Here’s a new batch of 13 writing opportunities, just in time for the end of the semester and beginning of summer. Good luck with your writing and submitting!
Tinderbox Poetry Journal
Tinderbox Poetry Journal is open for submissions until May 15. Tinderbox has been the original home of poems appearing in Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and Bettering American Poetry anthologies. We are a paying market that offers contributors $15, regardless of how many poems are selected. We offer fee-free submissions year-round, but to offset the costs of running our journal (and to continue offering no mandatory fees), we recommend Tip Jar ($3) and Requesting Feedback options ($5) for folks with the means to make a donation. Please send no more than four poems (six pages). We aim to respond within three months or sooner.
https://tinderboxpoetryjournal.submittable.com/submit
Inch
Inch is now a quarterly journal focused on the miracles of compression. Each “issue” is a micro-chapbook featuring the work of a single author. We are currently reading submissions through May 15, 2019. Inch loves to see collections of short-short fiction. Submit your collection of a minimum of three stories. Similarly, submit your collection of a minimum of three essays. Though we no longer have a line limit for poetry, we’re still looking for poems that celebrate compression. Submit your collection with no more than one poem per single-spaced page. Collections should be between 8-14 pages in length. Include a title page with your contact information, a table of contents, an acknowledgements page (if needed), and an “about the author” page, none of which will count toward those 8-14 pages. Up to 75% of the pieces in your collection may be previously published, but we do require that at least 25% of the pieces in the collection be unpublished at the time of acceptance.
http://www.bullcitypress.com/submissions-top/submissions
Nashville Review
Nashville Review will accept submissions during the month of May. We welcome flash fiction, short stories, and novel excerpts of up to 8,000 words. We welcome creative nonfiction up to 8,000 words. We’re open to anything: memoir excerpts, essays, imaginative meditations. Send us up to 3 poems per reading period.
https://as.vanderbilt.edu/nashvillereview/contact/submit
Oversound Chapbook Prize
Mary Jo Bang will judge this year’s Oversound Chapbook Prize. The winner will receive $1000 and 25 copies. There is an $18 fee to enter. All entrants will receive a subscription to Oversound. Send your submission by May 31, 2019. Manuscripts must be between 15 and 30 pages. For a manuscript outside this range, please contact us prior to sending.
http://www.oversoundpoetry.com/chapbook
Heartwood 2019 Broadside Series Contest
A writing practice requires us to slow down, reflect, attend. HeartWood Literary Magazine & West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA Program seek to honor this practice with an annual broadside series and contest. Partnering with West Virginia letterpress company Base Camp Printing, we print the winning entry (poetry or flash prose) on a limited-edition letterpress broadside featuring an original image inspired by the text. The annual broadside serves as artifact companion to the fall issue of the digital magazine. Both the handmade and the electronic HeartWood venues aim to showcase work that gets to the heart of the matter. Savannah Sipple will judge this year’s contest. Submit by June 1, 2019.
http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/contest
Contrary
We believe poetry is contrary by nature and we look especially for plurality of meaning, for dual reverberation of beauty and concern. Contrary’s poetry in particular often mimics the effects of fiction or commentary. We ask our fiction writers to imagine their readers navigating a story with one finger poised over a mouse button. We have published long stories on the belief that they succeed, but we feel more comfortable with the concise. We favor fiction that is contrary in any number of ways, but our fiction typically defies traditional story form. “Commentary” is our word for the stuff that others define negatively as non-fiction, nominally as essay, or naively as truth. We favor commentary that delivers a message less through exposition than through artistry. The commentary we select is often lyrical, narrative, or poetic. Deadline: June 1, 2019.
http://www.contrarymagazine.com/submissions
The Puritan
Submissions received through June 25, 2019, are considered for the summer issue, published in late early Aug. With fiction, feel encouraged to push boundaries. We have diverse tastes; try us out. Length is up to you, but a story over 10,000 words will only be considered if it is of exceptional quality (and nothing over 12,000 words, please). Only send one story at a time, unless you are writing flash fiction (or stories under 500 words), in which case you can send up to three. We’re also looking for poems of any length (including sequences and long poems). You may also send up to four poems at a time. We are no longer accepting essays through our regular submission process, but we encourage interested writers to pitch us at essays@puritan-magazine.com. Pitches should be no more than 500 words, and contain a clear, succinct description of the proposed piece and a rationale for why it would be a good fit for The Puritan.
