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Calls, Contests, & More
Here are the latest and featured calls for submissions and writing and book contests. Please note the ads featured here are paid listings. As a NewPages subscriber you receive early access to ads before they are posted to our site.
Our Doors are Open
Deadline: Year-round
The Blue Mountain Review launched from Athens, Georgia in 2015 with the mantra, “We’re all south of somewhere.” As a journal of culture, the BMR strives to represent all life through its stories. Stories are vital to our survival. What we sing saves the soul. Our goal is to preserve and promote lives told well through prose, poetry, music, and the visual arts. We’ve published work from and interviews with Jericho Brown, Kelli Russell Agodon, Robert Pinsky, Rising Appalachia, Turkuaz, Michel Stone, Michael Flohr, Lee Herrick, Chen Chen, Michael Cudlitz, Pat Metheny, Melissa Studdard, Lyrics Born, Terry Kay, and Christopher Moore. View full information and submit here.
CHESTNUT REVIEW Invites Submissions Year Round
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!
Consequence’s Fall Reading Period Now Open
Deadline: October 15, 2022
The reading period for Consequence Volume 15.1 is now open. As always, we are after any and all literary work or visual art that deals with the human consequences and realities of war or geopolitical violence as experienced by combatants, victims, or witnesses. We are especially interested in works of translation and fiction this time around. We also strongly encourage BIPOC and people from other under-represented communities to submit. Please spread the word. Have questions about what work we’re inclined to publish and/or how much we pay? Visit our FAQ. To submit, go here.
Cherry Tree Now Open for Submissions!
Deadline: October 1, 2022
Cherry Tree: A National Literary Journal would like to read your fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction through October 1, 2022. All accepted work is also considered for our distinctive Literary Shade section. Contributors receive $20 and 2 copies of the issue in which their work appears. Our $3 reading fee helps us to pay contributors and 10% of those fees will be donated to Minary's Dream Alliance, a community nonprofit organization with strong mentorship programs for at-risk youth. (The editors make a matching donation.) For more about what we're looking for and to read our guidelines, please visit our website.
Qua Magazine Seeks Submissions for Fall 2022 Issue
Deadline: October 2, 2022
Qua Literary and Fine Arts Magazine is a student-run publication of the University of Michigan-Flint. Founded over 50 years ago, we invite submissions of Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Visual Arts, and Photography from anyone living in the state of Michigan. No submission fees. For the Fall 2022 issue, all submissions must be made by October 2, 2022 here.
Woodcrest Literary Journal Open for Submissions
Deadline: November 1, 2022 (or until we reach our limit)
Woodcrest is pleased to announce an open reading period. Submissions are now open and can be sent through Submittable. The literary journal of Cabrini University, Woodcrest aims to publish work that surprises and challenges the human experience. Please read our recent issue to familiarize yourself with our journal. We accept work from around the world and we want to hear from you. Visit our Submittable account to learn more and submit!
Sky Island Journal: Issue 22 (Fall 2022) Call for Submissions
Deadline: September 30, 2022
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 115,000 readers in 145 countries with a powerful, free-access, 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 22 before midnight on September 30th, at our website.
Plant-Human Quarterly Seeks Poems and Essays for Upcoming Issues
Deadline: Year-round
Plant-Human Quarterly reads year-round. We seek unpublished or published poetry and essays that explore the myriad ways writers manifest their relationship to the botanical world—whether through heavily researched pieces, keen observation, or more intuitive ways of knowing—that attempt to communicate across boundaries and approach a plant’s-eye-view of the world. Send no more than 5 poems or an essay of no more than 1500 words (flash essay or essay excerpt). Past contributors include Ellen Bass, Forrest Gander, Kimiko Hahn, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Pattiann Rogers, Scott Russell Sanders, Arthur Sze. Submission guidelines at our website.
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.
Literary Events & Writing Programs
Affordable Poetry, Publishing, & Critique Workshops
Deadline: Year-round
Caesura Poetry Workshop aims to support, inspire, educate, and energize poets of all backgrounds through affordable monthly Zoom workshops hosted by award-winning poet, editor, and writing coach John Sibley Williams. Workshops include poem analysis, active group discussion, writing prompts, and plenty of writing time. Upcoming classes include: Writing Evocative Love Poems (September 17, 11am-1:30pm PT), Elegy: Writing Poems of Loss (October 2 & 9, 11am-1:30pm PT), two group critique classes (Fridays in October and Sundays in November), and others. Manuscript critiques and regular coaching to keep you writing and inspired also available. More information at the Caesura Poetry Workshop website.
