Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Call for Submissions from Young Writers: Crashtest

If you are a teenager currently enrolled in high school, grades 9-12, Crashtest, the new online literary magazine for high school writers, would like to hear from you!

Though we read all year round, our deadline for work to be considered for our inagural issue is APRIL 15. After that we will be reading for our Fall/Winter issue due out in December.

Crashtest publishes poetry, stories and creative non-fiction in the form of personal essays, imaginative investigation, experimental interviews, or whatever else you would like to call it. We're looking for writing that has both a perspective and a personality. We're looking for authors who have something to say. Our first issue will be up in the spring, but in the meantime please check us out.

Guidelines: Crashtest only accepts email submissions. Send submissions, in the form of a .doc or .rtf attachment only, and any queries to:
editor(at)crashtestmag.com (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail).

Poetry: 3-5 poems at a time.

Fiction: 1 piece at a time (no word or page limit)

Creative Non-Fiction: 1 piece at a time (no word or page limit)

Please go to our site for complete guidelines.

Call for Submissions: Artichoke Haircut

Artichoke Haircut is currently accepting submissions for its Spring 2011 issue.
We accept fiction, poetry, memoir (though very little, so make it good), and artwork.
Deadline for submissions is May 9th.
Guidelines for submission to our magazine are fairly open. Send up to three poems of any length, or one prose piece not to exceed 3,000 words. We do not have style guidelines per say, but keep in mind we are a magazine with tendencies more toward newer and experimental modes of seeing. That being said, we only really have one rule of thumb: If it's good it goes in, if it is not it doesn't.

Send all submissions to:
submit(at)artichokehaircut.com (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail), making sure to include contact info in the body of the email (please no cover letters, bios will be requested upon acceptance), and the type of submission (e.g. fiction, poetry, art, nonfiction) in the subject.

You may find more information here.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Call for Submissions: Spittoon

Submit for our first issue!
Spittoon is an independent contemporary literary zine dedicated to the publication of quality contemporary poetry and fiction. This publication will publish work by poets and writers, both well known and up-and -coming. Our only goal is to feature excellent work, so there are no form or content restrictions; however, we will never publish "cookie cutter" writers (you know who you are). We want original work that affects the reader in a physical and emotional way. To us, the form is as important as the content and they should both work together to develop the intended effect.

Guidelines:
Spittoon accepts submissions year-round. Response times will vary, but they are generally between 3 to 5 months.

No previously published work.
Simultaneous submissions okay.
Do not submit to Spittoon more than once at a time; please wait for response before submitting again.
No photographs or clip art should be in any of the files; we should only see words on the page, unless the visuals are actually part of the piece and used to help the piece achieve its intended effect.
Upon publication, Spittoon claims First Rights; after publication, all rights revert to the author, with the understanding that Spittoon will receive credit if the piece is published elsewhere.
Please read our mission to better understand the kind of work we want before submitting.
Include a short bio / cover letter.
Any submission that does not follow the guidelines will be deleted.

Poetry

Submit up to 5 poems at a time. No length requirement. All should be saved in a single .pdf, .doc, or .rtf document, with author's identifying information at the top of the first page. For poems that are more than one page, indicate page number with last name and poem title at the top of each page.

To submit via postal (snail) mail, include a cover letter with bio and
an SASE. Send to:

Spittoon
Poetry Editor
725 S. Taft Hill Rd.
Fort Collins, CO 80521

Fiction

Submit a single piece (up to 5,000 words) or up to three short-shorts. All should be saved in a single .pdf, .doc, or .rtf document, with author's identifying information at the top left of first page, and author last name with title and page number at the top of each
additional page. All text should be double-spaced in size 12 font.

To submit via postal (snail) mail, include a cover letter with bio and an SASE. Send to:

Spittoon
Fiction Editor
725 S. Taft Hill Rd.
Fort Collins, CO 80521

For more information or to contact the editor, email:

spittoonmag(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail) or visit our site.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

2011 Thin Air Writers' Challenge

In honor of National Poetry Month, the staff of Thin Air Magazine are proud to announce the 2011 Writers' Challenge.  To participate, simply write 30 pieces in 30 days -- any genre!  Each day, the editors will select a submitted piece to be featured on the blog as one of the best pieces ever written during April 2011.  Check out our blog for all the details.

You can also look for us on Facebook as Thin Air Magazine.  We hope that you will consider joining us, and we look forward to reading your submissions!

