiʻiloa, The Hero’s Journey, The Holy Mountain (1973), homecomings, hunts, Ibn Battuta, immigration & emigration, isochronic maps, journeymen, junkets, Junrei (巡礼), the knight-errant / white knight, Leif Ericson, the Lewis & Clark expedition, lost expeditions, maiden voyages, The Middle Passage, National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), nomadism, odysseys, The Oregon Trail, the Prodigal Son, Rōnin (浪人), Route 66, The Road Less Traveled, road trips, rush hour, The Silk Road, Sir Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay, spawning, Stalker (1979), tele/commuting, the Trans-Siberian Railway, The Trail of Tears, trafficking, travel writing, Vasco de Gama, Voyages extraordinaires, walkabout, wanderlust, white flight, wild goose chases.

Frontier Poetry Industry Prize (Deadline May 15 – $3000)

We are looking for poetry that pushes language forward, for poets and poems that strive to place themselves at the edge of what language can do. But this does not mean that we are only concerned with experimental poetry. We believe that sonnets can be at the frontier, book-length poems can be at the frontier, confessional poetry can be at the frontier—as long as a piece is constructed with exceptional consideration for language & craft, that poem is a fit for us.

Work by diverse poets and underrepresented voices is also very important for us to publish. We take our role as gatekeeper between poet and world extremely seriously and wish to use our platform as fairly and justly as we can. We warmly invite all voices to join us. The frontier land of poetry, that far territory where all voices are equal, pushing toward the vast unknown spaces of the human spirit—we will plant ourselves there & report back to the world the beauty found.

For this prize, we want to give our submitters a chance to be read by some of the most influential persons across our industry: a magazine editor, a director of a professional poetry organization, and a book editor. The winner of the Industry Prize will receive $3000 and publication on Frontier. The second and third place poems will win $200 and $100 respectively.The editors of Frontier will select the finalists from which the judges will make their decisions. Most exciting of all: the poems will be validated by a panel of leaders in our poetry community.

Upcoming Deadlines

Tin House Summer Workshop (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline April 29)
1888 Plaza Literary Prize (Deadline April 30)
CRAFT Short Fiction Prize (Deadline April 30 – $2000)
NPR All Things Considered Call for Your Best Poetry Tweets (April 30)
Soft Skull Press Open Call for Manuscript Submissions  (Deadline April 30)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1) 
Exposition Review Flash 405 Contest (Theme: Magnetism – Deadline May 5)
BOMB Biennial Poetry Contest (Deadline May 6 – $1000)
The Georgia Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 14)
Frontier Poetry Industry Prize (Deadline May 15 – $3000)
Bennington Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 15)
Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $2000)
LIT Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
Kweli Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
The Threepenny Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize (Deadline June 1 – $2500)
PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship (Deadline July 1 – $10,000)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 4.8.18

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

The Kerouac Project Call for Submissions (Deadline April 16)

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 Final Reading of your work at the Kerouac House at the end of your residency. 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.

Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)

Posit publishes a stimulating, dynamic selection of the finest new poetry, prose and visual art — accomplished, sophisticated work that may be eclectic in style but is always innovative, challenging, and aesthetically broadening. We believe in de-Balkanizing the literary and visual arts scenes by providing an aesthetically beautiful showcase for carefully curated, highly innovative work that is not circumscribed by affiliation with any specific aesthetic or artistic movement. We are committed to publishing work by writers and artists of all nationalities, ages, races, gender identifications, sexual orientations, and career stages. We also believe in supporting our contributors, nominating their work for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, etc., and publicizing their triumphs via social media.

Redivider Beacon Street Prize (Deadline April 15 – $1000)

Redivider is a newly online journal of art and literature produced by and representing the graduate students in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College in Boston. Published three times a year, we welcome art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions from new, emerging, and established artists and writers. 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 2018 contest will open March 1 and close April 15th.

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.

Soft Skull Press Open Call for Manuscript Submissions (Deadline April 30)

Soft Skull Press is an independent publisher of books that engage art, culture, and current events in new and radical ways. During the month of April 2018, Soft Skull Press is accepting book-length manuscripts of literary fiction under 50,000 words of length. Please do not submit partial manuscripts or proposals. Before submitting, please take time to read some of our previously published works. Soft Skull Press is an independent publisher of books that engage art, culture, and current events in new and radical ways. We publish every genre.

NPR All Things Considered Call for Your Best Poetry Tweets (April 30)

We're a week into National Poetry Month. And if you followed our haiku-heavy Super Bowl coverage, you can bet we're not letting April slip by without a nod to the art of the verse. All Things Considered is asking listeners to help us indulge in the annual affair. Twitter may have expanded its character limit, but we're asking you to play by our original rules: Send us your original 140-character poems with #NPRpoetry.

Those bounds should offer a suitable framework for you to cook up something "meaty and delightful," insists Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. "Usually, I write a poem and I end up taking about 30 percent away," Smith tells NPR's Michel Martin. If poetry is a compact language, Twitter's character limit presents a perfect canvas to exploit the literary form. Fill our feeds with your haikus, tankas, limericks and the nonsensical, and we'll feature some of our favorite bite-sized verses online and on the air.

Spotify Sound Up Bootcamp (Deadline April 10)

Women of color have been breaking ground in podcasting well ahead of the latest boom. But there's plenty more to be done -- a recent study showed that only 22 percent of podcasts are hosted by women, and the number’s even smaller when it comes to women of color. To move towards equity for women of color in podcasting, Spotify is launching the Sound Up Bootcamp, a weeklong intensive program for aspiring female podcasters of color. Over the course of five days in New York City, ten hand-selected attendees will learn about the art of podcast creation, from initial ideation to editing, producing, and marketing from experts in the field. On the final day, attendees will have the chance to pitch their podcast ideas to a panel of experts and professionals -- and the top three pitches will have the pilot process funded, up to $10,000. All expenses for the week will be paid by Spotify. Training for the week will be led by radio and podcast veterans Rekha Murthy and Graham Griffith. Rekha and Graham have spent decades working with the industry's top shows, and smaller ones too. They are passionate about raising up new voices, and helping podcasts reach new, big, and devoted audiences.

Action, Spectacle Call for Submissions

Action, Spectacle will publish three issues online each year, one of which will also appear in print. Our site will be live in the coming weeks. We aim to publish Issue #1 in August, 2018. Each issue will feature work solicited by a rotation of several guest editors, including Dana Levin, Bhanu Kapil, Kimiko Hahn, Tyrone Williams, Mia You, Cindy Arrieu-King, Amy Lawless, Shane McCrae, Julia Story and others work selected from general submissions. 

We read general submissions year round. We publish poetry, flash fiction, short fiction, comics, interviews, essays, reviews, as well as some static graphic images. Hybrid and collaborative work, as well as  translations are totally welcome and should be accompanied by a copy of the original text, whenever possible.

PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship (Deadline July 1 – $10,000)

PEN America’s $10,000 Writing for Justice Fellowship will commission six writers—emerging or established—to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate.

The PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship aims to harness the power of writers and writing in bearing witness to the societal consequences of mass incarceration by capturing and sharing the stories of incarcerated individuals, their families, communities, and the wider impact of the criminal justice system. Our goal is to ignite a broad, sustained conversation about the dangers of over-incarceration and the imperative to mobilize behind rational and humane policies. As an organization of writers dedicated to promoting free expression and informed discourse, PEN America is honored to have been entrusted by the Art for Justice Fund to engage the literary community in addressing this pressing societal issue.

Upcoming Deadlines

Spotify Sound Up Bootcamp (Deadline April 10)
Chautauqua Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
A Public Space Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
Redivider Beacon Street Prize (Deadline April 15 – $1000)
Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
The Kerouac Project Call for Submissions (Deadline April 16)
Salamander Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline April 28)
Tin House Summer Workshop (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline April 29)
1888 Plaza Literary Prize (Deadline April 30)
CRAFT Short Fiction Prize (Deadline April 30 – $2000)
NPR All Things Considered Call for Your Best Poetry Tweets (April 30)
Soft Skull Press Open Call for Manuscript Submissions  (Deadline April 30)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $2000)
LIT Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
Kweli Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
The Threepenny Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship (Deadline July 1 – $10,000)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 3.25.18

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

CRAFT Short Fiction Prize (Deadline April 30 – $2000)

Welcome to our fiction contest! We are thrilled to have Jim Shepard as the judge for our contest. Jim Shepard is the author of seven novels, including most recently The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal for Achievement in Jewish Literature from the American Library Association and the PEN/New England Award for fiction, and five story collections, including his new collection, The World To Come. Five of his short stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and one for a Pushcart Prize. He teaches at Williams College.

Three stories will be selected by Jim Shepard from a short list and published in CRAFT, accompanied by an introduction from Shepard and a craft essay from each author.  Each of the three stories will also be available as downloadable pdfs. The author of the prize-winning story will receive $2000; the two runners-up will receive $500 and $300, respectively. A short list of finalists will be published online.

Brick Call for Nonfiction Submissions

Brick prides itself on publishing the best literary non-fiction in the world, and we are eager to read your freshest, most impeccable, most compelling non-fiction submissions. What is literary non-fiction, you ask? It’s a wider label than you might think.

