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We've reached it, almost:  that time of year so precisely and richly
described by Natalie Babbitt that it changed me as a reader and a writer. 




The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.
-- Prologue from Tuck Everlasting, 1975

This beginning to a book caught me like hands holding my 10-year-old head on both sides, looking me urgently in the eyes and saying, "Of words we can make art, art as true as a photograph layered with brushes of color, with sound and rhythm of blues symphony, full of the woven textures of weariness, curiousness, motion and suspense.  Writing can do it all."

What about you, poetry friends?  What piece of literature brought you to see writing as art, made you want to live in and even make this kind of art?


Keri has the round-up today at Keri Recommends.  Happy Almost August.

Fiction International will accept submissions for an issue on Fluids from October 1, 2014 to February 15, 2015.

Fiction, non-fiction, and indeterminate prose texts of up to 5,500 words as well as visuals which address Fluids are welcome.

Please submit online through Submittable or by mail from 10/1/2014 to 2/15/2015 to the address listed on this page. We will consider submissions of narrative, anti-narrative and indeterminate texts but only accept submissions reflecting the theme. Please read sample texts from our catalog to become familiar with our thematic focus and our unique global perspective. Recent themes have been: Real Time/Virtual, About Seeing, DV8, Walls, The Artist in Wartime, Freak, Animals, and Abject/Outcast.

We accept all submissions (text and images), including those from agents, online or through mail.

Online submissions must be submitted through Submittable.

Hard copy submissions must be printed out, accompanied by an SASE, and mailed to:

Harold Jaffe, Editor
Fiction International
San Diego State University
Dept. of English and Comp. Lit.
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-6020 USA

Please ensure that all submissions are submitted as close to print-ready as possible. This is especially crucial for images. We exercise all due care in handling manuscripts, but we cannot be responsible for loss. Please allow one to three months for reply.

If submitting through Submittable or by mail isn't possible, we may accept emailed submissions providing you receive approval in advance. Do not email without receiving prior approval. Should you have any questions, please email the editor at:

hjaffeATmailDOTsdsuDOTedu (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

Tammy is reading for its fifth print issue for only four more weeks. Aimed at the esteemed fringes and unguarded egresses of American letters, Tammy seeks writing in all genres and forms of visual art that lend themselves to the printed page.

Submit September 1 - December 1 for the spring 2015 issue and March 1 - May 1 for the fall issue. 

Online submissions manager 

Submissions in multiple genres and simultaneous submissions are encouraged. If your submission(s) is accepted elsewhere, please let us know via Submittable. 

For queries outside of these guidelines, please email:

thetjournalATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

Each academic year, Slash Pine Press publishes two chapbooks in limited runs of 125 copies. This year, the press will publish one in the Fall of 2014 and one in the Spring of 2015.

The reading period is now open for our Spring chapbook. We are in search of prose manuscripts of any prose genre, no longer than 25 pages and made up of at least five separate pieces. 
 
DEADLINE: October 31, 2014.  

To submit, go here.

Guidelines:

We’re interested in seeing manuscripts of prose in all genres: fiction, non-fiction, and prose poetry. Manuscripts should be entirely prose, and should be made up of at least five interconnected or separate pieces. We are not considering, for example, submissions of one to four stories or essays. We are more interested in flash fiction or non-fiction, a larger work made up of smaller parts, or work that is conscious of how it uses white space and the page.
 
Simultaneous submissions are OK, but no multiple submissions will be accepted.

Please include your name and full contact information only in the “cover letter” section of the submission page. Authors may also list acknowledgments on the manuscript if desired.

All manuscripts receive a blind reading. The author’s name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript or in the title of file (on Submittable blind readers can still see the name of the file). Those manuscripts that include the author's name will be disqualified.

Manuscripts should be between 15-25 pages not counting cover page, acknowledgment page, or contents page (if included).

Collaborations are OK, but only by two authors.

The accepted manuscript will be determined by the editors and interns of Slash Pine Press. Decisions will be announced early 2015.

The $5 reading fee will go to printing and administrative fees. The author of the accepted manuscript will receive 15 copies as well as the option to buy additional copies at a reduced cost.

