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NewPages Blog
Stay caught up at our blog. There you can take in short reviews, contest & book award winners, book & literary magazine news, and cultural & political news.
Calls, Contests, & More
Check out the latest and featured calls for submissions, writing and book contests, and more in the NewPages classifieds.
Calls for Submissions
RCC MUSE Journal – Poetry and Prose Submissions Open
Deadline: December 15, 2021
MUSE is especially looking to publish work from under- or misrepresented groups, such as people of color, disabled people, LGBTQ+, present/formerly incarcerated people, and others from a culturally and linguistically diverse background. Through Dec. 15: submit one short story or CNF 1500 words max; up to three poems. Mail to RCC MUSE, Riverside City College, 4800 Magnolia Avenue, Riverside, CA 92506 or email. If email, send as attachment with “Last Name – Genre – Title of Submission” in the subject line (e.g., Smith – Prose – “In Summer”). Please include contact information. See full submission guidelines at our site.
Atmosphere Press Reading Book Manuscripts in All Genres
Deadline: Rolling
Atmosphere Press currently seeks book manuscripts from diverse voices. There's no submission fee, and if your manuscript is selected, we’ll be the publisher you’ve always wanted: attentive, organized, on schedule, and professional. We use a model in which the author funds the publication of the book, but retains 100% rights, royalties, and artistic autonomy. This year Atmosphere authors have received featured reviews with Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, and have even appeared on a giant billboard in Times Square. Submit your book manuscript at our website.
Paying Small Press, Driftwood Press Seeks Submissions
Deadline: Year-round
Driftwood Press is a paying small press specializing in fiction, poetry, visual arts, and comics. Whether you have short stories, novellas, single poems, poetry chapbooks, or comic collections, we can't wait to take a look. We also offer our poetry submitters a premium option to receive an acceptance or rejection letter within one week of submission. We use submission fees to pay our writers, offering $400 for novellas; we offer year-round contests with medium to large awards, and our In-House fiction contest has a shorter response time than most press' contests. Please see our site for more details!
Call for Submissions - great weather for MEDIA
Deadline: January 15, 2022
great weather for MEDIA seeks poetry, flash fiction, short stories, dramatic monologues, creative nonfiction, and cross-genre for our annual print anthology. Our focus is on the unpredictable and experimental. We look forward to reading your work. Please visit our website for guidelines.
Take The Fruit Religion Abuse Anthology Seeks Subs
Deadline: December 31, 2021
Take The Fruit, Flood The Desert: A Religious Trauma Anthology is accepting submissions. Did you question church doctrine and the way leaders/family members used it to lead you? How did the threat of eternal damnation affect you? Did you experience self-loathing or an inability to make decisions? What messages did the church give you about your relationship to your body, sex, and boundaries? How have you healed and reclaimed your identity? Send up to 3 pieces of any genre (Google or Word docs) up to 2,500 words total via email, with the subject “submission, Take The Fruit.” Please visit our website for full guidelines.
Sky Island Journal: Issue 19 (Winter 2022) Call for Submissions
Deadline: December 31, 2021
Sky Island Journal is an independent, international, free-access literary journal dedicated to publishing the finest poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. We publish accomplished, well-established authors—side by side—with fresh, emerging voices. We provide over 90,000 readers in 145 countries with a powerful, focused, advertising-free literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally. We publish quarterly, and our average response time is 9 days. Every submission receives a prompt, respectful response detailing what we appreciated. Enjoy our previous issues and submit to our stunning Issue 19 before midnight on December 31st, at our website.
Mistake House Magazine Seeks Submissions from Graduate & Undergraduate Writers
Deadline: March 15, 2022
Mistake House Magazine publishes fiction and poetry by students in graduate or undergraduate programs worldwide. We seek inventive work that speaks to the heart in a complex global context, including work expressive of documentary poetics. Submission window: October 15, 2021 to March 15, 2022. Submission fee $5. Guidelines at our website.
Call for Submissions: Storm Cellar
Deadline: Rolling
Storm Cellar seeks new and amazing writing and art for its spring issue! We are a journal of safety and danger, in many senses, in print and ebook formats since 2011. Send secrets, codes, adventures, mad experiments, and wild things. Black, Indigenous, POC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent, fat, border-straddling, poor, and other marginalized authors encouraged, bonus points for a Midwest connection. Now paying; limited no-fee submissions available each month. Full guidelines and F.A.Q. at our website.
Chestnut Review Invites Submissions Year Round
Deadline: Rolling
Chestnut Review (“for stubborn artists”) invites submissions year-round of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, and photography. We offer free submissions for poetry (3 poems), flash fiction (<1000 words), and art/photography (20 images); $5 submissions for fiction/nonfiction (<5k words), or 4-6 poems. Published artists receive $120. Notification in <30 days or submission fee refunded. We appreciate stories in every genre we publish. All issues free online which illustrates what we have liked, but we are always ready to be surprised by the new!
Heron Tree: Call for Submissions
Deadline: January 15, 2022
Heron Tree is open for submissions through January 15, 2022. We will read submissions and make decisions on a rolling basis. Accepted poems will be published individually online (one poem a week beginning in February 2022) and then collected in Heron Tree volume 9, which will be available as a free downloadable ebook. This special issue will be devoted to found poetry. See our detailed submission guidelines at our website.
Plus more calls for submissions at our website
Call for Submissions from About Place: Navigations - A Place for Peace
Awakenings Review Seeks Poetry, Fiction, & Nonfiction
Sleet, Sleet, Sleet: Oh Yes We are Open for Submissions!