Love has led Brick to publish essays of every description: on reading, the writing life, literature, art, ideas, travel, science, photography, the perfect ending, dance, sport, music, city-building, food, bathrooms, history . . . and we are always looking for new terrain. We are interested in the singular obsessions that compel you to write. We welcome humour, we welcome depth, we welcome the unclassifiable, and we welcome playfulness with the non-fiction form.

An average issue of Brick will contain essays, reviews, interviews, belle lettres, memoir, translations, and all manner of incidental ephemera. (Brick also contains the odd story or poem or piece of art or photography, but we sadly do not accept such submissions and will return them to you unread.)

LIT Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)

LIT: The journal of The New School Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program—promoting innovative art and writing via print and digital publishing. Poetry and prose. Our reading periods are from approximately September to December, then January to May.

The CutBank Chapbook Contest (Deadline March 31 – $1000)

The CutBank Chapbook Contest honors a book of original poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction by a single author; translations are not eligible for this award. While previously published stand-alone pieces or excerpts may be included in a manuscript, the manuscript as a whole must be an unpublished work. Translations and previously self-published collections are ineligible. The winning author receives a $1000 honorarium plus 25 copies of the published book. Two runners-up will be chosen for publication as well.

We're proud of CutBank's forty-plus years as Montana's foremost literary magazine, founded in 1973 by the Creative Writing program at the University of Montana and helmed initially by favorite literary son William Kittredge. We publish two print issues a year of compelling poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction by established writers and new voices alike. We're global in scope, but with a regional bias.


Palm Leaf Call for Submissions

We are currently accepting submissions for Palm Leaf, an online periodical connected to the Twenty Stories bookstore. We seek work from new & emerging voices. We love writing from unique perspectives. Writing that pushes boundaries. Writing that finds new & inventive ways to use language. Surprise us!

All submissions must be previously unpublished, original work. Translations will be considered when submitted with a copy of the original text. Simultaneous submissions are considered - please notify us immediately if the work is accepted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only once a month. We look forward to reading your work!

Michigan Quarterly Review Call for Submissions (Theme: Caregiving and Caregivers – Deadline March 31)

For our Fall 2018 issue, Michigan Quarterly Review seeks submissions on the theme of Caregiving and Caregivers. The issue will be guest edited by Heather McHugh. We particularly encourage submissions from writers and artists who are themselves active caregivers.

MQR is an eclectic interdisciplinary journal of arts and culture that seeks to combine the best of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction with outstanding critical essays on literary, cultural, social, and political matters. The flagship journal of the University of Michigan, MQR draws on lively minds here and elsewhere, seeking to present accessible work of all varieties for sophisticated readers from within and without the academy.

Hypertext Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)

Since 2010, Hypertext Magazine has been publishing stories, essays, and interviews by writers who take chances, push forms, and see things differently. We’re suckers for stories from and about all ages and types of people, stories that change the way we view the world.

In addition to startling, vibrant, surprising fiction and essays, Hypertext is looking for serial fiction and graphic novels, editorial cartoons, and interviews. If you have ideas for any of these forms, just email us and your idea will be considered. Submissions for Hypertext Review, our print issue, will be accepted September 2017 through March 2018.

The Masters Review Anthology Prize (Deadline March 31 – $500)

Every year The Masters Review opens submissions to produce our anthology, a collection of ten stories or essays written by the best emerging authors. Our aim is to showcase ten writers who we believe will continue to produce great work. The ten winners 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 was an honorable mention for best anthology. This year stories will be selected by Rebecca Makkai who will choose ten winners from a shortlist of thirty. This category is open to ALL EMERGING WRITERS. Anyone who has not yet published a novel at the time of submission or whose work has had a circulation below 5000 copies.

Upcoming Deadlines

Submittable 2018 Eliza So Fellowship (Las Vegas, Nevada – Deadline March 25)
Community of Writers at Squaw Valley Writers Workshops (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline March 28)
AWP Kurt Brown Prizes (Deadline March 30 – $500)
Booth: A Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
Hypertext Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
The CutBank Chapbook Contest (Deadline March 31 – $1000)
The Masters Review Anthology Prize (Deadline March 31 – $500)
Michigan Quarterly Review Call for Submissions (Theme: Caregiving and Caregivers – March 31)
Chautauqua Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
A Public Space Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
Salamander Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline April 28)
Tin House Summer Workshop (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline April 29)
1888 Plaza Literary Prize (Deadline April 30)
CRAFT Short Fiction Prize (Deadline April 30 – $2000)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $2000)
LIT Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
Kweli Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
The Threepenny Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 3.11.18

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

Fourth Genre Steinberg Essay Contest (Deadline March 20 – $1000)

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.

The 2018 Fourth Genre Steinberg Essay Prize judge will be Robin Hemley! He is an award winning writer, founder of NonfictioNOW, former director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and current director of the Writing Program and Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. His books include Do-Over! and Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness.

Kweli Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)

Kweli’s mission is to nurture emerging writers of color and create opportunities for their voices to be recognized and valued. By creating a community and programming based on artistic excellence and rigor, Kweli empowers writers to share stories that engage and impact our communities. Our vision is for a world where the narratives being told reflect the truth of our histories and the possibilities for our future.

Launched in December 2009, Kweli is the first online journal of its kind to celebrate community and cultural kinships. In this shared space, you will hear the lived experience of people of color. Our many stories. Our shared histories. Our creative play with language. Here our memories are wrapped inside the music of the Muscogee, the blues songs of the South, the clipped patois of the Caribbean. Kweli welcomes submissions of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. We currently publish two online issues and one print issue each year.

1888 Plaza Literary Prize (Deadline April 30)

The Plaza Literary Prize is a national novella competition. We believe a great story is never defined by its length and welcome all genres and themes with compelling characters and evocative moments. We’re looking for our generation’s Hemingway, Oates, or Steinbeck. The City of Orange, California was incorporated on April 6, 1888. The center of the town became known as the Plaza, which has become a symbol of the community and a catalyst for storytelling. 1888 publishes contemporary novellas through The Plaza Literary Prize, an annual anthology of international short stories titled The Cost of Paper, and community essays supporting our Why We Write project.

A Public Space Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)

A Public Space is an independent nonprofit publisher of an award-winning literary and arts magazine and APS Books. Since 2006, it has been our mission to seek out overlooked and unclassifiable work, and to publish writing from beyond established confines. A Public Space welcomes submissions to the magazine from September 15–April 15.

A Public Space has partnered with Graywolf Press to publish books by contributors to the magazine, including: Karate Chop (2015), So Much for That Winter (2016), and Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (2018) by Dorthe Nors; Cities I’ve Never Lived In (2016) by Sara Majka; The Complete Ballet (2017) by John Haskell; and A Lucky Man (2018) by Jamel Brinkley. A Public Space offers three fellowships annually to fiction and nonfiction writers who have not yet published a book-length work. Fellows are selected through an open application each fall.

Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $2000)

Ploughshares welcomes unsolicited submissions of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction during our regular reading period, which runs from June 1 to January 15. The literary journal is published four times a year: mixed issues of poetry and prose in the Spring and Winter, a prose issue in the summer, and a longform prose issue in the Fall, with two of the four issues per year guest-edited by a different writer of prominence.

The Emerging Writer's Contest is open to writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry who have yet to publish or self-publish a book. The winner in each genre will be awarded $2,000. The 2018 contest judges are Carmen Maria Machado (Fiction), Roxane Gay (Nonfiction), and Roger Reeves (Poetry). The winning story, essay, and poems from the 2018 contest will be published in the Winter 2018-19 issue of Ploughshares, and each writer will receive $2,000 and two copies of the issue in which their work appears. The winners will also receive a conversation with our partnering literary agency, Aragi, Inc. regarding their work and writing careers.

Sonora Review 2018 Contest (Theme: The Future – Deadline March 15 – $1000)

Each year, three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Sonora Review are awarded to a short story, an essay, and a poem or group of poems. We’d like to announce our judges for our 2018 contest, whose theme is The Future.

Fiction Judge: Charles Yu
Nonfiction Judge: Rubén Martínez
Poetry Judge: Harmony Holiday

Sonora Review is run entirely by graduate students in the MFA program at the University of Arizona. Sonora Review accepts submissions in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. We only accept unpublished work. Typical response time is three to six months. Please submit only once every six months.

Salamander Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline April 28)

Salamander is a literary organization that publishes a biannual magazine of poetry, fiction, memoir, and works in translation. It was founded by Jennifer Barber in 1992 with the aim of publishing a generation of writers reaching artistic maturity and deserving of a wider audience alongside new work by established writers. In addition to the magazine, Salamander sponsors events and readings in the Boston area and in New York. Salamander came to Suffolk University in the fall of 2005 and receives ongoing support from the University. Housed in and published from Suffolk's English Department at 73 Tremont Street in Boston, it is distributed nationally. Its annual fiction contest, judged by prominent short story writers and novelists, began in 2010.

Les Figues Press 2018 NOS Book Contest (Deadline March 20 – $1000)

Les Figues Press is a nonprofit literary organization and award-winning, independent publisher of poetry, prose, visual art, conceptual writing, and translation. We are an imprint of LARB Books. Based in Los Angeles, our mission is to create aesthetic conversations between readers, writers, and artists. Les Figues Press publishes five to seven books a year and favors projects which push the boundaries of genre, form, and general acceptability. We also curate and host literary events, including readings, conversations, performances, and art salons.