Faculty, students, and graduates of the University of Alabama are not eligible for publication.

As always, Slash Pine books are carefully designed and hand bound. To see examples of the books Slash Pine has published in the past, go to Slashpinepress.com.

Gulf Coast Prize in Translation

To celebrate translation and translators, Gulf Coast has created a new translation prize and we're pleased as punch about it! In 2014, the inaugural Gulf Coast Prize in Translation is open to poetry and will be judged by Jen Hofer, a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, social justice interpreter, teacher, urban cyclist, and co-founder with John Pluecker of the language justice and literary activism collaborative Antena. The winner of the prize will receive $1,000 and publication in the journal. To share the love, two honorable mentions will also appear in issue 27.2, due out in April 2015. Pretty fierce way to start a translation prize, non? Share this good news with your translator friends and colleagues!

2014 Barthelme Prize

Think good things come in small packages? So do we! Gulf Coast is now accepting entries for the 2014 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose, judged by Amy Hempel. This annual contest is open to pieces of prose poetry, flash fiction, and micro-essays of 500 words or fewer. Established in 2008, the contest awards its winner $1,000 and publication in the journal. Two honorable mentions will also appear in issue 27.2, due out in April 2015. So dust off those keyboards, sharpen those pencils, put in a new typewriter ribbon, and write something fabulous in its brevity.

Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal is open to publishing previously unpublished poetry and fiction by new,emerging, and established authors. We are happy to embrace all experimental genres, but we are slightly more biased towards literature whose deepest emotions,when given the opportunity to inhabit with ours, creates a strange yet familiar sensation of déjà vu. Works where imagination and a strong imagery guide reality to examine the creative chaos beyond its straitjacket cliff.

There are no deadlines to meet, since we accept submissions throughout the year. The guidelines aren’t too complex, and therefore, we would request you to adhere to them in order to engage in a fruitful aesthetic interaction with the journal.

General Guidelines:

• All the submissions must be sent to: hermeneuticchaosjournal[at]gmail[dot]com (Change [at] to @ and [dot] to . )
• The subject line must mention the following- Poetry/Prose Submission-Name of the author.
• Include a cover letter and a short, third-person bio which tells the readers about the writer.
• We accept simultaneous submissions.However, we request you to inform us promptly in case your submissions find acceptance elsewhere.
• We also accept multiple submissions. However, please submit your poetry and fiction as separate emails.
• Poetry/Fiction previously published in a personal blog can also be submitted for consideration after a slight noticeable modification of the original. In such cases, please include the blog link along with the submission(s).
• We may also sometimes reprint pieces which possess the power to establish a strong aesthetic and emotive bonding with the readers, but do acknowledge the place where it was first published so that we can include the same.
• We do not accept erotic, political and polemical musings.

• Poetry in both prose and verse are welcome.
• Brevity should be the code of conduct. No long poems.
• The poems should have a strong sensory appeal with an enthusiastic linguistic freedom. We want poems where words contemplate the interpretations of instincts and deeper strokes of human dilemma.
• Please send no more than 5 poems attached as a word document.
• Milton was one of the first poets to understand the beauty of blank verse while composing Paradise Lost. We want your creative outputs to experience the same liberation as well.

• We look for works that describe the journey of the emotions, and not the incidents which engender it. The inspiration comes from Virginia Woolf,Sylvia Plath and Margaret Atwood.
• Each fiction should not exceed 500 words.
• Please send no more than 2 fiction pieces attached as a word document.

Call for Flash Fiction, Creative Nonfiction & Poetry: Star 82 Review

Star 82 Review is an art and lit online and print magazine looking for your best original unpublished work and lyrical language featuring the displaced person and the humorous oddness of everyday life. We’re looking for up to 1000 words as well as photos or images you’ve created that tell a story. Combinations of art and writing (erasure texts, tiny stories with photo, etc.) are most welcome.

See the guidelines on our submissions page.