Writing & Book Contests
Interim Test Site Poetry Series Call for Manuscripts
Extended Deadline: January 1, 2022
We’re looking for manuscripts of at least 48 pages that engage the perilous conditions of life in the 21st century, as they pertain to issues of social justice and the earth. Because we believe the truth is always experimental, we’ll especially appreciate books with innovative approaches. Beginning in 2021 and going forward, Interim will be publishing two books in their Test Site Poetry series—one title publicized as the winner of the Test Site Poetry Series and the other as the Betsy Joiner Flanagan Award in Poetry. Both winners will receive $1,000 and publication by the University of Nevada Press.
2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
Deadline: January 31, 2022
Submissions are now being accepted for the 10th Saroyan Prize. The awards, co-sponsored by Stanford Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation, are “intended to encourage new or emerging writers and honor the Saroyan legacy of originality, vitality, and stylistic innovation.” Two prizes of $5,000 each are given for works of fiction and nonfiction. Writers who have published four books or more are ineligible. Submit five copies of your work published between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021, with a $50 entry fee by January 31, 2022. Visit our website for complete eligibility and submission details.
2022 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction
Deadline: December 31, 2021
Press 53 Award for Short Fiction: First Prize $1,000, publication, and 50 copies (ten hardcover and 40 softcover) awarded to an unpublished collection of short stories. Press 53 Short Fiction Editor, Claire V. Foxx, will judge. Enter online through Submittable. Deadline: midnight, December 31, Eastern Time. Winner and finalists announced before May 1, 2022. Reading fee: $30. Complete information, plus a list of past winners at the Press 53 website. Questions should be directed to Kevin Morgan Watson, Publisher and Editor in Chief via email or call at 336-770-5353.
2022 Rattle Chapbook Prize
Deadline: January 15, 2022
The Annual Rattle Chapbook Prize offers three winners $5,000 for a chapbook (up to 36 pages), plus 500 author copies, and distribution to Rattle’s 8,000+ subscribers. Entry fee of $25 includes a 1-year subscription to the magazine. For guidelines and to read past winners, visit our website.
3rd Annual Short Short Story Contest to Support Literacy
Deadline: January 31, 2022
Ethos Literacy—a nonprofit literacy program—announces its 3rd Annual Short Short Story Contest. 100-word limit on one of these topics: chewing gum, horror movies, skyscrapers, or tubas. Cash prizes: Best in Contest: $250; Best Youth Prize (14 years or younger): $100; 4 Best of Category: $100; People's Choice $100. Publication in a digital magazine + webcast of winners reading their stories. Submission fee: $10. Proceeds support literacy programs for teens and adults. Visit our website for full guidelines.
Acacia Fiction Prize: $1,200 + Publication
Deadline: December 31, 2021
Send us your polished manuscripts of short stories, flash fiction, novellas or any combination totaling 45K to 75K words. Winner Receives $1,200, publication by Kallisto Gaia Press, and 20 copies. Runner-Up receives $100 and offer of publication under our generous contract. Gabino Iglesias is the final judge. Individual stories may be previously published. Original work. $25 to play. Submissions through Submittable only. All judging is ID concealed. See website for more info.
$1,200 & Publication - Saguaro Poetry Prize
Deadline: December 31, 2021
Send us your polished manuscripts of original contemporary poetry totaling 28 to 48 pages. Winner receives $1,200, publication by Kallisto Gaia Press, and 20 copies. Runner-Up receives $100 and offer of publication under our generous contract. Guest judge to be announced. Individual poems may be previously published. Original work. $25 to play. Submissions through Submittable only. All judging is ID concealed. See website for more info.
The Headlight Review Chapbook Prize in Poetry
Deadline: December 31, 2021
The Headlight Review is currently seeking poetry chapbook submissions until December 31, 2021. The winner will receive $500, publication, and 25 perfect-bound copies. Finalists will be announced March 2022. Finalists will be judged by esteemed author Tina Mozelle Braziel, winner of the 2017 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for her book Known by Salt. The Headlight Review is a student run online journal affiliated with Kennesaw State University’s Master of Arts in Professional Writing Program. See our guidelines for further details.
The Annual Memoir Prize for Books
Deadline: December 31, 2021
The second annual Memoir Prize awards Memoir and Creative Nonfiction book-length works of exceptional merit in the categories of traditional, self-published, and previously unpublished prose. Submit your full-length memoir on any subject matter for a chance to win cash and a feature in Memoir Magazine. The only contest of its kind dedicated exclusively to the Memoir genre accepts full-length books of memoir or narrative creative nonfiction, essay collections, or graphic narratives for consideration. No restrictions on length, type of publisher, or year of publication. Enter at the Memoir Magazine website.
New & Forthcoming Titles
Broadstone Books Presents New Poetry from David Hargreaves
Lush and allusive, tuned to a background in translating Nepal Bhasa poetry, Running Out of Words for Afterwards gives voice to cycles of desire, loss, and renewal. Like the many rivers that flow through this book, David Hargreaves’ poems, in various turns, can be urgent, expansive, unpredictable, or calm, conveying the reader through landscapes both mystical and mundane, through illusions of selfhood, and the struggles of language to accept its own limitations. "A truly exquisite book of poems."—Charlotte Pence
Workshops, Conferences, & Programs
18th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival
18th Annual Virtual Palm Beach Poetry Festival will take place January 10-15, 2022. Focus on your work with America’s most engaging and award-winning poets. Workshops with Kim Addonizio, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Chard deNiord, Mark Doty, Yona Harvey, John Murillo, Matthew Olzmann, and Diane Seuss. One-On-One Conferences with Lorna Blake, Sally Bliumis Dunn, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, and Angela Narciso Torres. A special Craft Talk by Kwame Dawes, Special Guest Poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. Poet-at-Large, Aimee Nezhukumatathil. To find out more and purchase tickets, visit our website.