Respectfully,

The Editors of Thin Air Magazine
thinairmagazine.com

Call for Submissions: Soundzine

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN FOR ISSUE #13 of Soundzine

We will be open for submissions until May 31, 2011
For Issue #13, we are celebrating LUCK in all its silly-serious, superstitious glory. Good luck, bad luck and all the luck in-between! What makes you feel lucky? Four leaf clovers, your lucky socks? What makes you shiver a bit? Three crows in a tree, a black cat crossing your path? Heck, do you even believe in luck? Take this one as far as you want - have fun with it! Push your luck and see what happens!

NOTE: We will also accept non-themed poetry and prose.

General Guidelines

We accept quality poetry and flash fiction (450 to 800 word maximum), as well as author's readings. We are now also accepting submissions of music and song. Submissions should be accompanied by a brief bio. Articles concerning literary criticism or theory will also be considered.

All submissions EXCEPT prose should be e-mailed to:
submissions(at)soundzine.org
(and for prose:
prose(at)soundzine.net (replace (at) with @ in sending
e-mail).

Poetry Competition: Cave Canem Poetry Prize

2011 Cave Canem Poetry Prize Guidelines

Award: Winner receives $1,000, publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press in fall 2012, 15copies of the book and a feature reading.
Final Judge: Patricia Smith. (Judge reserves the right not to select a winner or honorable mentions.)
Eligibility: African American writers who have not had a full-length book of poetry published by a professional press. Authors of chapbooks and self-published books with a maximum print run of 500 may apply.Simultaneous submission to other book awards should be noted: immediate notice upon winning such an award is required. Winner agrees to be in the United States at her or his own expense when the book is published in order to participate in promotional reading(s).

Deadline: Reading period opens March 15, 2011. Manuscripts must be postmarked no later than April 30, 2011. Manuscripts received after May 9, 2011, 5 pm, will not be considered, regardless of postmark date. To be notified that your manuscript has been received, enclose a stamped, self-addressed postcard. Winner announced in September 2011.

Entry Fee: $15. Enclose check with submission, made payable to Cave Canem Foundation. Entry fees are non-refundable.
Direct packet to:

Cave Canem Foundation
Cave Canem Poetry Prize
20 Jay Street, Suite 310-A
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Submission
Send two copies of a single manuscript. One manuscript per poet allowed. Enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope to receive notification of results. Author’s name should not appear on any pages within the manuscript. Copy One must include a title page with the author’s brief bio (200 words, maximum) and contact information: name, postal address, e-mail address and telephone number. Copy Two must include a cover sheet with the title only.

Manuscript must include a table of contents and list of acknowledgments of previously published poems.

Manuscript must be single sided with a font size of 11 or 12, paginated, and 50-75 pages in length, inclusive of title page, table of contents and acknowledgments. A poem may be multiple pages, but no more than one poem per page is permitted.

Manuscript must be unbound. Use a binder clip—do not staple or fold. Do not include illustrations or images of any kind.

Manuscripts not adhering to submission guidelines will be discarded without notice to sender.

Due to the volume of submissions, manuscripts will not be returned. Post-submission revisions or corrections are not permitted.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Call for Submissions: Super Arrow

We write to you from a sunny place, where though the branches are yet bare, our legs may be similarly and comfortably unsheathed. We invite you to help celebrate this heady end of hibernation season by submitting your writing and art to Super Arrow.

We are looking for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as any cross-genre sally-forths – make your words count, and your notions rich, your formal methods as carefully wrought as the content they envelop. We like the dad-joke funny and the unpredictably poignant as well as great beauty and confident homeliness; we like loyalty to sonic texture and a lashing-to of tension and motion; we like lots of things un-listable here and this can be best understood by reading the current and past issues in the archive.

We are also looking for serious visual and audio work. We like to present work which is stand-alone, rather than illustrative, and which holds within it some conceptual affinity to ideas of creative experimentation and process. In the past, we’ve published drawings, collage, installation work, improvisational sound collaboration, and photography. Super Arrow is interested in sustaining an interdisciplinary venue; help us, oh artist types, in doing this.

LASTLY, and not LEASTLY, our Issue Four Assignment Folio concerns the idea of persona in all sorts of work. Send us work you made that was somehow made, you feel, by other people. We do not state it this way to be difficult or abstract. Ideas of identity and maker-ship are shifty…What new people must we make up in order to invent new artistic approaches? See our site for more details, and stay tuned to the blog for more in our Chatbot Series, as vaguely fictionalized versions of our editorial staff try to discuss the concept of PERSONA with artificially intelligent beings, to mixed success.