Les Figues Press embraces a feminist criticality and editorial vision. We are interested in work that is aware of itself as a textual body within a history and culture marked (like physical bodies) by constructs of gender, race, class, and sexuality.

Eligible submissions include: poetry, novellas, prose poems, innovative novels, anti-novels, short story collections, lyric essays, hybrids, and all forms not otherwise specified. A prize of $1,000 and publication by Les Figues Press will be given for the winning manuscript. 2018 judge Simone White is the author of Dear Angel of Death, Of Being Dispersed, House of Envy of All the World and Unrest. She is Program Director at The Poetry Project (at St. Mark’s Church) and, in Spring 2018, she will be visiting associate professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Upcoming Deadlines

Colorado Review / Center for Literary Publishing Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)
Copper Nickel Call for Submissions (Deadline March 15)
Fugue Annual Writing Contest (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Paper Darts Short Fiction Award (Deadline March 15 – $500)
Sonora Review 2018 Contest (Theme: The Future – Deadline March 15 – $1000)
The Southampton Review Frank McCourt Memoir Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
The Missouri Review 11th Annual Miller Audio Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Fourth Genre Steinberg Essay Contest (Deadline March 20 – $1000)
Les Figues Press 2018 NOS Book Contest (Deadline March 20 – $1000)
Submittable 2018 Eliza So Fellowship (Las Vegas, Nevada – Deadline March 25)
Community of Writers at Squaw Valley Writers Workshops (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline March 28)
AWP Kurt Brown Prizes (Deadline March 30 – $500)
Booth: A Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
Chautauqua Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
A Public Space Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
Salamander Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline April 28)
Tin House Summer Workshop (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline April 29)
1888 Plaza Literary Prize (Deadline April 30)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Deadline May 15 – $2000)
Kweli Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
The Threepenny Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 2.25.18

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

The Southampton Review Frank McCourt Memoir Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)

Dedicated to publishing fine fiction, nonfiction, plays, screenplays, poetry, literary cartoons, photography and art, TSR opens its pages to writers from across the globe whose work is compelling. This site provides information on the publication and its staff, an archive of past issues, information on how to submit your work to TSR, as well as information on how to subscribe. TSR Online, our online companion, contains content not available in our printed editions.

Our goal in putting The Southampton Review together is to create a literary journal that readers will keep for a very long time, that they will dip into again and again, discovering new voices and visions while savoring long-standing favorites.

Exposition Review Call for Submissions (Flash 405: "Greed" – Deadline March 5)

“Greed is the beginning of so many great narratives. Whether our hero is thrown into a hellish situation by another’s avarice, or if our narrator herself is delightfully (or horrifically) selfish, there are so many ways in which we can be greedy. Show me all of them, and don’t be shy.”

Our annual issue submissions are closed, but that means it’s time to kick off our first Flash 405 contest of 2018! Flash 405 is Exposition Review’s multi-genre flash competition, awarding prizes and online publication to the winners! The contest runs every other month during our “off” season (January-August), when regular submissions are closed.

Joyland Magazine Open Border Fiction Prize (Deadline March 9 – $1000)

Based on the idea that fiction is an international movement supported by local communities, Joyland is a literary magazine that selects stories regionally. Our editors work with authors connected to locales across North America, including New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto as well as places underrepresented in cultural media. Our 10 regional verticals highlight the diversity of voices nationwide, and we are proud to have created a home where all can coexist.

Joyland Magazine is now accepting entries for its 2018 Open Border Fiction Prize, to be judged by Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye Vitamin, called a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Oprah Magazine, Vogue, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Huffington Post, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Women.com, Booklist, and The Independent. This prize is open to any author writing in the English language, no matter their country of residence. One entry per author and the story must be a previously unpublished work of fiction, between 1900 and 6000 words in length. The winning entry will receive $1000 (US) and be published on Joyland. Two runner-up stories will also be published. Winners will be announced in April 2018.

Chautauqua Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)

The editors of Chautauqua are seeking poems, short stories, personal essays, and flash prose pieces that feature moxie—that ineffable quality of courage, grit, determination, expertise, energy, and sheer stick-to-itiveness. We are eager to consider pieces that explore how characters and narrators handle predicaments and dilemmas, setbacks to their ambitions, and roadblocks to their desires. The outcome may be hard or disappointing, tragic or comic, satisfying or fulfilling, but our interest lies in how the characters—fictional or real-life—display resilience, perseverance, grace, and integrity. How they persist in the face of danger and defeat, how they grapple with matters of personal honor and a sense of duty or service to others, how—in William Faulkner’s words—the human spirit doesn’t just endure but prevails, and in so doing creates memorable beauty on the page.

Paper Darts Short Fiction Award (Deadline March 15 – $500)

Our Short Fiction Award Judge, Carmen Maria Machado, wrote this: “Many people live and die without ever confronting themselves in the darkness.”

Step 1: Turn off the light and confront yourself in 1,200 words or less.
Step 2: Send your words to us.

A magazine of LIT + ART fueled by volunteers and imaginary money since 2009.

The Rumpus Call for Submissions (Theme: Mothering Outside the Margins – Deadline March 5)

It’s time to tell the truth and all of the experiences outside the margins. This May, The Rumpus will be exploring the theme of “Mothering outside the Margins,” and we want your real-life, in the trenches essays about everything we never talk about when we talk about mothers. What do the words “mother” and “mothering” mean to you? How do you want to push and stretch the definitions of those words? This isn’t a call for smug advice. This is a call for burn-it-all-down, hands-covered-in-shit-and-piss-and-vomit (because yes, you caught that vomit in your hands) stories that only you can tell. Abortions, miscarriages, choosing to become a mom, choosing not to become a mom, the ways you were and weren’t mothered, blended families, co-parenting, LGBTQ mothers, adoptions, and single moms—we want it all. Everything you don’t see on-screen but do see in the mirror.

Community of Writers at Squaw Valley Writers Workshops (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline March 28)

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, or scholarly works will not be considered. Tuition is $1,200, which includes six evening meals.

Tin House Summer Workshop (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline April 29)

The Tin House Summer Workshop is a weeklong intensive of workshops, seminars, panels, and readings led by prominent contemporary writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The program combines morning workshops with afternoon seminars and career panels. Evenings are reserved for author readings, singing, and dancing.

Workshops meet for six sessions, Monday through Saturday, from 9:30 am until 12:30 pm. Each workshop will have no more than twelve students and will treat two manuscripts per session. Each student will meet with their faculty instructor for a 15-minute one-on-one meeting during the week. Tin House editors and guest agents are available to meet individually with students throughout the week. For students who have completed a collection of stories or poems, a memoir, or a novel, one-on-one mentorships are available with select faculty and staff for an additional fee.

The Workshop will take place at Reed College, located on 100 acres of rolling lawns, winding lanes, and magnificent old trees in the southeast area of Portland, Oregon, just minutes from downtown and twelve miles from the airport.

Upcoming Deadlines

Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Intoxication – Deadline February 26 – $1000)
The Writers Lab Call for Entries (Deadline February 28)
ASU Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest (Deadline February 28 – $1000)
Summer Literary Seminars Fiction & Poetry Contest (Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya and Tbilisi, Georgia – Deadline February 28)
Territory Call for Submissions (Theme: Love – Deadline March 1)
Exposiiton Review Call for Submissions (Flash 405: "Greed" – Deadline March 5)
The Rumpus Call for Submissions (Theme: Mothering Outside the Margins – Deadline March 5)
Joyland Magazine  Open Border Fiction Prize (Deadline March 9 – $1000)
Gigantic Sequins 2018 Winter Contests in Flash Non-fiction & Poetry Comics (Deadline March 10 – $100)
Colorado Review / Center for Literary Publishing Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)
Copper Nickel Call for Submissions (Deadline March 15)
Fugue Annual Writing Contest (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Paper Darts Short Fiction Award (Deadline March 15 – $500)
The Southampton Review Frank McCourt Memoir Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
The Missouri Review 11th Annual Miller Audio Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Submittable 2018 Eliza So Fellowship (Las Vegas, Nevada – Deadline March 25)
Community of Writers at Squaw Valley Writers Workshops (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline March 28)
AWP Kurt Brown Prizes (Deadline March 30 – $500)
Booth: A Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
Chautauqua Call for Submissions (Deadline April 15)
Tin House Summer Workshop (July 8-15, 2018 – Deadline April 29)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
The Threepenny Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 2.11.18

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

 

The Threepenny Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)

"Everybody should rush right out and subscribe to The Threepenny Review." —Tony Kushner

"There are vanishingly few magazines left in this country which seem pitched at the general literary reader and which consistently publish such interesting, high-quality criticism, reflection, argument, fiction, and poetry… Threepenny is thankfully still out there." —Jonathan Franzen

The Writers Lab Call for Entries (Deadline February 28)

The Writers Lab is a four-day writer’s workshop that gives women screenwriters over the age of 40 the opportunity to work intensively on their feature film scripts with the support of established film professionals. Through one-on-one meetings, panel discussions, peer workshops, and group meals, Mentors and Writers engage in a rigorous process to support intensive script development.

The retreat takes place September 25-29, 2018, at the Wiawaka Center for Women, on Lake George, in New York State.

The Writers Lab is funded by Meryl Streep​ for the fourth year, and produced by IRIS ​and New York Women In Film & Television​ in collaboration with the Writers Guild of America​, East, with support from The Black List, Relativity Media, Stony Brook Southampton+Manhattan​ and Tribeca Film Institute​.