Writing & Book Contests
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest
Deadline: September 30, 2022
20th year, sponsored by Winning Writers. Win $3,000 for a poem in any style and $3,000 for a poem that rhymes or has a traditional style. Total prizes: $8,000. The top two winners will also receive two-year gift certificates from our co-sponsor, Duotrope (a $100 value). Both published and unpublished work accepted. Winning entries published online. Submit 1-3 poems for a $20 entry fee. Length limit: 250 lines per poem. Judged by S. Mei Sheng Frazier. This contest is recommended by Reedsy. Winning Writers is one of the "101 Best Websites for Writers" (Writer's Digest, 2022). See past winners, advice from the judge, and submit online at our website.
$1,000 + Publication: New Letters Editor's Choice Award
Deadline: October 17, 2022
The New Letters’ Editor’s Choice Award is now accepting entries for experimental work that crosses the traditional boundaries of genre and form. Enter your hybrid work—your lyric essays, prose poems, short-shorts, collages, micro-memoirs. . . whatever you’re doing that’s experimental, that defies easy categorization. The maximum word count is 8,000 and entries must be previously unpublished. The winner will receive $1,000 plus publication in New Letters. Visit the New Letters website for guidelines and to enter online via Submittable.
MAYDAY Creative Nonfiction Prize
Deadline: October 1, 2022
$1,000 award and publication. Deadline: October 1, 2022. To submit, send an essay (2,000–7,500 words) exploring the theme of “Disappearance” (of people, places, things, etc.). Final judge: Darin Strauss, bestselling author of several books, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning memoir Half a Life and most recently the acclaimed novel The Queen of Tuesday: A Lucille Ball Story. Reading fee: $20. Online submissions only, please. Complete guidelines at the MAYDAY website.
Whitefish Review's "Montana Prize for Humor" Judged by Garrison Keillor
Deadline: September 30, 2022
Think you’re funny? Know someone else hilarious? Submit your humorous fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for a chance to win the Montana Prize for Humor and $500 in each category! Legendary writer and funny man Garrison Keillor is the final judge! Have your writing published in Whitefish Review, a nationally acclaimed journal published twice yearly from Montana to illuminate the landscape of the human condition, our connection to the natural world, and the confluence of art and science. It features distinctive voices of both well-known and emerging authors and artists. All are welcome to submit! Submissions here!
The Missouri Review's 32nd Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize
Deadline: October 1, 2022
The Missouri Review invites entries for its 32nd annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Winners receive $5000, publication, and promotion. Fiction or nonfiction entries up to 8,500 words, poetry entries up to 10 pages. Regular entry fee: $25. All-Access entry fee: $30. All entrants receive a 1-year digital subscription to the Missouri Review and a digital copy of Missouri Review Books’ sixth offering, Hello, I Love You, featuring previous contributors. All-Access entrants receive the same plus access to the past decade of digital issues of TMR. All entries considered for publication. Guidelines and further info here. Deadline: October 1.
Fifth Annual Open Book Prize—$1,500 and Publication
Deadline: November 1, 2022
Our fifth annual open book prize is accepting manuscripts. If you have a manuscript or know someone who does, please give us a shot. Open to any poet writing in English regardless of previous publication record, the prize seeks to represent the best contemporary writing in high-quality editions of enduring value. Prospective entrants are encouraged to familiarize themselves with Conduit, which champions originality, intelligence, irreverence, and humanity. Previously unpublished manuscripts of 48-90 pages should be submitted through our Submittable page or via the USPS. Please visit our website for details.
2023 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction
Deadline: December 31, 2022
2023 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction is awarded to an outstanding, unpublished collection of short stories. Reading Fee: $30. Award: $1,000 cash advance, publication, and fifty copies (35 softcover/15 hardcover). Enter: Submit online with Submittable or by mail from September 1–December 31, 2022. Press 53 short fiction editor in chief Claire V. Foxx will serve as the only judge. Winner and finalists announced by May 1, 2023; advance review copies sent to major reviewers and outlets; publication in May 2024. Complete details at Press 53's website.
2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize
Deadline: September 30, 2022
Established in 1998, The George Garrett Fiction Prize highlights one full-length novel or collection of short stories. Since 2019 the Prize comes with a $1,000 advance and publication. 2022 Judge is Vi Khi Nao. This contest is open to any writer in any stage of their career. Submissions are accepted through Submittable only. Deadline to submit is September 30th. Entry fee is $28. Full rules and guidelines can be found on TRP's Submittable or at the TRP website.