We’ll be accepting submissions through Tax Day, April 15, 2011, midnight for the submitter’s time zone, through our Submishmash manager.

As always, we’d be so pleased if you would forward this to any of your creative compatriots, or post this call on your blog, Facebook or Twitter accounts. (Also, don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter, to stay best abreast of news and future calls!)

Yours in Creative Experiment and Impatient Thermometer Watching,
Super Arrow

Friday, March 18, 2011

Call for Submissions: The Monarch Review

The Monarch Review, an online and print journal dedicated to publishing visual, literary and musical art, launched on November 10, 2010. The editors of TMR seek poetry, fiction, non-fiction, visual arts and music that display the inherent human conflict: work of faith and doubt; work that endures; work that fills the other with curiosity and inspiration. The publication was inspired by the Monarch apartments, home to a myriad of Seattle artists who appreciate the sense of creative community a common building provides.

The editors of the publication are Nickolai Koveshnikov (Managing Editor), Caleb Thompson (essays and music), Jacob Uitti (poetry and fiction), Todd Jannausch (visual arts) and Evan Flory-Barnes (music). The Web-Master for the review is Sarah Kulfan (Beans n’ Rice graphic design).

To submit, see the website for complete guidelines. The first online issue was launched in early 2011 with the inaugural print issue due out in fall 2011.

A publication dedicated to visual, literary and musical art, The Monarch Review seeks works integral to the creation and sustenance of creative community.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Call for Submissions: The New Sound

The New Sound: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Art & Literature publishes short fiction, poetry, essays, drama, art and book reviews. Writers at all stages of their careers are invited to submit. Undergraduate students are especially encouraged to submit, as each issue will feature undergraduate writing and art. If you are interested in submitting your work for consideration, please refer to the guidelines below.

Reading Period: The New Sound: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Art & Literature will be published in January 2012, and we ask that writers submit no more than once a year. Our inaugural reading period will be from March 15th to May 31st. Manuscripts received from June through August will not be read.

Manuscripts: Manuscripts must be paginated and clearly labeled with the author’s name on every page. Please limit your submission to no more than 5 poems, 2 short plays, or 7,000 words of prose, either critical or creative. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged, but we ask that you notify us if the work is accepted elsewhere. Do not send the only copy of your work, as we do not accept responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts.

Visual art and design submissions should be submitted in jpg format at 72 dpi and not exceed a file size of 2MB each. Each file should be titled with your name and the number of the submission (ex/ john_doe1.jpg, john_doe2.jpg). A maximum of four works may be submitted each year. Black and White and Color work is encouraged.

Book Reviews: Please note that we do not accept unsolicited book reviews. If you are interested in reviewing, please write to the editor describing the kind of books you would be interested in reviewing and  enclose one or more recent samples of a review.

Response Time: We try to respond to submissions within 6 months; however, it may occasionally take longer for a manuscript to be read. We ask for your patience, as we do make every effort to read all the submissions we receive. Unfortunately we are unable to respond to status inquiries.

Although The New Sound: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Art & Literature is a print journal, we will feature excerpts from each issue on the University of New Haven web site. Thus, please note that if your work is accepted we may ask your permission to include your work on our website as well as in the print journal.

Send submissions to the following email address:

unhenglish(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail)

Hard Copies will be accepted as well. Please send to:
The New Sound: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Art & Literature
University of New Haven
English Department
300 Boston Post Road
West Haven, CT 06516-1916

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Poetry Residency: The Frost Place

The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire, invites applications for a six- to eight-week residency in poet Robert Frost's former farmhouse, which sits on a quiet north-country lane with a spectacular view of the White Mountains, and which serves as a museum and conference center.

The residency begins July 1 and ends August 31, and includes an award of $1,000. The Resident Poet will have an opportunity to give a series of public readings across the region, including at Dartmouth College,  for which the Resident Poet will receive a $1,000 honorarium. There are no other specific obligations.

Accommodations are spartan but comfortable. The Frost Place Museum is open to the public during afternoon hours, but the resident poet will have sole use of non-public rooms of the house.

Previous recipients of this residency include Katha Pollitt, Robert Hass, William Matthews, Cleopatra Mathis, Mark Halliday, Mary Ruefle, Mark Cox, and Laura Kasischke. The 2011 Resident Poet will be K. A. Hays. The aim of this program has been to select a poet who is at an artistic and personal crossroads, comparable to that faced by Robert Frost when he moved to Franconia in 1915, when he was not yet known to a broad public.