Booth: A Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31) 

Q: What kind of stuff can I send?
A: Poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, lists. Especially the last three. We want more of those.

Booth publishes one new piece or author every Friday, square on our home page. Also, we publish two print issues yearly, usually in winter and summer. Booth was established in 2009. Our staff is comprised of MFA faculty and students in the Butler University graduate writing program.

5 x 5 Call for Nonfiction Submissions 

“5×5” is one of twenty-five phrases used in radio-transmission-speak or “voice communication” via two-way radios to describe the signal-to-noise ratio or the quality of communication of a given transmission. The scale used to describe the quality of communication ranges from one to five, where one is the worst and five is the best. Static, or white noise, is what results from a low signal-to-noise ratio, whereas a high ratio, such as 5×5 or “Five by Five” or “Fivers” or “Fifers,” is a signal that is very strong and very clear, as in I can hear you perfectly, or Rodger that—loud and clear.

5×5 the magazine, which borrows from that concept of transmission, is a non-profit, online literary magazine run by a small team of editors who aim to publish a healthy mix of both established as well as emerging writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We also publish photography on occasion. Each issue we publish includes at least five pieces per genre.

The Missouri Review 11th Annual Miller Audio Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)

$1000 for first prize in each of four categories: prose, poetry, audio documentary, and humor.

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. The Missouri Review maintains an “open submission” policy and read year round, sifting through approximately 12,000 submissions each year. 

JSTOR Daily Call for Submissions

We’re excited by stories that tease out the details or that look at the obvious in a non-obvious way. Subjects that are newsworthy, entertaining, quirky, surprising, and enlightening are right up our alley. Each of our stories is informed by and provides open access to underlying scholarship on JSTOR. Because JSTOR’s digital library holds mostly archival content (rather than just-published research), our stories tend to look at the ways the present is informed by the past—or the ways the past lives on inside the present.

Upcoming themes that we may cover include:

• The Restoration
• The winter Olympics
• Popular psychology
• Nostalgia
• The hearth

We’re not usually interested in republishing content that’s been previously published, articles written for specialists in a particular discipline, or anything that feels like work to read. We are interested in timely, engaging, and reported stories on scholarly topics, including interviews with researchers doing cutting-edge work in their fields.

AWP Kurt Brown Prizes (Deadline March 30 – $500)

Formally known as the WC&C Scholarship Competition, the Kurt Brown Prizes award $500 each year to emerging writers in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction who wish to attend a writers’ conference, center, retreat, festival, or residency. The prizes are applied to fees for winners to attend one of the member programs in AWP’s Directory of Conferences & Centers. Winners, as well as six finalists, will also receive a one-year individual membership in AWP. Ultimately, the goals of the contest are to spread the word about the incredible work being done at local writing centers, conferences, festivals, retreats, and residencies.

In 1990, Kurt Brown founded WC&C, a coalition of writers’ conferences and festivals, to help these groups support one another and thrive. Kurt was a friend and mentor to many writers, a poet, editor, memoirist, essayist, teacher, and administrator. Today, the group he founded is an important part of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, which hosts more than 150 member programs. We hope you will take the time to visit our directory and explore them all. There is an excellent chance you will find one that meets in your local area that can help you connect with a community of writers and friends.

Anaphora Writing Residency (Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, CA – Deadline February 12)

Anaphora Writing Residency is a ten-day program, designed exclusively for writers of color. The residency will provide genre-specific workshops in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Workshops are held with small groups that meet five or six times throughout the residency. Faculty will also be available for consultation sessions. The residency will feature lectures by faculty, visiting writers, and other guests; roundtable discussions on topics about the literary and publishing industry; a keynote address; pitch madness sessions; and different networking opportunities with fellow writers and professionals from the publishing industry. Participants will also have the opportunity give and attend readings, as well as participate in field trips to local museums and art galleries in Los Angeles. Participants who are also visual artists may have the opportunity to sign up for a master class with the critic-in-residence. 

  

Upcoming Deadlines

Anaphora Writing Residency (Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, CA – Deadline February 12)
Beecher's Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline February 14)

Slag Glass City Call for Submissions (Theme: Dear City – Deadline February 15)
Santa Fe Art Institute Truth & Reconciliation Residency (Santa Fe, NM – Deadline February 15)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Intoxication – Deadline February 26 – $1000)
The Writers Lab Call for Entries (Deadline February 28)
ASU Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest (Deadline February 28 – $1000)
Summer Literary Seminars Fiction & Poetry Contest (Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya and Tbilisi, Georgia – Deadline February 28)
Territory Call for Submissions (Theme: Love – Deadline March 1)
Gigantic Sequins 2018 Winter Contests in Flash Non-fiction & Poetry Comics (Deadline March 10 – $100)
Colorado Review / Center for Literary Publishing Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)
Copper Nickel Call for Submissions (Deadline March 15)
Fugue Annual Writing Contest (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
The Missouri Review 11th Annual Miller Audio Prize (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Submittable 2018 Eliza So Fellowship (Las Vegas, Nevada – Deadline March 25)
AWP Kurt Brown Prizes (Deadline March 30 – $500)
Booth: A Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline March 31)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
The Threepenny Review Call for Submissions (Deadline June 1)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 1.28.18

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

The BAU Institute Camargo Arts Residency Award (Cassis, France – Deadline January 31)

The BAU Institute Residency offers international mid-career artists, who have been working independently for over ten years, apartments and workspaces at no cost. Hosted by the Camargo Foundation, the BAU Institute’s Residency award supports artists working in the visual arts, film, performance, and writing on a secluded campus in Cassis, France.

The BAU Institute Residency provides artists a singular opportunity to devote intense focus on projects within an inspiring campus perched above the Mediterranean Sea. Residents are free to create their own schedule of studio practice combined with group dinners and outings. Film screenings, readings and studio presentations also support a vibrant community among Fellows. The setting enables undisturbed creativity, while still offering interaction with the local village of Cassis and the nearby city of Marseille.

Territory Call for Submissions (Theme: Love – Deadline March 1)

Territory is a literary project about territories and the maps that will always fail to capture them. It’s about the naive dream of objectivity, and how we use the act of representation to both hide and broadcast our subjectivities.

For our eighth issue, Love, we are seeking work that gets lost in this complicated space and its many maps. Consider the many types of love: at first sight, blind, calf, cupboard, free, of the game, poly, star-crossed, tough, true, unconditional, Greek: familial (storge), friendly (philia), romantic (eros), and divine (agape), Chinese: benevolent (ren, 仁) and universal (jiān'ài, 兼愛). Consider the places and spaces of love: altars, bedrooms, bordellos, cruising spots, dating apps, erogenous zones, grottos, key parties, motels, public, Valentine’s Day, Lover’s Lane, The Tunnel of Love, The Love Ranch. The temporalities of love: everlasting, fleeting, til death; affairs, anniversaries, date nights, shotgun weddings, singles nights, speed dating. The art and industry of love: erotica, love letters, odes, palinodes, romance paperbacks, serenades, sex toys, slow jams; Kama Sutra, Loveline, The Love Boat, The Love of a Good Woman. The people: Aphrodite/Venus, Casanova, Dr Terri, The Love Doctor®, Eros/Cupid, Kāmadeva, Min, St. Valentine. And above all else, consider what, whom, and how you love, even if there is no why.

Arts & Letters Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31)

For nearly twenty years, Arts & Letters has attracted both emerging and well established writers, publishing the likes of R.T. Smith, Denise Duhamel, Donald Hall, Bret Lott, Maxine Kumin, Sonja Livingston, Opal Moore, Bob Hicok, Xu Xi, Lia Purpura, Marianne Boruch, and David Kirby. Arts & Letters also boasts an all-new design, including beautiful full-color covers designed by Peter Selgin. Add these changes to the new, much-improved website and plenty of upcoming features, such as reviews of other journals and an archives spotlight section, and Arts & Letters is looking more lively and exciting than ever.

Our editors seek work that doesn’t try too hard to grab our attention, but rather guides it toward the human voice and its perpetual struggle into language. We’re open to both formal and experimental fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; we’re also open to work that defies classification. Above all, we look for work in which we can feel writers surprising themselves.

Gigantic Sequins 2018 Winter Contests in Flash Non-fiction & Poetry Comics (Deadline March 10 – $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.

Beecher's Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline February 14)

Beecher's is now open for submissions! We seek to publish diverse voices, including works by writers who are people of color, queer, transgender, disabled, indigenous, international, and/or underrepresented in literary magazines. Beecher’s magazine, published annually in Lawrence, Kansas, and run by the students of the graduate program in English at the University of Kansas, seeks the best in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry from both emerging and established authors. Beecher’s accepts poetry, fiction, and nonfiction submissions from September 1st to February 14th.

In 1856, Henry Ward Beecher, a prominent abolitionist, publicly stated that when it came to Kansas slaveholders, there was more moral power in a Sharps rifle than there was in the Bible. Following his speech, the Sharps rifle quickly became known as a “Beecher’s Bible.” Rifles being shipped to fellow abolitionists in Kansas were shipped in containers marked as “Books” or “Beecher’s Bibles” in order to sneak them past pro-slavery fighters and to keep from raising any suspicion in the federal and state authorities, who prohibited the shipping of arms to the area. Hundreds of Beecher’s Bibles were brought to the region in the fight to make Kansas a free state.