http://www.puritan-magazine.com/submissions
Drue Heinz Literature Prize
The award is open to writers who have published a novel or a book-length collection of fiction with a reputable book publisher, or a minimum of three short stories or novellas in magazines or journals of national distribution. The award is open to writers in English, whether or not they are citizens of the United States. Eligible submissions include an unpublished manuscript of short stories; two or more novellas (a novella may comprise a maximum of 130 double-spaced typed pages); or a combination of one or more novellas and short stories. Novellas are only accepted as part of a larger collection. The prize carries a cash award of $15,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press under its standard contract. Deadline: June 30, 2019.
https://www.upress.pitt.edu/drue-heinz-literature-prize-submission-guidelines/
Threepenny Review
As a rule, critical articles should be about 1200 to 2500 words, Table Talk items 1000 words or less, stories and memoirs 4000 words or less, and poetry 100 lines or less. (Exceptions are occasionally possible, but longer pieces will have a much harder time getting accepted.) We prefer to read prose submissions that are double-spaced; poetry can be single-spaced or double-spaced. At present The Threepenny Review is paying $400 per story or article, $200 per poem or Table Talk piece. Deadline: June 30, 2019.
http://www.threepennyreview.com/submissions.html
Bellevue Literary Review
The BLR seeks high-caliber, unpublished work, broadly and creatively related to our themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body. We seek character-driven fiction with original voices and strong settings. We do not publish genre fiction (romance, sci-fi, horror). Our word max is 5,000, though most of our published stories tend to be in the range of 2,000-4,000 words. We are looking for essays that reach beyond the standard ‘illness narrative’ to develop a topic in an engaging and original manner. Incorporate anecdotes that feel alive, and dazzle us with thoughtful and creative analysis that allows these anecdotes to serve a larger purpose. Please, no academic discourses or works with footnotes. Maximum 5,000 words. Poetry submissions should have no more than 3 poems. Please include all poems in one document. Deadline: June 30, 2019.
https://blr.med.nyu.edu/submissions
The Orison Chapbook Prize
Announcing the inaugural Orison Chapbook Prize! Orison Books announces The 2019 Orison Chapbook Prize, judged by founder and editor Luke Hankins. Submissions are open to all genres (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, hybrid). The winner receives $300 & publication by Orison Books. Manuscript length should be between 20 and 45 pages. Entry fee: $12. Deadline: July 1, 2019.
www.orisonbooks.submittable.com
The Writer’s Block Prize in FICTION
The Writer’s Block Prize in Fiction will accept submissions through August 1, 2019. Award-winning novelist Garth Greenwell will judge. Winner will receive $500 and publication in The Louisville Review, the literary magazine of Spalding University’s nationally distinguished low residency MFA in Writing program. Winner also will be invited to read the winning story at the 2019 Writer’s Block Festival in Louisville, KY. Submit up to 3 stories, 4,000 words maximum. There is a $12 submission fee.
https://www.louisvilleliteraryarts.org/writersblockprize
apt (special issue on climate change)
For apt’s (howapt.com) tenth print issue, we are seeking to publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and comics that address climate change, the defining challenge of our lifetime. It is, of course, not the only major, systemic issue we face and, for many, it is not the most important in day-to-day lives marked by injustice and inequality in a system that privileges the few. But it is an issue that touches nearly everyone and that permeates our systems, exacerbates inequality, and sharpens injustice. We encourage all types of work, but please proceed with these facts in mind: climate change is real, it’s caused by humans, there’s still time to fight it. On that note, we’re excited to read your words and hear your ideas on the topic. Keeping in line with our usual wish list, the following issues aren’t meant to be exhaustive, but to provide potential areas we’d love to see addressed: Environmental, economic, and intergenerational justice; Community-based responses to climate change; Physical and mental health impacts of climate change; Biodiversity, species, and ecosystem conservation; Environmental policy and programs; Intersectional views (e.g. indigenous communities, re: contested lands and their stewardship; the vulnerability and strength of racialized and classed neighborhoods; the challenges faced by disabled people and those with mobility constraints). As always, we seek longer work for our print issues in order to publish and promote narratives that engage deeply with a subject and take time to explore it fully. For this issue, we will also read shorter work (5,000 words minimum for prose, 1,000 words/100 lines/7 pages minimum for poetry) that falls within our theme. If you have work that comes close to these constraints but doesn’t quite meet them, submit it and we’ll figure out the rest. Payment: authors included in the issue will receive a $50 payment and a copy of the issue. Deadline: Aug 31, 2019.
Denton Loving 