wanted: your great literature!
Send us great work ... especially for our annual contests, now open until Nov 30!
If you want to submit outside our contests, we currently have our 'submission + back issue' option open now; we'll re-open for regular'submissions in December. All accepted authors are paid, and all non-contest submissions will be considered for our $200 Staff Choice Award: an accepted submission chosen by our staff as best embodying two things we love and respect about writing: stylistic ambition and social engagement. One author each issue will receive this award, announced with the issue's release (usually in May).
As always: we hope to read your very best, we're excited to read it, and we want more, we hope for more, we quietly plead for/demand more. Simply: we love great literature, especially literature that is urgent and/or strange, and we love all voices, be they new, emerging, or established - certainly those from underrepresented groups. We always put samples from past issues on our homepage if you'd like to get a sense of our sensibilities.
Note: Submissions are being read for our spring 2025 issue. They must be previously unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are totally fine (but please withdraw accepted pieces immediately; the lack of this practice has increased far too much for us lately).
Note 2.0: We generally charge a two dollar fee so that we can do something we hope all agree is a good thing: pay all our authors, at least $40 per writer; usually we have free submissions in early Dec and May ... and during most of June and July, we're happy to provide free submissions to any authors who self-identify as being from underrepresented or minoritized communities or simply can't afford the $2 fee. Just email our editor at sbernard (at) laverne (dot) edu for more information.
-->Excepting the student contest, current students and employees of the University of La Verne are not eligible to submit. Sorry!
Note 3.0: We are not Prism International, a fantastic journal in Canada.
Happy submitting, and feel free to visit/like our Facebook page!
Deadline: midnight Nov 30
Prize: $250 and publication
Length: 1-5 poems, ten pages max. Multiple submissions accepted.
Judge: Luivette Resto
Luivette Resto is an award-winning poet, a mother of three revolutionary humans, and a middle school English teacher. She was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, but proudly raised in the Bronx. She is a CantoMundo and Macondo Fellow and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has three books of poetry: Unfinished Portrait, Ascension, and Living on Islands Not Found on Maps. Her work has been mentioned in the LA Times and Ms. Magazine. She is the associate editor of Tía Chucha Press, and she sits on the boards for Women Who Submit and Beyond Baroque.
We follow CLMP guidelines. Entries are judged anonymously, so please exclude identifying information from the document. All entries will be considered for publication (non-winning poems have also been published), and all domestic entrants will get issue #27 (international entrants will receive PDFs of issues 26 & 27). The issue will be excellent!
Winners announced spring 2025.
Deadline: midnight Nov 30
Prize: $250 and publication
Length: up to 7,000 words; can be one single story or linked microstories. Multiple submissions accepted.
Judge: Mimi Herman
Mimi is a Kennedy Center teaching artist and co-director of Writeaways writing workshops in France, Italy, Ireland, and New Mexico. She serves as vice-chair of the board of directors for AWP and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson. Her novel The Kudzu Queen was selected by the North Carolina Center for the Book for the 2023 Library of Congress “Great Reads from Great Places” and has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, Crab Orchard Review, The Hollins Critic, Main Street Rag, Prime Number Magazine, and other journals.
We follow CLMP guidelines. Entries are judged anonymously, so please exclude identifying information on the manuscript. All entries are considered for publication, and all domestic entrants get issue #27 (international entrants receive PDFs of issues 26 & 27). The issue will be excellent!
Winners announced spring 2025.
If you hate paying submission fees without getting anything to show for it up front, this category is for you: submit following our regular prose guidelines and have your work considered along with the rest of the submissions . . .
. . . and, best of all, receive a recent back issue (if you want a specific #, let us know with your cover letter).
Usually we sell issues for $9. This is a pretty fair deal - you get a journal with great literature at a killer price, and, better, a chance to be in a future issue. (Note: due to shipping costs, this category is only available to those living in the US.)
If you hate paying submission fees without getting anything to show for it up front, this category is for you: submit following our regular poetry guidelines and have your work considered along with the rest of the submissions . . .
. . . and, best of all, receive a recent back issue (if you want a specific #, let us know with your cover letter).
Usually we sell issues for $9. This is a pretty fair deal - you get a journal with great literature at a killer price, and, better, a chance to be in a future issue. (Note: due to shipping costs, this category is only available to those living in the US.)