Barrelhouse Books Call for Nonfiction Submissions (Deadline January 31)

Barrelhouse Books is looking for its next manuscript to publish. This go-round, we’re on the hunt for innovative nonfiction: book-length projects that experiment in some way with form, or take an unusual vector through their subject matter. We realize that’s a little vague, so what we’re asking for, rather than a full manuscript, is a brief note telling us about your project. If it sounds like our kind of thing, we’ll get back to you and ask to see the whole manuscript.

So, why are we doing things this way? Last time we had an open call for submissions we asked for full manuscripts, and while that netted us a book we love—the wonderful novel, Year 14—the process on our end was pretty overwhelming. And we realized that a lot of the books people submitted just weren’t right for us—which isn’t a statement about the quality of those books, but on our own editorial idiosyncrasies. We want to publish a book that’s “our kind of thing,” but it’s not so easy to define what “our kind of thing” is. Often, we don’t know it until we see it. So we thought this would be easier for all involved—you give us a sense of your project, and we decide whether it sounds like our kind of deal. If it does, we’ll follow up and ask for more.

Fugue Annual Writing Contest (Deadline March 15 – $1000)

Every year, Fugue hosts our Annual Writing Contest, publishing winners in both prose and poetry and awarding them $1,000 each. We are excited to announce that this year's contest judges are Vijay Seshadri (poetry) and Carmen Maria Machado (prose).

Begun in 1990 by the faculty in the Department of English at University of Idaho, Fugue has continuously published poetry, plays, fiction, essays, visual-text hybrids, 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 a deep 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. 

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.

Akrai Residency Program (Palazzolo Acreide, Sicily – Deadline January 31)

Akrai is an international multidisciplinary arts residency program on the island of Sicily, with a strong emphasis on interaction with the local community and collaboration among peers. Akrai’s mission is to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals an opportunity to develop new work in a stimulating environment. Akrai seeks to offer a platform for a better understanding of the rich and complex heritage of Sicily—with its layers of history and tradition and multifaceted contemporary issues—by facilitating a cultural exchange between the local community and artists from across the world.At the local level, Akrai aims to forge new connections between the surrounding community and the contemporary arts, encouraging  community members to become active participants in the cultural dialogue. The next residency session will take place from August 6 -26, 2018. 2018 is a special thematic edition of Akrai Residency: we accept submissions with project proposals that reflect upon the theme of Tempo Lento (Slow Time) in any possible interpretation, and in any disciplines we offer residencies for.

Upcoming Deadlines

 

The Iowa Review Awards (Deadline January 31 – $1500)
Arts & Letters Call for Submissions (Deadline January 31)
Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize (Deadline January 31 – $12,000)
The 2018 DISQUIET Prize (Lisbon, Portugal – Deadline January 31)
Barrelhouse Books Call for Nonfiction Submissions (Deadline January 31)
Magma Poetry Call for Submissions (Theme: Film – Deadline January 31)
Akrai Residency Program (Palazzolo Acreide, Sicily – Deadline January 31)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes (Deadline January 31 – $1000)
The BAU Institute Camargo Arts Residency Award (Cassis, France – Deadline January 31)
American Short(er) Fiction Prize (Deadline February 1 – $1000)
Sesame Writers' Room Fellowship (Deadline February 4)
Beecher's Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline February 14)
Slag Glass City Call for Submissions (Theme: Dear City – Deadline February 15)
Santa Fe Art Institute Truth & Reconciliation Residency (Santa Fe, NM – Deadline February 15)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Intoxication – Deadline February 26 – $1000)
ASU Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest (Deadline February 28 – $1000)
Summer Literary Seminars Fiction & Poetry Contest (Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya and Tbilisi, Georgia – Deadline February 28)
Territory Call for Submissions (Theme: Love – Deadline March 1)
Gigantic Sequins 2018 Winter Contests in Flash Non-fiction & Poetry Comics (Deadline March 10 – $100)
Colorado Review / Center for Literary Publishing Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)
Copper Nickel Call for Submissions (Deadline March 15)
Fugue Annual Writing Contest (Deadline March 15 – $1000)
Submittable 2018 Eliza So Fellowship (Las Vegas, Nevada – Deadline March 25)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 1.14.18

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

Sesame Writers' Room Fellowship (Deadline February 4)

Let's bring more voices to the table! Sesame Street Writers’ Room is a writing fellowship opportunity from the creators of Sesame Street. And we are looking for YOU! Fresh new writing talent from underrepresented racial backgrounds. Emerging storytellers who are selected to join the Writers’ Room fellowship will receive hands-on writing experience guided by Sesame Street veterans and other media industry leaders. Participants must be able to attend 8 weekly sessions in NYC, which will be held on a weeknight evening.

The Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers (Deadline January 15 – $3000 + Agency Review)

Welcome to our Winter Short Story Award For New Writers. The winning story will be awarded $3000 and publication online. Second and third place stories will be awarded publication and $200 and $100 respectively. All winners and honorable mentions will receive agency review by: Nat Sobel from Sobel Weber, Victoria Cappello from The Bent Agency, Andrea Morrison from Writers House, and Mark Gottlieb from Trident Media. It’s an awesome chance to get your work seen by agents in the industry.

Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

For the spring 2019 issue of Creative Nonfiction magazine, we’re looking for true stories about doing it. Whether you’re straight, gay, or other; alone, in a couple, or in a crowd; doing it for the first time or the last, or not doing it at all, we want to hear your story.

As always, we’re interested in stories that are more than mere anecdotes, and we love work that incorporates an element of research and/or makes a connection to a larger story or theme. We welcome personal stories as well as profiles, and above all, we are looking for narratives—true stories, rich with scene, character, detail, and a distinctive voice—that offer a fresh interpretation or unique insight into the theme.

Please note: for this issue, we are interested primarily (and perhaps even exclusively) in stories of consensual and/or victimless sex. Also note, we are not seeking erotica. No photos, please. Creative Nonfiction editors will award $1,000 for Best Essay and $500 for runner-up. All essays will be considered for publication in a special issue of the magazine to be published in spring 2019.

Submittable 2018 Eliza So Fellowship (Las Vegas, Nevada – Deadline March 25)

Submittable is thrilled to announce the second annual Eliza So Fellowship, in partnership with The Writer’s Block and Plympton. This month-long residency in Las Vegas will offer award recipients time and solitude to help them finish a book that is already in progress. The program’s inaugural fellow was Melissa Sipin in 2017.

The 2018 fellowships will include room and board at The Writer’s Block, along with a $500 food stipend and $400 toward travel. Submittable will accept applications between January 1 and March 25, 2018, and results will be announced June 1. We’re pleased to expand the program this year to offer two residencies between September and December, and awarded in the following categories: The Eliza So Fellowship for Immigrant Writers and The Eliza So Fellowship for Montana Indigenous Writers.

Australian Book Review 2018 Calibre Essay Prize (Deadline January 15 – $3000)

Australian Book Review welcomes entries in the twelfth Calibre Essay Prize. The Calibre Prize, founded in 2007, is one of the world's leading prizes for an original non-fiction essay. It is now worth a total of $7,500. Entry is open to anyone in the world who is writing in English. The winning essay will be published in ABR’s 400th issue in April 2018.

First Prize: $5,000
Second Prize: $2,500

Essays must range from 3,000 to 6,000 words and be written in English. Deadline for entries is 15 January 2018. This year the Calibre Essay Prize will be judged by Andrea Goldsmith, Phillipa McGuinness, and Peter Rose (ABR Editor and CEO).

Poor Joker Press Call for Submissions

Poor Joker Press is a Chicago-based indie publisher focusing on meaningful, well-crafted, short-form writing. All titles from Poor Joker Press are printed in a 3.5 x 5-inch format, allowing readers to carry our stories with them—in pockets, on city trains, in purses and on the move. Poor Joker Press publishes literary fiction, nonfiction and memoirs. We only accept submissions between 4,000 and 7,000 words. 

Electric Literature Call for 300-Word Love Stories (Deadline January 16)

We’re five issues away from a milestone (and Valentine’s Day), and we want to publish the people who got us there — you. 

The Love Story, and its shadow, The Heartbreak Story, are a kind that will never get old — there will be versions and retellings and sequels for as long as humans exist. Love, in short, is perhaps the grandest source of anguish and inspiration. So we’ve decided that’s what we want for our 300th issue: Love, in short.

For one week, from January 8 through the 16th (yay for long weekends!), we’ll be opening submissions for 300-word love stories. Recommended Reading only publishes fiction, though it is up to you how thinly you choose to veil the scumbag character who cheats and then meets an untimely death.

The Oxford American Jeff Baskin Writers Fellowship (Little Rock, Arkansas – Deadline March 24 – $10,000)

Jeff Baskin, a librarian by trade, was a lifelong and generous literary citizen. His imaginative approach to his work and his programming innovations brought reading and writing to countless in the North Little Rock community. In 2010, he initiated the Laman Library Writers Fellowship, an annual award that honored Arkansas writers.

