CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Lost Balloon
INFO: Lost Balloon publishes flash fiction, flash nonfiction, and prose poetry (all 1,000 words or less). We publish one new piece every Wednesday. There are no theme or genre restrictions, but we want your best. Give us work that entertains and challenges, that pushes boundaries and breaks hearts.
Please send only one piece at a time and wait to hear back before sending another submission. We do not accept reprints, so your piece must be original and unpublished. Do not submit in more than one genre at a time. If your submission is rejected, please wait at least 1-2 month(s) after hearing back before you submit again. We will specifically ask for more work if we would like to see something else from you right away. If we accept and publish your piece, please wait one year from your publication date before submitting again.
Simultaneous submissions are great—please withdraw your piece right away if it’s accepted elsewhere.
We cannot currently pay our authors. We do promise to promote your piece on social media. We also nominate work for anthologies.
You can usually expect to hear back in about 60-90 days. If it has been at least 120 days, and you have not received a response, feel free to send a query about your submission status to lostballoonmag at gmail dot com. If you query before 120 days, your email will not be answered.
SUBMISSION FEE: $0
DEADLINE: October 7, 2020
https://lost-balloon.com/submit/
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Tricks and Treats Issue
No Contact
INFO: We are now OPEN for submissions to our No Contact: Tricks and Treats Issues!
We are reading for your best Halloween work! Please send us all things horrific, gothic, dreadful, dark and dreary and particularly spooky. We’ll publish the best of what we find in one of our two October Tricks and Treats Issues.
As always, we consider art, fiction, creative non-fiction, humor, poetry, and any fusion therein — so long as the work pays homage to this most ghastly of holidays. Please take a look at our guidelines, and click the link below to submit!
DEADLINE: October 8, 2020
https://www.nocontactmag.com/submissions
Bridgewater International Poetry Festival
INFO: The Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, a celebration of global poetry, is accepting submissions of 5-minute readings of original poetry in English, or with English translation
The length of the video should be approximately 5 minutes long in total with a brief introduction of yourself as well as a reading from your original poetry. The best video format for YouTube is .MP4 (example: YourName.MP4). However, other supported formats include .MOV and .MPEG4.
In your submission, you will need to include a brief introduction of yourself (no longer than a minute) as well as a reading from your original poetry in English, or with English translation. Also, include a statement similar to: “I’m performing this for the Fall Virtual 2020 edition of the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival.”
The festival videos will be publicly available on the BIPF YouTube page. You can also access information about the festival on the BIPF Twitter page and the BIPF Facebook page.
The festival will be made public in two playlists on November 16 and 17, 2020. There is no end date anticipated for the poems to be removed
Send submissions by email to lit-conf@bridgewater.edu.
DEADLINE: October 12, 2020
https://wp.bridgewater.edu/bipf/fall-2020-virtual-event/
TWH Winter Retreat 2020 Writing Workshop Fellowship
The Watering Hole
INFO: TWH’s Retreat will take place December 26-30 (Virtual Retreat via Zoom Video Conference)
The retreat features living room style daily classes/workshops, daily craft talks, two readings, one performance workshop, a keynote speech, group writing challenges, and a genuine community. Our mission is to build Tribe through genuine relationships and help poets reach their best work. (This is not the application for the Manuscript Coaching Fellowship.)
Writing Facilitators: John Murillo, Justin Phillip Reed, TBD
Performance Facilitator: Ebony Stewart
Keynote: Tyehimba Jess
APPLICATION PROCESS
Submission Components: 1 Cover Letter (with aesthetics statement) + 3 poems (written within the last two years). Do not include your name on these materials. Judging will be blind.
The cover letter must be written. The poems may be written or audio. We accept a variety of file types.
Eligibility: You must be 21 years of age by December 25th.
If you need help with the basic cover letter format, check out our blog post of Cover Letter Advice.
The type of aesthetics statement that we ask for is a paragraph or two that details...
who influences your art,
what challenges have you faced on your creative journey,
what you seek to accomplish in your poems,
and what The Watering Hole means to you as a writer of color.
This will contextualize the poems in your submission and help us get to know you as an artist. You may also optionally include how your art or aesthetic informs what you do, where you work, or any work you do in the arts community or vice versa.
Make certain your submission is your final version. Corrections and new versions will not be accepted.
Additional Note: We ask for a sample of your recent poetry, because we don't want to see "hits from the '80s." We want to get to know you through your current artistic voice.
SUBMISSION FEE: $25
DEADLINE: October 15, 2020
https://twhpoetry.submittable.com/submit/156024/twh-winter-retreat-2020-writing-workshop-fellowship
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Apogee Journal
INFO: We consider submissions as they come in during the month-long reading period. We aim to choose pieces for publication by November, to finish editing pieces by mid-January, and to send rejections by the end of January. We share this tentative timeline to help manage any anxiety that comes with the submissions process.