2022 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize
Deadline: September 30, 2022
Established in 1998, The X. J. Kennedy Prize highlights one full-length collection of poetry per year. Since 2019 the Prize comes with a $10,000 advance and publication. 2022 Judge is Kimiko Hahn. This contest is open to any poet in any stage of their career. Submissions are accepted through Submittable only. Deadline to submit is September 30th. Entry fee is $28. Full rules and guidelines can be found on TRP’s Submittable or at the TRP website.
Find more great calls, events, and contests on our website:
Submit to Clinch—A Martial Arts Literary Magazine
Awakenings Review Seeks Poetry, Fiction, & Nonfiction
The New Verse News Seeks Current Events Poetry
Rockvale Review Open for Poetry, Short Fiction, and CNF Submissions
MudRoom Open for Submissions
Works Progress Calling for Fiction Submissions
Brick Box Paradox: Introduction to the Prose Poem
The Hamilton Stone Review Is Open for Submissions 9-8-22 through 10-8-22
Thuya Poetry Review (Deadline Extended Through September)
Submit to the 2023 Emma Howell Rising Poet Prize :: Willow Spring Books
The NewPages Classified section is updated throughout the week giving you news and info on the latest contest and calls.
News from NewPages
Enjoy Editor Denise Hill talking with Portrait of New England, an online journal that is coming back from a hiatus, on how they bounced back. Plus, if you missed the announcement from Carve, you can discover the winners of the 2022 Raymond Carver Contest.
The NewPages Book Stand was updated over the long weekend. You can find the full list of books received for the month of September along with highlighted titles. Releasing this month enjoy The Lost Notebook of Zhao Li by 75-year-old poetry/philosopher J.R. Solonche; Chino and the Dance of the Butterfly, the memoir of renowned Korean American modern-dance choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess; and The Empty Bowl: Poems of the Holocaust and After by Holocaust survivor Judith H. Sherman who strives to record trauma through art.
Currently available to own, discover Visiting Her in Queens Is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, winner of Rattle’s Chapbook Prize by Michael Mark and Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora edited by Christopher Nelson and featuring 130 poets and translators from ten countries. Coming this fall add these titles to your must-read list: Lakȟóta: An Indigenous History by Rani-Henrik Andersson and David C. Posthumus which opens with an origin story of White Buffalo Calf Woman and her gift of the sacred pipe to the Lakȟóta people and Bright Shade by Chelsea Harlan, winner of the 2022 American Poetry Review Honickman First Book Prize selected by Jericho Brown.
During the week, discover more great titles including The Most Excellent Immigrant by Mark Budman who takes readers on a ride from magic realism to hardcore realism to magic; Good Naked: How to Write More, Write Better, and Be Happier which is recently revised and expanded; The Tree Stand by Jay Atkinson which is a collection of short stories of hardscrabble living and crushing blows show through with seams of love and hope; Belly to the Brutal by Jennifer Givhan which sings of the love between mothers and daughters while confronting the learned complicity with patriarchal violence passed down from generation to generation; Music Gigs Gone Wrong gathers 74 musicians and vocalists to share exactly what can happen when they do; and My Secret Place by Max Talley mixes humor with pathos with biting social commentary.
Last week saw a ton of new issues hit the Magazine Stand. Stay tuned to the NewPages Blog throughout the week to catch even more great issues including River Heron Review 5.2 which features the work of 2022 River Heron Poetry Prize selected by Deshawn McKinney, Thomas McGuire; Blink-Ink #49 themed “Storm” and featuring works of 50 words or less from 30 contributors; underbelly - a unique online publication dedicated to bringing to the surface what we strive to make invisible; South Dakota Review 56.3 featuring work by Jeffrey Bean, Marlon Hacla translated by Kristine Ong Muslim, John Sibley Williams, Joseph Biancalana, Sharon Goldberg, and more; and last but never least Gargoyle 76 - which is the audio issue and features a line-up of music and spoken world by Amanda Newell, The Crooked Angels, Tin Wendel, and many more.
NewPages Blog
Stay caught up at our blog. There you can take in short reviews, contest & book award winners, book & literary magazine news, new issues of literary magazines, new and forthcoming titles, and cultural & political news.
In reviews, Kevin Brown tackles Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, a novella centering on a coal and fuel seller in 1980s Ireland while MG Noles covers the re-released Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates which will be appearing as a Netflix original film this fall.
If you’re interested in seeing your own review displayed on our blog, please check out our revised guidelines and consider submitting to NewPages today. It’s free.