The chosen writer will receive $10,000 for a nine-month residency in Central Arkansas to work on a book of debut creative nonfiction. Writers of any genre are invited to apply. Although the writer may have published books in other genres, the proposed project must be for a debut book of creative nonfiction. The manuscript may, however, be in any stage of development: draft, agency representation, contracted, or not. For the purposes of this fellowship, creative nonfiction is defined as literary journalism, memoir, reportage, criticism, or the lyric essay. 

Upcoming Deadlines

 

The MacDowell Colony Fellowships for Summer 2018 (Deadline January 15)
Australian Book Review 2018 Calibre Essay Prize (Deadline January 15 – $3000)
Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) of Los Angeles +LAB Artist Residency Program (Deadline January 15)
The Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers (Deadline January 15 – $3000 + Agency Review)
Entropy & InterAction Initiative Inc. Privilege & Identity Abroad Narrative Writing Contest (Deadline January 15 – $250)
Saint-Paul de Vence James Baldwin Writer-in-Residence Program (Saint-Paul de Vence, France – Deadline January 15)
Electric Literature Call for 300-Word Love Stories (Deadline January 16)
The Iowa Review Awards (Deadline January 31 – $1500)
Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize (Deadline January 31 – $12,000)
The 2018 DISQUIET Prize (Lisbon, Portugal – Deadline January 31)
Magma Poetry Call for Submissions (Theme: Film – Deadline January 31)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes (Deadline January 31 – $1000) 
American Short(er) Fiction Prize (Deadline February 1 – $1000)
Sesame Writers' Room Fellowship (Deadline February 4)
Slag Glass City Call for Submissions (Theme: Dear City – Deadline February 15)
Santa Fe Art Institute Truth & Reconciliation Residency (Santa Fe, NM – Deadline February 15)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Intoxication – Deadline February 26 – $1000)
ASU Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest (Deadline February 28 – $1000)
Summer Literary Seminars Fiction & Poetry Contest (Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya and Tbilisi, Georgia – Deadline February 28)
Colorado Review / Center for Literary Publishing Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)
Copper Nickel Call for Submissions (Deadline March 15)
Submittable 2018 Eliza So Fellowship (Las Vegas, Nevada – Deadline March 25)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Let's Talk About Sex – Deadline July 16 – $1000)

Submission Sunday 12.31.17

Happy new year!

The Iowa Review Awards (Deadline January 31 – $1500)

Each January since 2003, The Iowa Review has invited submissions to The Iowa Review Awards, a writing contest in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Winners receive $1,500; first runners-up receive $750. Winners and runners-up are published in each December issue. We accept submissions to the Iowa Review Awards during the month of January. Judges for the 2018 Awards are Elizabeth Willis (poetry), Alexander Chee (fiction), and Kiese Laymon (nonfiction).

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.

Wanderlust Journal Call for Submissions

Wanderlust is focused on sharing travel narratives, sketches, and images by both known writers and promising new voices. Wanderlust. Nomad. Wanderer. Traveller. Adventurer. Explorer. Insatiably curious or easily bored? How would you define Wanderlust? How do you explain your need to hit the road again? Can you? As Bill Bryson said in the 2016 Best of American Travel Essays, he travels simply because it gives him pleasure.

For some it is also a need, psychological and creative. Without movement, travel, new experiences, life becomes dull. Taking an unknown road, finding the best lake to camp beside, chatting to those met along the way, this is what life is for. Wanderlust is dedicated to travelogues, trip reports, photographs and nonfiction essays taken from unique experiences on the road. In these stories there’s an open sense of adventure and innocence, one that takes a personal experience and taps into something universal. A narrative map is the result.

Broken Pencil Indie Writers Deathmatch Short Story Contest (Deadline January 9 – $400)

Welcome to the Deathmatch Short Story Contest, the world’s only and most dangerous interactive short story competition. What exactly is the Indie Writer’s Deathmatch? It’s an online battle. The top 16 stories battle it out online complete with reader voting, author trash talk and lots of comments. It’s fun and crazy and all about finding and promoting new voices!

Since 1995, we have been a mega-zine dedicated exclusively to exploring independent creative action. Published four times a year, each issue of Broken Pencil features reviews of hundreds of zines and small press books, plus comics, excerpts from the best of the underground press, interviews, original fiction and commentary on all aspects of the indie arts. From the hilarious to the perverse, Broken Pencil challenges conformity and demands attention.

Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize (Deadline January 31 – $12,000)

A $12,000 advance and publication by Graywolf will be awarded to the most promising and innovative literary nonfiction project by a writer not yet established in the genre. The prize will be awarded to a manuscript in progress. We request that authors send a long sample from their manuscript, as well as a description of the work, as detailed below. We expect that we will work with the winner of the prize and provide editorial guidance toward the completion of the project.

The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize emphasizes innovation in form, and we want to see projects that test the boundaries of literary nonfiction. We are less interested in straightforward memoirs, and we turn down a large number of them every year. Before submitting your manuscript for the prize, please look at the books previously published as winners of the prize for examples of the type of work that we are seeking. 

The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize seeks to acknowledge—and honor—the great traditions of literary nonfiction. Whether grounded in observation, autobiography, or research, much of the most beautiful, daring, and original writing over the past few decades can be categorized as nonfiction. Submissions to the prize might span memoir, biography, or history.

Magma Poetry Call for Submissions (Theme: Film – Deadline January 31)

Whether it’s a film you always go back to, a director you follow, a cinema that holds a particular story for you, or a poem that simply reads like a short film, Magma 71 is set out to celebrate the poetry of cinema. Take us with you to the movies. Send us your takes on Neorealism and Nouvelle Vague, Hollywood Golden Age or the cinema of today. Or perhaps you’d like to create your own film script, presented to us in the form of a poem. Send us your films noirs, your indies and your blockbusters. In short, make us believe in films that don’t exist and send us to watch the films that do. Show us the ways poetry and film are connected and explore with us whether it is even possible for contemporary poets to write without the cinema screen at the back of their mind.

We are also calling for submissions of film-poems. We are particularly interested in collaborative work between poets and filmmakers. The poems, as always, should not have been previously published, either in print or online. The chosen film-poems will be screened at Magma events, showcased on the Magma website, and the poem texts published in the magazine. We are interested in collaborations that challenge and converse with each other’s form rather than simply echo it. In other words, if there’s a moon in the poem, we probably don’t need to see it represented as a moon in the film.

Colorado Review / Center for Literary Publishing 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.

The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)

The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 will publish compelling and thought-provoking books of creative nonfiction, essay, and literary journalism. We are particularly interested in immersive and reportage based writing, socio-cultural and political criticism, pop culture analysis, and essayistic prose that artfully blends the personal and public. We are also interested in lyric essays, hybrid nonfiction, research-driven memoir, and the sort of engaging and eclectic nonfiction writing we regularly publish in our literary magazine partner, The Normal School. We also hope to publish books by diverse, historically under-represented, and/or marginalized voices.

For now, our goal is to publish one book a year and give it sustained marketing and PR attention combined with author promotion through The Normal School’s online and print platforms. This may involve interviews, excerpts, and “reader’s guides,” integrated with AWP exposure. Outpost19 will publish the selected title each year as part of its seasonal list, offering standard royalties, author book tour support, ARC mailings to reviewers, trade show exposure, advertising to the book trade, and social media outreach.

Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) of Los Angeles +LAB Artist Residency Program (Deadline January 15)

LTSC, a Community Development Corporation in Los Angeles, California, presents the +LAB Artist Residency Program, which seeks four California-based artists (including one from the Little Tokyo community) for a three-month community-based residency, this coming May 1 through July 30, 2018.

The +LAB Residency will be a supportive cohort of the selected four artists in residence who will meet regularly with the each other and the collaborating organizations to research, conceptualize and manifest projects around the overarching theme of “Community Control and Self Determination.” The cohort will meet weekly with community members, and bi-monthly to exchange ideas and information about the projects they are involved with.

Through this residency, LTSC seeks to further explore and deepen the relationship between arts and the pursuit of self-determination. To be fully immersed in Little Tokyo, participants will be embedded in local community organizations and will live at the historic Daimaru Hotel—a single room occupancy hotel that is an important piece of Little Tokyo’s legacy. Artists in this program will have the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to Little Tokyo’s fight for self-determination while also spending three months deepening their own community practice. 

Upcoming Deadlines

 

The Cantabrigian Call for Submissions (Deadline December 31)
Storyknife Writers Retreat (Homer, AK – Deadline December 31)
Mississippi Review Prize (Deadline January 1 – $1000)
Writing by Writers Wolf House Residency Program (Minneapolis, MN – Deadline January 1)
The Studios at MASS MoCA Residency Program (North Adams, MA – Deadline January 8)
Broken Pencil Indie Writers Deathmatch Short Story Contest (Deadline January 9 – $400)
Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (Joshua Tree, CA – Deadline January 10)
The MacDowell Colony Fellowships for Summer 2018 (Deadline January 15)
Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) of Los Angeles +LAB Artist Residency Program (Deadline January 15)
Entropy & InterAction Initiative Inc. Privilege & Identity Abroad Narrative Writing Contest (Deadline January 15 – $250)
Saint-Paul de Vence James Baldwin Writer-in-Residence Program (Saint-Paul de Vence, France – Deadline January 15) 
The Iowa Review Awards (Deadline January 31 – $1500)
Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize (Deadline January 31 – $12,000)
The 2018 DISQUIET Prize (Lisbon, Portugal – Deadline January 31)
Magma Poetry Call for Submissions (Theme: Film – Deadline January 31)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes (Deadline January 31 – $1000) 
American Short(er) Fiction Prize (Deadline February 1 – $1000)
Slag Glass City Call for Submissions (Theme: Dear City – Deadline February 15)
Santa Fe Art Institute Truth & Reconciliation Residency (Santa Fe, NM – Deadline February 15)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Intoxication – Deadline February 26 – $1000)
ASU Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest (Deadline February 28 – $1000)
Summer Literary Seminars Fiction & Poetry Contest (Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya and Tbilisi, Georgia – Deadline February 28)
Colorado Review / Center for Literary Publishing Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Deadline March 14 – $2000)
Copper Nickel Call for Submissions (Deadline March 15)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19 Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)

Submission Sunday 12.17.17

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

Saint-Paul de Vence James Baldwin Writer-in-Residence Program (Saint-Paul de Vence, France – Deadline January 15)

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the death of James Baldwin, the France-based nonprofit association Les Amis de la Maison Baldwin announces plans to award to an emerging writer a one-month fellowship in Saint-Paul de Vence, the village on the Cote d'Azur where for 17 years Baldwin made his home.