Email questions to Alisa Golden at: 

editorATstar82reviewDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )
 

Cartridge Lit is an online literature mag dedicated to showcasing the best lit – fiction, nonfiction, poetry – inspired by video games. We believe video games are important and vital to [pop] culture. Why shouldn’t there be a lit mag dedicated to showcasing lit + games? We don’t know why not, either, so, here we are.

Uncharted prose poems. Final Fantasy VI flash fiction. Segmented essays on transformation and mutation in games. Chrono Trigger. Donkey Kong. Minecraft.

We like it short – 2,000 words or less [micro and flash fiction/essays] – and poetic. Fictions, essays, and poetry [traditional or prose]. If you’re writing short fiction or essays, say 500 words or less, feel free to send over up to three. If you’re writing poetry, send as many as five.

Check out our submissions page for more information.

Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine is now reading for June, July, and August. We are looking for 12 to 20 line poems and tight, gripping fiction under 200 words. Poetry should be accessible and language-rich. We prefer free verse and prose poems but have been known to publish poetry far outside of those broad categories. Prose should grab the reader immediately and hold them by the throat until the final sentence.

At Postcard Poems and Prose we use Submittable for all submissions.

Our home gallery is here.

Our submit page is here.

Inky Path Literary Magazine is now accepting interactive fiction pieces for its second volume.

Inky Path is seeking new and previously published works of interactive fiction, stories where readers make choices. These are traditionally choose-your-own-adventure pieces and parser-based fiction, but since it is such a new genre we're open to other experimental pieces that fall under the category.

We're seeking everything from choice-based poetry to gamebook epics, so we look forward to seeing what you have!

Inky Path's website.

Inky's Submission Guidelines.

Crooked/Shift, a brand new journal, is “officially” launching March 7, 2014.

Submissions link.

Crooked/Shift is an online literary publisher dedicated to horror, humor, the absurd, and the strange. We are currently looking for flash fiction, short stories, prose poetry, and essays for inclusion in our first issue slated for July 1, 2014. We invite new and seasoned writers alike.

This is a great opportunity for first time publication!

Submissions are free, though we are not paying writers at this time. Hopefully that changes soon with your support.

Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism is seeking submissions for #4, January 1 – March 31, to be published October 1, 2014. We’re looking for flash fiction, short stories, poetry and prose poems readers might label as new weird, slipstream and/or fabulist/fantastic—outstanding work difficult to categorize.

We pay on publication ($5 per page, minimum $10). Short fiction up to 6500 words, poems up to120 lines. Also seeking critical essays and interviews up to 5,000 words focused on emerging and neglected fabulist/fantastic writers.

Submissions can be made on our website. There are no submission fees.

Submission deadline: March 31, 2014



​

Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine is expanding their publication schedule.
On January 1, 2014 we will begin publishing a new feature every other day.
Fifteen features per month and the occasional short story and contest means will need to publish 200 new features in 2014.
We are pleased to be able to offer these additional opportunities for authors and artists.

With that in mind we are once again calling for submissions of poetry and flash.
Our guidelines may be found here.

If you don’t have the time to read our guidelines - we probably won’t find time to read your manuscript. J Cheers from Dave and the staff.

2013 Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest

Prize: $1,000 and publication in Quarter After Eight
Submission Deadline: November 30, 2013
Entry Fee: $15 for three pieces, includes a one year subscription

Submit up to three previously unpublished pieces of 500 words or fewer: prose poems, short-short stories, micro-essays, etc. We accept both electronic and paper submissions to the contest. All entries will be considered for publication in Quarter After Eight. For further details go here.

Quarter After Eight also welcomes general submissions in any genre. We are currently reading for our 20th issue forthcoming in early 2014. Quarter After Eight is dedicated to the exploration of innovative writing and regularly publishes new and established writers. For more information visit our website. 

Thanks!

We are working on our December and January publishing calendars at Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine. We still have a need for seven or eight flash fiction stories (200 words or less) and four or five poems (12-20 lines).

We love it when art to accompanies a submission but, if not, we will work up the appropriate art for pieces we like. When in doubt…send us something. Historically we have accepted 10-15% of what we find in slush. If it’s good, if it’s your best work, if every word carries its weight, then send it to us.