Apogee is a journal of literature and art that engages with identity politics, including but not limited to: race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and intersectional identities. We are a biannual print publication featuring fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. Our goals are twofold: to publish fresh work that interrogates the status quo, and to provide a platform for underrepresented voices, prioritizing artists and writers of color.
Working toward these goals, our fiction team is piloting several initiatives. Go here to 1. read what the team looks for (and other FAQ) and 2. complete a Submitter Form. Then submit your work at the Apogee Journal Submission Manager. You must complete the Submitter Form and submit your manuscript for us to consider your fiction. Please note, these steps apply only for fiction submissions. For guidelines on how to share poetry and nonfiction, please see below.
We often receive work from over-represented perspectives whose primary goal is to interrogate its privilege or come to terms with the “other.” Please note: this is not the work we seek to elevate at Apogee. We look for work that centers the experience of marginalized perspectives. We want to foster work that addresses the politics of identity, such as migration, diaspora, multiculturalism, privilege, hierarchy, oppression, though these themes are not a requirement for publication. We believe the exploration of perspectives and voices that are mostly unheard and ignored is a political act itself. To read our mission statement, please visit this page.
All work must be previously unpublished.
Cover letters are optional.
Please include a current bio.
We accept simultaneous submissions. Please notify us if your work has been accepted elsewhere.
For prose submissions, please send a maximum of 5,000 words, in either .doc or .docx format.
Please send only one piece per reading period.
Please send a maximum of five poems in the same document, either .doc, .docx, or .pdf format.
DEADLINE: October 15, 2020
https://apogeejournal.org/submit/
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Rigorous
INFO: Rigorous is an online journal highlighting the works of authors, artists, critics, and educators of color. We take our name from an accusation commonly leveled at authors of color—that our works are not as rigorous as works created by white authors. We add our voices; we continue to prove otherwise.
We publish fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, visual art, sound art, audiovisual art and movies, cartoons, and any other artistic creations by people of color. We accept all genres, and have a particular affinity for science fiction, superheroes, and other “geek” genres. We enjoy work geared toward the Young Adult market, but we note that Rigorous will sometimes have content that is “Not Safe For Work.”
We seek essays on the personal experiences of people of color and interviews with interesting people of color. We seek critical analysis of art by people of color. We are especially interested in stories about and by educators of color, and the experience of teaching the works of people of color.
Rigorous is edited by Rosalyn Spencer and Kenyatta JP Garcia. Its next issue will be released around the end of October. If you’d like to submit, please do so through Submittable. If you are a white ally working on these issues, please consider our friends at Unlikely Stories and horse less press.
All submissions are handled through Submittable. Please submit up to 10 files, with a maximum of 3000 words.
Please include a cover letter with a brief bio (up to 100 words).
DEADLINE: Extended to October 15, 2020
https://rigorous.submittable.com/submit
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Underblong
INFO: Underblong, a poetry journal, is seeking poetry for the current reading period.
We only accept unpublished submissions.
Absolutely no: racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, ableism, Islamophobia, orientalist b.s., fat-shaming, colonialist exoticizing or fetishizing of cultures and peoples, appropriation of experiences & communities that aren’t yours, general literary assholery, “edgy” or “ironic” renditions of any of the above. If you send us this crap, we will point it out. So, like, don’t.
COMPENSATION: We offer a modest $20 for each contributor. We will promote contributors like we are on fire. Grateful for every submission. Thank you for believing in us & trusting us with your work.
DEADLINE: October 15, 2020
https://www.underblong.com/send-plz
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: POETRY
Pangyrus
INFO: Pangyrus publishes well-crafted, thought-provoking writing in every genre: fiction, poetry, journalism, essays and memoirs, reviews and criticism, comics and visual arts. We publish two print editions a year, and continuously online.
We are interested in showing the range of poetry that exists in the contemporary moment.
First and foremost, we publish poetry in a wide range of styles and voices that moves us deeply and has us see the world in a new way.
In addition, our specific categories: Zest!; Politics, Environment, and Society; In Sickness and In Health; Field Notes; and Schooled are always open to poetry submissions.
Please send a maximum of 3 poems contained within a single document. Because our volume of submissions is high, we ask that you submit only once per reading period.
SUBMISSION FEE: $3
DEADLINE: October 15, 2020
https://pangyrus.submittable.com/submit
2020 Brush & Lyre Prize
Palette Poetry
INFO: We are so thrilled to offer poets space to stretch their creativity into new and exciting projects. This unique multimedia contest will accept work that incorporates poetry into new media formats, including but not limited to: music, video, art, photography, sculpture, and performance—use the communication technique that you feel most creatively gets across the experience of your poetry. You choose the creative canvas. $3500 will be awarded and all winners will be published on Palette Poetry.