The first Saint-Paul de Vence James Baldwin Writer-in-Residence will be offered a house in the village center for the month of April 2018. The property, which is home to our Welcome Center, features a 3rd-floor bedroom suite with a sunny terrace overlooking the tiled roofs of the village and the valley beyond. The resident writer will also be provided a private writing studio and a full kitchen, stocked and replenished for breakfast. Daily lunch or dinner will be offered to the resident writer through partnerships with local restaurants and host families. The award does not cover travel expenses to and from Saint Paul.

Eligible to apply are emerging writers in English of literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry and theater, the genres in which Baldwin worked. For our purposes, emerging writers are defined as those with a solid history of publication or literary recognition but with no more than one published book or theatrical production. The resident will be selected by an independent panel of established authors, who will look especially for writers working in the spirit of James Baldwin.

Writing by Writers Wolf House Residency Program (Minneapolis, MN – Deadline January 1)

Writing By Writers is pleased to offer two, one-week, dog-friendly, residencies at The Wolf House in NE Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 3-10, 2018 and early July 2018.  The Wolf House Residency is open to fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers and poets.  Lodging is provided free of charge, however residents are responsible for their own meals, transportation and personal needs while at the residency.  The Wolf House is dog-friendly and your dog is welcome to join you at the residency.  Residencies are intended for writers only.  No spouses, children or friends are allowed.

Applications are due by January 1st and selections will be made by January 15th.  Applicants will be asked to provide a statement of intent, a short writing sample and submit a $50.00 tax deductible application fee.  The application fee will help fund fellowships at future Writing By Writers workshops. Winners will be selected by Pam Houston. Pam’s most recent book is Contents May Have Shifted, published in 2012, by W.W. Norton.  She is also the author of two collections of linked short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, the novel, Sight Hound, and a collection of essays called A Little More About Me, all published by W.W. Norton. 

Storyknife Writers Retreat (Homer, AK – Deadline December 31)

In 2018, as we raise the final funds to bill the entire residency, we will be hosting women writers during the months of June, July, and August. The residency cabin has one bedroom and one bathroom with all modern conveniences provided. The kitchen is equipped with a hot plate, a microwave, an electric kettle and a refrigerator. The living room has a desk for writing and a chair for reading. The view is incomparable.

The Storyknife Fellow will sit down to a welcome dinner her first evening at Storyknife with Dana Stabenow and Erin Hollowell, and to a celebratory dinner their last day with Dana and assorted members of the Storyknife board, staff, and advisory council. The rest of their stay the Fellow is expected to purchase food and cook their own meals.

The Fellow will be responsible for transportation costs from where they live to Homer, Alaska. It has been our experience that it is beneficial to have vehicle. For each week she is in residency, the inaugural Fellow will receive a $250 stipend to cover food and transportation costs, to be awarded at the final dinner.

The 2018 DISQUIET Prize (Lisbon, Portugal – Deadline January 31)

The 2018 DISQUIET Prize is now open for entries! Contest winners in the categories of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction will have their winning work published in North America’s leading publications. Additionally, one grand prize winner will receive a full fellowship (airfare stipend, tuition, and housing included) to the 2018 DISQUIET International Program in Lisbon, Portugal.

The DISQUIET International Literary Program is a two-week program that brings writers from North America and from around the world together with Portuguese writers in the heart of Lisbon for intensive workshops in the art and craft of writing.

The program is premised on several beliefs: That the conversations and exchange of ideas that result from meeting writers from around the world pushes one’s own work beyond the boundaries of the self. That all writers need a community to support and sustain them. That stepping out of the routine of one’s daily life and into a vibrant, rich, and new cultural space unsettles the imagination, loosens a writer’s reflexes… To those ends: Come be DISQUIET-ed with us!

The Studios at MASS MoCA Residency Program (North Adams, MA – Deadline January 8)

Applications are now open for residency sessions between April and September of 2018! We provide self-directed residencies of up to 8 weeks for artists and writers.

Selected artists receive:

• Private, furnished studio space at MASS MoCA, available 24/7
• Housing (private bedroom/queen bed, shared kitchen, and bath) in newly renovated apartments directly across the street from the museum
• One communal meal per day in the company of fellow artists-in-residence
• MASS MoCA member benefits for the duration of the residency, including free access to the museum’s galleries and discounts on performing arts events and museum store purchases
• Optional one-on-one artist-focused financial and business counseling through the Assets for Artists program.

The full-price residency fee is $650/week, but many participants are offered both merit- and need-based financial aid.

Summer Literary Seminars Fiction & Poetry Contest (Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya and Tbilisi, Georgia – Deadline February 28)

Summer Literary Seminars (SLS) is one of the world’s foremost, one-of- a-kind international literary and cultural organization, founded in 1998 and currently operating on three continents: North America (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), Europe (Tbilisi, Georgia), and Africa (Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya). SLS, in connection with its upcoming programs in Georgia (Summer 2018) and Kenya (December 2018), and in conjunction with Fence magazine, is excited to announce its 2018 literary contest.

The first-place winners in poetry and fiction will have the choice of attending, with all expense paid, one of our innovative 2018 programs in Georgia or in Kenya, and will have their work published in Fence magazine. Each prize includes airfare, tuition, and housing.

Over the years, SLS has played, and continues to play, a pivotal role in bringing together the North American and international literary and cultural communities, fostering the artistic cooperation between the two and serving to increase mutual understanding across the cultural and geographic divides. It connects prominent  and emerging writers from all walks of life for a richly variegated array of literary and cultural offerings. SLS sees it as the crucial part of its mission to increase the literary and cultural visibility of every locale of its presence.

The Gillkistan Residency (Laugarvatn, Iceland – Ongoing)

The Gullkistan residency was founded in spring 2009 and is now run all year round. Gullkistan is located on the edge of the Laugarvatn village just off the main road. The main building, The Center(Miðstöðin), is comprised of work spaces, computer room and bedrooms, bathrooms and a kitchen. The other house is a log cabin we call Kistan. It houses bedrooms, bathroom, livingroom and a kitchen. All within easy walking distance from the town center, grocery shop and bus stop, swimming pool etc.  Total space for 8 people.  The Center (Miðstöðin) and Kistan er 5  minutes walk from the village Laugarvatn.

The accommodation is fully equipped and there is internet access everywhere. Gullkistan has also been a place for seminars, courses in art, exhibitions of art and open studios. The guests so far are mostly visual artists as well as writers, musicians, designers, photographers, filmmakers and scientists. Minimum stay is one month but if you are interested in a shorter stay, please contact us. Gullkistan is very family friendly and we accept applications the whole year round.

Santa Fe Art Institute Truth & Reconciliation Residency (Santa Fe, NM – Deadline February 15)

From September 2018 through August 2019, SFAI will bring together 70 artists, creative practitioners, content experts, and innovative thinkers from all over the world to explore how uncovering and acknowledging the truth can be used as a means of reconciliation.

SFAI believes that the process of truth-seeking and reconciliation are deeply creative acts that can bring individuals, communities, and nations together and heal our divisions to build a better world. In the open call for applications for the Truth & Reconciliation Thematic Residency, we seek creative projects, conversations, and processes by which the investigation of truth and steps toward meaningful reconciliation can occur. We also seek to broaden the residency experience and increase collective knowledge by bringing together in community at SFAI artists from all disciplines alongside other innovators in disciplines such as architecture, planning, policy, education, science, health, law, and activism.