To be eligible, applicants will have published at least one book of poems.

Application guidelines: Applications are received March 1 through October 1, 2011. Poets can apply directly or be nominated by someone else. Please submit to:

The Frost Place
P.O. Box 74
Franconia, NH 03580

Please enclose a a check for $25 (reading fee) and four copies of the following: 5 poems from a most recent book, a letter explaining why you/the candidate would be a good choice for a residency at The Frost Place, a current resumé, and contact information for two references.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Collaborative Writers and Artists Project: Flying House

Flying House is an annual collaboration project that kicks off in May with the announcement of five artist-writer pairs. There’s no need to apply with a partner to participate, in fact, we discourage that. The more we artists and writers can push ourselves out of our comfort zones the better. That’s the point. We’ve become too comfortable where we are, or we haven’t strived far enough, and Flying House provides artists and writers with both a blank space to fill, and a push to get your work out in front of the public. 

Once the pairs are picked, they have a good month to swap ideas back and forth. They get to know one another, email, phone, and skype each other, and then they brainstorm what kind of project they are interested in completing.

Warning: the participants should be realistic with the projects. Work must be finished on time; there are two checkpoints to be met along the way and, of course, the work has to make it to the show on time. That's mandatory. Flying House will help with transportation and lodging costs, but not with the cost of materials.

After the first month of introductions, the pairs get to work. The sky’s the limit at this point but, as we mentioned, there are 2 checkpoints along the way to be aware of: first, at the end of the first month each participant must email in 5-seconds worth of something about themselves and their project. This could be anything from a home-movie to a series of camera-phone pictures to a paint-by-numbers coloring book page. It just needs to tell us who you are and what you’re about. Second, half way through our fundraising campaign (July 1), each artist and writer will need to provide a work-in-progress sample of their project. This sample will do 2 things: it will tell us if everyone is on track (or if a replacement needs to be found), and it will also be used to create hype around the up-coming show.

At the beginning of the sixth month, all five of our participating artist-writer teams must have a completed visual and written representation of their collaboration, and they must get it to the location of their big show. We will then display all the work in a gallery space, have a big reading, and celebrate a job well done! Last year’s Flying House gallery event and reading took place in Chicago at the Maes Studio (fancy-shmancy) on December 11.

Last but not least, each year Flying House bottles up the whole experience and produces an anthology for all of our lovely sponsors, friends, family, and participants to enjoy. They are on sale through our website, as well as at the show, and annual subscriptions are welcome!

Emerging Writers Fellowship: The Writer's Center

Emerging Writers Fellowship

The Writer's Center, metropolitan Washington, D.C.'s community gathering place for writers and readers, is currently accepting submissions for several competitive Emerging Writer Fellowships for Fall 2011. We welcome submissions from writers of all genres, backgrounds, and experiences in the following genres: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Emerging Writer Fellows will be featured at The Writer's Center as part of Story/Stereo, our Emerging Writers Reading Series and live music fusion events. The readings, held on Friday evenings, bring together writers and some of the area's best local musicians. You can learn more about Story/Stereo by visiting our website.

Selected Fellows may be invited to lead a special Saturday workshop at The Writer's Center, with compensation commensurate with standard Writer's Center provisions.

Fellows receive an all-inclusive honorarium of $250 to help offset their travel costs.
Fellows for Spring 2011 include poet Susanna Lang (Even Now); nonfiction writer Eli Hastings (Falling Room); and fiction writers Matthew Pitt (Attention Please Now), James Hannaham (God Says No), Andrew Foster Altschul (Deus Ex Machina), and Merrill Feitell (Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes).

Emerging Writer Fellows will:
•--have 1 or 2 full-length single-author books published in a single genre, and no more than 3 books published to their credit (including as editors of anthologies) in any genre. Chapbooks and pamphlets will not be calculated into an author's total publication record and cannot be substituted for a full-length single-author book. Self-published titles or vanity press titles are not admissible and will not be considered.
•--be judged in the category in which their submitted creative selection falls. In cases of cross-genre work or multiple-genre work, our staff will determine the genre of consideration.
--have published books "in hand" or be in the uncorrected proof stage of publication at the time of their submission.

To be considered, please send:
•--a one-page letter of interest that includes the name of your creative selection and a short bio
•--a resume or CV that details publication history and familiarity facilitating group discussions or workshops
•--a creative selection from your most recent published book-length work in a Word document or RTF format:
•--Poetry: up to 10 pages of poems (1 poem per page).
•--Fiction & Nonfiction: up to 16 pages of text double-spaced with 1-inch margins.
•--Your creative selection does not need to be one excerpt, but can be comprised of multiple sections or excerpts up to but not exceeding the total page limit.