We will rate the work accordingly: 50% poetic experience, 50% media experience. Each submission must include poetry into the work in some significant way—visually written or audio recorded. Ekphrasis is welcome as well, as long as the art is original.
We're looking to experience poetry in a new way, beyond just black text on a blank page!
AWARD: Our editorial team will select the winner of the $3000 top prize, as well as two runner-ups for $300 and $200 respectively.
GUIDELINES:
Submissions must include at least one significant multimedia aspect, such as video, photography, sculpture, audio, painting, or performance.
Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—other languages are okay to include, as long as the meat of the poem is in English.
Please keep any recordings or video to under 8 minutes in length. Please upload videos and include links when you can—works better than the native upload on submittable itself.
Collaborations are welcome.
The author may appear in the video and/or credits.
A poem that has been published previously may be included into the new work, if the new multimedia aspect is original and unpublished. You must have permission from the previous publisher of the work however, and the poem must be your own or a collaborator's.
There is no page requirement, but submission must be no more than 2 individual works.
We do accept multiple submissions, but each submission will include the reading fee.
Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history
DEADLINE: October 18, 2020
https://palettepoetry.submittable.com/submit
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: MELIORA
Lucky Jefferson
INFO: After four enthralling issues, we are turning a new leaf and ending our first arc of collective poems and flash fiction with our upcoming fifth issue, Meliora! Submissions for this winter 2020 issue should bend the rules and challenge form; submissions should speak to the raw, healing nature of owning one’s truth, new beginnings, or the concept of ever better.
What does Meliora mean to you?
For this celebratory issue, we are interested in unpublished experimental, visual/concrete, and hybrid poetry; we tend to adore shorter poems (less than 18 lines in length).
SUBMISSION FEE: $3
DEADLINE: October 25, 2020
https://luckyjefferson.com/submit/
CALL FOR BLACK WRITERS
Knights Library Magazine
INFO: The Knights Library Magazine is looking for Black writers to fill our inbox for our special December issue. If you are a Black poet, playwright, fiction writer, nonfiction writer, etc., please send us your work.
All work submitted must be original material and previously unpublished.
Super secret special guest judges to be announced soon, so keep your eyes peeled on Twitter!
GUIDELINES:
One poem or prose piece can be submitted. No longer than 3 pages (poetry) and 8 pages (prose).
Work must be submitted as a separate Word document where your name does not appear in the document.
You must be a Black writer.
Please submit to BlackWriters@KnightsLibraryMagazine.co
DEADLINE: October 31, 2020
Start A Riot! Chapbook Prize
Foglifter
INFO: In response to rapid gentrification and displacement of QTBIPOC+ literary artists in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in celebration of these communities’ revolutionary history, Foglifter Press, Radar Productions, and Still Here San Francisco are pleased to announce Start a Riot! - a chapbook series for local emerging queer and trans Black writers, Indigenous writers, and writers of color.
AWARD: Each year, the prize will honor one author with:
chapbook publication
a $1,000 prize
promotion
a spot on the Sister Spit Tour
ELIGIBILITY:
Submitter is a QTBIPOC+ literary artist
Submitter is a current resident of the larger San Francisco Bay Area
Submitter does not have a previous full-length publication in their submission genre
MANUSCRIPT DETAILS:
Open to all genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, hybrid, graphic novels
25 pages (maximum)
IMPORTANT DATES:
Deadline: November 1, 2020
Results Announced: Spring 2021
Chapbook Release: Fall 2021
https://foglifterjournal.com/submit-to-start-a-riot/
JACK STRAW WRITERS PROGRAM
Jack Straw Cultural Center
INFO: Jack Straw Cultural Center is now accepting applications for the 25th year of the Jack Straw Writers Program. To date, the program has included more than 275 writers from the Pacific Northwest and beyond who represent a diverse range of literary genres. Each year, an invited curator selects 12 participants.
The purpose of the Jack Straw Writers Program is to introduce writers to the medium of recorded audio; to develop their presentation skills for both live and recorded readings; to encourage the creation of new literary work; to present the writers and their work in live readings, in an anthology, on the web, and on the radio; and to build community among writers. Participating writers are presented in live readings, in the printed Jack Straw Writers Anthology; and on the web and radio. Each year an invited curator selects the participating writers from a large pool of applicants based foremost on artistic excellence. Among past curators are program co-founder Rebecca Brown, Anastacia- Renée, Donna Miscolta, Matt Briggs, Stephanie Kallos, Shawn Wong, and Jourdan Imani Keith. Writers receive training in vocal presentation, performance, and microphone technique to prepare them for public readings, interviews, and studio recording. Their recorded readings and interviews with the curator are then used to produce programs for SoundPages, our literary podcast, and for selected radio broadcast.