 

Upcoming Deadlines

 

The A3 Review Call for Submissions (Theme: Gold Things – Deadline December 23)
American Writers Review 2018 Contest and Call for Submissions (Deadline December 30 – $150)
The Cantabrigian Call for Submissions (Deadline December 31)
Storyknife Writers Retreat (Homer, AK – Deadline December 31)
Mississippi Review Prize (Deadline January 1 – $1000)
Writing by Writers Wolf House Residency Program (Minneapolis, MN – Deadline January 1)
The Studios at MASS MoCA Residency Program (North Adams, MA – Deadline January 8)
Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (Joshua Tree, CA – Deadline January 10)
The MacDowell Colony Fellowships for Summer 2018 (Deadline January 15)
Entropy & InterAction Initiative Inc. Privilege & Identity Abroad Narrative Writing Contest (Deadline January 15 – $250)
Saint-Paul de Vence James Baldwin Writer-in-Residence Program (Saint-Paul de Vence, France – Deadline January 15) 
The 2018 DISQUIET Prize (Lisbon, Portugal – Deadline January 31)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes (Deadline January 31 – $1000) 
American Short(er) Fiction Prize (Deadline February 1 – $1000)
Slag Glass City Call for Submissions (Theme: Dear City – Deadline February 15)
Santa Fe Art Institute Truth & Reconciliation Residency (Santa Fe, NM – Deadline February 15)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Intoxication – Deadline February 26 – $1000)
ASU Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest (Deadline February 28 – $1000)
Summer Literary Seminars Fiction & Poetry Contest (Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya and Tbilisi, Georgia – Deadline February 28)
Copper Nickel Call for Submissions (Deadline March 15)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)

Submission Sunday 11.26.17

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

Entropy & InterAction Initiative Inc. Privilege & Identity Abroad Narrative Writing Contest (Deadline January 15 – $250)

How did the spaces you occupied influence your conceptions of power dynamics and privilege? In what ways did your identity embody power or authority over space and/or over others whether voluntarily or involuntarily? What power dynamics did you observe when first arriving at your abroad destination? Describe a time when you were vulnerable while abroad.

In what ways did you find your study abroad program problematic or useful in highlighting marginalizations and privileges? Describe a moment where your prejudices, assumptions, beliefs or ideologies were questioned in your study abroad experience.

We are looking for nonfiction narratives that transport readers into the experience. We want raw stories that express and share a specific experience that the writer lived through. We are NOT looking for academic essays. We are also NOT looking for abstract writing of an experience. We are open to different expressions of writing about your experience that addresses the prompt.

Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Intoxication – Deadline February 26 – $1000)

Seeking altered states might be one of the oldest human hobbies—for better and for worse—and we’re looking for stories that capture the widest possible range of experiences and voices. Whether you (or someone else) were tipsy or wasted, soooooooo drunk or just a little high—on life, or love, or power, or something else—we want to hear your story about being under the influence.

As always, we’re interested in stories that are more than mere anecdotes, and we love work that incorporates an element of research and/or makes a connection to a larger story or theme. We welcome personal stories as well as profiles, and above all, we are looking for narratives—true stories, rich with scene, character, detail, and a distinctive voice—that offer a fresh interpretation or unique insight into the theme.

If we’re being honest, we’re also especially hoping for some happy (or at least lighthearted, if not downright funny) stories—a mix of uppers and downers, as it were. CNF editors will award $1,000 for best essay and $500 for runner-up. All essays submitted will be considered for publication.

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

We are thrilled to announce that Amber Sparks will be judging this year’s American Short(er) Fiction Prize. 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. Previous winners of the Short(er) Fiction Prize have gone on to be anthologized in places such as The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. 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.

Slag Glass City Call for Submissions (Theme: Dear City – Deadline February 15) 

The Slag Glass City seeks EPISTOLARY ESSAYS to-or-from YOUR CITY. WRITE US AN ESSAY LETTER! Love Letter • Breakup Letter • Open Letter • Thank You Letter • Follow-Up Letter • Complaint Letter • Application Letter • Rejection Letter • Letter-to-the-Editor • Letter of Recommendation • Literary Correspondence • Letter to a Pen-Pal • Letter of Protest • Cease and Desist Letter • Letter to Book Accommodation • Series of Postcards • Etc.

The essay-letter can be FROM YOUR CITY, e.g: Dear America. This is how it feels to be underwater. Love, Houston. OR Dear Congress. Here are how our immigrants get the job done. Love, Los Angeles. OR Dear President. Would you drink this water? Love, Flint. OR it can be addressed TO THE CITY WHERE YOU LIVE or HAVE LIVED or SIGNIFICANTLY VISITED, e.g: Dear Orlando. We are still grieving. OR Dear Oakland. Here is what your gentrification means to me. OR Dear Dubrovnik. Here is how you heal me. OR AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN PEOPLE IN A CITY OR CITIES, which might even be a collaborative work. 

OR SURPRISE US! Feel free to use the tone and form to adore, assuage, and/or assail. Any length, from short-short to longform. This nonfiction submission should inhabit the format or intention of an actual letter, but may also employ fragments, braids, mosaic, montage, photographs, sound, drawing, image + text, and/or hybridity. We welcome anything fresh and original that fits our theme.

Rose Metal Press Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest (Deadline December 1 – $200)

Rose Metal Press, Inc. is an independent, not-for-profit publisher of hybrid genres specializing in the publication of short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry; novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; and other literary works that move beyond the traditional genres of poetry, fiction, and essay to find new forms of expression.

Our 12th Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest submission period begins November 1 and ends December 1, 2017. Our 2017 judge will be Rigoberto Gonzalez. The winner will receive $200 and have his/her chapbook published in summer 2018, with an introduction by the contest judge. During the submission period, please submit your 25–40 page double-spaced manuscript of short short stories (fiction or nonfiction) each under 1000 words to our Submittable contest site with a $10 reading fee. Multiple entries from the same author are acceptable as long as each is accompanied with a separate fee. Individual pieces in your manuscript may have appeared in journals, both in print and online, as long as the entire collection itself is unpublished.

Sonora Review Call for Submissions (Theme: Frenzy – Deadline December 1)

Frenzy. It fits the times, doesn’t it?

Frenzy (n) ⎯ a feeling in your lungs when the situation has moved too fast and you watch, participating, hoping your body knows what it is doing, thinking that it does not.

Frenzy: an old world word.

It feels old. It feels like the provinces are burning and the capital is rioting and the Senate is disbursed and the King is hiding in his summer home. It feels like mercury thermometers and watches lit with radium, taking tea with a spoon of arsenic to calm your nerves. What can you do? You check your feed. You think on it. You refresh and the question, always what do you write, changes hourly to what do you write now? What do you do with such a fine frenzy rolling raging rife? How do your words stay in touch?

Hot Metal Bridge Call for Submissions (Deadline December 3)

Hot Metal Bridge is open for submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art from September 12th—December 3rd and from January 15th—April 1st. Guidelines for individual genres are on Submittable, our only process for receiving submissions; anything received by email or snail mail will not be considered. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please contact us through Submittable to withdraw your work if it is accepted for publication elsewhere. We usually respond within two to three months.

We do not accept previously published work. Because we are run by the graduate students of the MFA program at the University at Pittsburgh, our masthead—and thus our aesthetic judgment—changes frequently! Regardless of the staff, it is our mission to seek the most accomplished, surprising work in contemporary literature. We are committed to publishing writers and artists from diverse perspectives and experience, and encourage writers from marginalized communities to submit.

Oxford American 100th Issue Call for Debut Fiction (Deadline December 1)

The Oxford American welcomes submissions for a work of fiction from an emerging writer for our 100th issue. We are eager to feature a writer whose fiction has not yet been published in a print publication with a circulation over 5,000 copies. Stories under 10,000 words will be considered, and the selected writer will be paid $1000. The 100th issue will be on newsstands starting March 2018.

Our primary consideration is quality, though we would be especially pleased to include the work of an author with ties to the South and/or a story that furthers our mission of exploring the complexity and vitality of the South.

Upcoming Deadlines

 One Story Call for Submissions (Deadline November 14)
Writer's Digest Short Short Story Competition (Deadline November 15 – $3000)
Mid-American Review Sherwood Anderson Fiction and James Wright Poetry Prizes (Deadline November 15 – $1000)
StoryQuarterly Call for Submissions (Deadline November 18)
EVENT Magazine Let Down Your Hair Contest (Deadline November 20 – $1000)
ZYZZYVA Call for Submissions (Deadline November 30)
The Iowa Review Call for Submissions (Deadline November 30)
Hackney Literary Awards (Deadline November 30 – $250-$2500)
Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Writing Contests (Deadline November 1–30 – $500-$1500 depending on genre)
Oxford American 100th Issue Call for Debut Fiction (Deadline December 1)
Teachers & Writers Magazine Bechtel Prize (Deadline December 1 – $1000)
Sonora Review Call for Submissions (Theme: Frenzy – Deadline December 1)
Rose Metal Press Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest (Deadline December 1 – $200)
Hot Metal Bridge Call for Submissions (Deadline December 3)
The A3 Review Call for Submissions (Theme: Gold Things – Deadline December 23)
American Writers Review 2018 Contest and Call for Submissions (Deadline December 30 – $150)
The Cantabrigian Call for Submissions (Deadline December 31)
Mississippi Review Prize (Deadline January 1 – $1000)
The MacDowell Colony Fellowships for Summer 2018 (Deadline January 15)
Entropy & InterAction Initiative Inc. Privilege & Identity Abroad Narrative Writing Contest (Deadline January 15 – $250)
The Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Prizes (Deadline January 31 – $1000) 
 American Short(er) Fiction Prize (Deadline February 1 – $1000)
Slag Glass City Call for Submissions (Theme: Dear City – Deadline February 15)
Creative Nonfiction Call for Submissions (Theme: Intoxication – Deadline February 26 – $1000)
ASU Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest (Deadline February 28 – $1000)
Copper Nickel Call for Submissions (Deadline March 15)
Bayou Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline May 1)
The Gettysburg Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)