Our website.

The Quaker is a national undergraduate journal of literary art published by the Student Writers Guild and the Program in Creative Writing at Malone University in Canton, Ohio.

Submissions link.

Journal link.

We seeks submissions of poetry, fiction, essays, reviews—of good writing in any and all forms.

Publication occurs on a rolling basis, and each semester one author is chosen to be honored with a $100 Editor's Prize for an outstanding contribution to the journal.

Fall consideration deadline: November 30

GOT TRUTH?
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FACT?
International Journal of Literary Nonfiction

INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Literary nonfiction essay, memoir, commentary
1000-5000 words
Literary nonfiction
narrative poetry
Black & white art and photography

Submission Deadline: December 31, 2013

Submit via email:

editorATthetruthaboutthefactDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to .)

Published by Loyola Marymount University
Our website.

Twelve Winters Press is accepting submissions for an anthology of poetry, prose poetry, and flash fiction (1,000 words maximum) inspired by the theme of "extinguished and extinct." Certainly contributors will want to think in terms of animals that have become or are fast becoming extinct, but also plants, insects, even bacteria and viruses.

Feel free to think of extinguished and extinct in more abstract terms as well: disappeared ecosystems; eras; political, social, cultural, artistic movements; perhaps even extinguished emotions on the personal level. As long as you're thinking extinguished and/or extinct, we want to take a look at it.

Contributors may submit up to five total pieces (poem, prose poem, and/or flash fiction). Submit online.

Contributors will be paid in two copies of the anthology, which is planned for a 2014 release. After confirmation of acceptance, contributors will receive page galleys for approval. We look forward to reading your work.

John McCarthy
Assistant Editor, Quiddity International Literary Journal and Public-Radio Program
Benedictine University at Springfield
1500 North 5th Street
Springfield, IL 62702

Really System, a new journal of poetry and extensible poetics, will publish its first issue in January 2014.

We seek new, interesting writing that exhibits a keen awareness of the forms, patterns, and channels through which we find ourselves connected with other people, other things, other worlds. We are looking for vibrant poems inflected by our shared technocultural moment and the ways it envelops us, fascinates us, dances with us, ignores us, and fails us. We are open to poems of any length or form.

More information our magazine here.
 
Read our submission guidelines here.
 
Submissions for issue one are open until December 1, 2013.

Fall 2014 Themed Issue: WOMEN AND NATURE

Submit here.

In honor of the 35th year since the publication of Susan Griffin's eco-feminist classic Woman and Nature: the Roaring Inside Her, The Fourth River announces a 2014 themed issue on Women and Nature. We are looking for poetry and creative nonfiction, written by women, inspired by the natural world or addressing environmental concerns. Although we will accept lined poems and traditional essays, we are most interested in seeing prose poetry or lyric essays.

In the words of Adrienne Rich, who reviewed Griffin's book, we are looking for any work that "demands of us activity, not passivity; which enlarges our sense of female presence in the world; . . . which uses language and sensual imagery to impart a new vision of reality, from a woman-centered location; . . . which expands our sense of the connections among us in the bonds of history; . . . which drives us wild, that is, helps us break out from tameness and repetition into new trajectories of our own." — Adrienne Rich, New Woman's Times Feminist Review.

Submission period is May 15-Dec 15. All submissions should come through our Submittable page. We will also be accepting material for a general issue so please make sure that you identify your submission as for the "Women and Nature" issue.

Conclave: A Journal of Character is open for submissions for Spring, 2013.

Conclave is a bi-annual print journal that focuses on character-driven writing in short stories, flash fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, prose poems and photographs. Issues appear every spring and autumn. We select six of our best works each year to be nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Pieces should focus strongly on character. For further information about what character means to us, please visit our website.

You may read our submissions guidelines here.

Subject: Call for Submissions: Compressed Fiction, CNF, and Poetry

The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts is looking for, as you might guess, "compressed creative arts." We accept fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, mixed media, visual arts, and even kitchen sinks, if they are compressed in some way. Work is published weekly, without labels, and the labels here only exist to help us determine its best readers.