The Writers Program requires participants to be on-site at Jack Straw Cultural Center for a number of activities, such as an introductory orientation, workshops for microphone/voice technique and live performance, in-studio interview session with the program curator, and live readings. (See Covid-19 advisory for more on this.) Most of these activities take place between January and June. Additional Writers Program readings will take place around the community throughout the year, including a final reading with all of the writers in November. Work appearing in the Jack Straw Writers Anthology may not be previously published material, and any subsequent publication of this work must acknowledge the Jack Straw Writers Program.
The 2021 Writers Program Curator is E. J. Koh. E. J., a 2016 Jack Straw Writers Program fellow, is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others (Tin House Books, 2020) and poetry collection A Lesser Love (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), winner of the Pleiades Editors Prize for Poetry. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Academy of American Poets, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, PEN America, Slate, and World Literature Today. Koh is the recipient of The Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing from Prairie Schooner and has received fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, Kundiman, MacDowell Colony, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Vermont Studio Center. She is the editor for Pleiades: Poetry by Korean American Women and has appeared in anthologies: Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics, Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on Politics of Identity, and The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit. Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University in New York for Creative Writing and Literary Translation. She is completing her PhD at the University of Washington in English Language and Literature.
Selection Process
Writers Program applications are evaluated and awarded by an invited curator. The curators change each year. All applicants will be notified of the results in writing. Please allow at least eight weeks after deadline dates for the review and notification process to be completed. The first Writers Program mandatory meeting will take place in January 2021.
Selection Criteria
The Writers Program receives more than a hundred applicants, from which 12 writers are selected. Curator selections will be based upon the excellence of the work represented in the support materials provided by the applicant.
Covid-19 Advisory
We will almost certainly need to adapt the 2021 Writers Program to fit the safety requirements of the current situation, as we have been doing for the 2020 Writers. Some elements – such as workshops, readings, and meetings – will be moved online, and some will be adjusted to minimize the number of people sharing space.
It is impossible to know exactly what the situation will look like in January, when this program is set to begin, so we are requesting your patience, flexibility, and adaptability in advance. Know that we will do whatever we can to help you get the most out of this program and find community with your cohort and curator.
DEADLINE: November 3, 2020
https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit/90532/jack-straw-writers-program
THE OCM BOCAS PRIZE FOR CARIBBEAN LITERATURE 2021
INFO: The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is an annual award for literary books by Caribbean writers, first presented in 2011. Books are judged in three categories: poetry; fiction — both novels and collections of short stories; and literary non-fiction — including books of essays, biography and autobiography, history, current affairs, travel, and other genres, which demonstrate literary qualities and use literary techniques, regardless of subject matter. (Note: textbooks, technical books, coffee-table books, specialist publications and reference works are not eligible.)
There will be a panel of three judges for each category, who will determine category shortlists and winners.
The three category winners will then be judged by a panel of four judges — consisting of the chairs of the category panels and the prize chair — who will determine the overall winner.
AWARD: The author of the book judged overall winner will receive an award of US$10,000. The other category winners will receive US$3,000.
To be eligible for entry for the 2021 prize, a book must:
Have been first published in the calendar year 2020 (1 January to 31 December);
Have been written by a single author who either holds Caribbean citizenship or was born in the Caribbean (this must be verified by the publisher), regardless of current place of residence;
Have been written by an author who is living on 31 December, 2020;
Have been written and first published in English originally (i.e. translations are not eligible);
Be a new work, previously unpublished in book form (though collections including poems, stories, essays, or other short pieces that have individually appeared in print in periodicals or anthologies are eligible).
The OCM Bocas Prize is requesting both digital and print copies of each entry for 2021: a PDF file of the book must be uploaded with the entry form below, and five copies of the book must be mailed via reliable courier to The Bocas Lit Fest.
DEADLINE: November 9, 2020
https://www.bocaslitfest.com/2021/awards/ocm-bocas-prize-entry/
CALL FOR AUDIO SUBMISSIONS: HEARD/WORD
Galleyway
INFO: HEARD/WORD is Galleyway's new audio series highlighting compelling voices in poetry and prose. We invite you to share recordings of original poems and short fiction. Selected work will be showcased on our blog and social media platforms. Submissions should include:
MP3 recording of you reading your poetry (no longer than 3 minutes) or short fiction (no longer than 5 minutes)
Text version of the piece
A headshot
A brief bio
Social media handles and link to website
Please send submissions to camille@galleyway.com
DEADLINE: Ongoing
https://galleyway.com/blog/2020/3/31/call-for-audio-submissions