Our response time is generally 1-3 days. Also, our acceptance rate is currently about 1% of submissions. We pay writers $50 per accepted piece and signed contract.

Beginning January 15, 2013, we will again be open for compressed poetry, compressed prose fiction (including prose poetry), and compressed creative nonfiction. We will close submissions on April 15, 2013.

The reader for your submission is, during this round of fall submissions, the managing editor.

Please be sure to submit in the correct category; we've been receiving several fiction submissions in the creative nonfiction category. Word count alone doesn't create compression, so we ask that you also consider why this piece works for a journal obsessed with what's compressed. With the writer's permission, we publish the "best of lists" from the cover letters on our blog, along with the writer's name, picture, and link (of the writer's choosing).

For all submitters, we aren't as concerned with labels—hint fiction, prose poetry, micro fiction, flash fiction, and so on—as we are with what compression means to you. In other words, what form "compression" takes in each artist's work will be up to each individual. However, we don't publish erotica or work with strong, graphic sexual content.

In short, we want to fall in love with your work. That might happen in the way we've fallen in love with work we've previously published, or it might happen in a way we have yet to experience. Maybe reading that other work will help in knowing whether you should send your work to us, but in truth, such a thing might not be discoverable.



Submit here.

Linden Avenue Literary Journal (www.lindenavelit.com), founded in June 2012, is now accepting poetry and short fiction on a rolling basis for its fall and winter issues (October, November, and December)

Linden Avenue publishes poetry and short fiction that highlights the intersection between art and everyday life. Bring us your words, colored and sketched, and if we love them? There will be a place for them here.

What you should expect from Linden Avenue:

1.) A monthly literary journal that highlights the best work submitted regardless of any affiliation or prior publication.

2.) Poetry and fiction that is as beautiful in construction as it is in content.

Detailed submission guidelines for each genre can be found on our Submittable page.

Alligator Juniper National Writing Contest in Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry

$15 Entry Fee
*** $1,000 First Place Prize ***

Postmark Deadline: October 1, 2012

Our annual contest awards $1000 plus publication for the first place winners in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Finalists in each genre will be recognized as such, published, and paid in copies. Cost of entry: $15, checks or money orders payable to Alligator Juniper. Every entrant receives one copy of the 2013 issue, a $10 value. The issue will come out in late spring 2013. There is no theme for this issue; work is selected upon artistic merit. By entering our contest, you agree to allow us to select your work for publication, as a finalist. We encourage submissions from writers of all levels, including emerging or early-career writers. We accept simultaneous submissions; inform us in your cover letter and contact us immediately, should your work be selected elsewhere.


Submission Guidelines
Submissions accepted August 15 through October 1, 2012 (postmark deadline).
Include a brief cover letter; please let us know if yours is a simultaneous submission.
Include SASE for response only; manuscripts are recycled, not returned.
Include a $15 entry fee payable to Alligator Juniper for each story or essay (30-page limit), or up to five poems. Additional categories require additional fee.
Indicate category with a large F, NF, or P on cover letter and mailing envelope.
Manuscripts must be typed with numbered pages. Prose double-spaced.
Double-sided submissions are encouraged. No email submissions.

Send to:
Alligator Juniper, Prescott College
220 Grove Avenue
Prescott, AZ 86301

Note: We usually inform in January.
Interested in reading Alligator Juniper?
Back issues are available for all but 1995 (the premier issue), 2001, and 2007. Send $10 to above address and request a copy from any year: 1996-–2000, 2002-2006, or 200-–2012.

For a limited time, we are offering a subscription deal: for only $20, you will receive Alligator Juniper for two years, AND two free back issues—, a $40 value!


Questions?
Email alligatorjuniper(at)prescott.edu

Thank you for your interest in Alligator Juniper!

Palooka is a nonprofit literary journal open to diverse forms, seeking fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, plays, graphic short stories, graphic essays, comic strips, artwork, photography, and multimedia for Issue #5 and #6.

Always excited to see new work! Happy submitting!

Our submissions link.