A committee comprised of The Writer's Center board members, workshop leaders, and members will evaluate submissions on behalf of our community of writers.

The deadline to submit is April 15, 2011.
Applicants are welcome to contact Kyle Semmel, Publications & Communications Manager, with questions or for more information at 301-654-8664 or by e-mail at:

kyle.semmel(at)writer.org (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail).

Please send your submission materials to Zachary Fernebok at:

The Writer's Center
4508 Walsh Street
Bethesda, MD 20815

The Writer's Center, established in 1976, is one of the nation's oldest and largest literary centers, dedicated to cultivating the creation, publication, presentation, and dissemination of literary work. We provide over 60 free public events and more than 250 writing workshops each year, sell one of the largest selections of literary magazines in our on-site bookstore, and publish Poet Lore, America's oldest continually published poetry journal.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Call for Submissions: Sweet: A Literary Confection

Sweet publishes emerging and established writers three times a year--September, January, and May. Past contributors include: Lee Martin, Tim Seibles, Lee AnnRoripaugh, Ann Panning, Aimee Nezhukamatathil, Nin Andrews, Dinty W. Moore.

Sweet seeks only poetry and creative nonfiction, graphic nonfiction and anything in between. Sorry, fiction writers! We read submissions all year. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if your work has been taken by another literary journal (we'd like to be the first to congratulate you). Our preferred submission size is 3-5 poems. For creative non-fiction, we prefer 2-3 short-short creative nonfiction pieces or one longer one. Essays should not exceed 3,500 words total.

For Graphic Nonfiction: Sweet welcomes submissions of previously unpublished nonfiction cartoons, graphic narratives and photo essays that demonstrate both artistic and literary merit. We are interested in traditional forms and new innovative techniques. Submissions can be in color or black and white. Please format submission in a single .doc, as a .pdf or a .jpg series.

Please visit the website to submit. We accept submissions through our online submission manager. Please include a brief cover letter and bio with your submission. Also, after sending us a portfolio of work, please wait to hear back before sending another.

If you have any questions, email:
editors(at)sweetlit.com (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail)

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Fiction Competition: Tusculum Review

2011 TUSCULUM REVIEW FICTION CONTEST

The 2011 Tusculum Review Fiction Prize offers a $1,000 (U.S.) purse and publication. There is a $15 (U.S.) entry fee, which includes one copy of the vol. 7/2011 edition of the The Tusculum Review and consideration for publication. We consider all works submitted for publication, but only works with entry fees are considered for the contest.

Submissions must be postmarked by March 15, 2011 in order to be considered.
Each submission is restricted to one short story no more than 30 typed, double-spaced pages in length (use a standard 12-pt. font, please). All entries must be typed.

Previously published stories, including web publications, are not allowed. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable if our editors are notified immediately if the work has been accepted elsewhere.

Please send a cover letter with your name, postal address (to where you’d like your review copy sent), phone number, e-mail address, and the title of your work. Please do NOT include your name anywhere on your manuscript. Those entering more than one submission may designate a gift copy of The Tusculum Review vol. 7/2011. Please provide the name(s) and address(es) for where you want the journal(s) mailed.

Manuscripts will be numbered, and all author names and information will be removed before the entries are presented to the judges. In the event that judges do not deem any submissions worthy of the prize, The Tusculum Review reserves the right to extend the call for manuscripts or to cancel the award.

The final judge for this year’s contest will be Aimee Bender. Family, friends, and current/previous students of the judge, or those with a reciprocal professional relationship with the judge, will be disqualified from the contest. Submissions will be screened by the staff of The Tusculum Review, and finalists will be forwarded for judging.

All contestants will receive a letter announcing the winner and finalists along with one copy of The Tusculum Review vol. 7/2011.The winner and finalists will be listed on The Tusculum Review companion website in April 2011. The new issue will be mailed in May 2011.

Manuscripts will not be returned.

Mark all envelopes: FICTION CONTEST.

Send all work to:
The Tusculum Review
60 Shiloh Road
P.O. Box 5113
Greeneville, Tennessee 37743.

We accept checks and money orders made payable to The Tusculum Review.

For more information, contact the editors at:

review(at)tusculum.edu
(replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail) or
423.636.7300 ext. 5285.

Call for Poetry Submissions: Joaquin Miller Cabin Summer Poetry Series

The Joaquin Miller Cabin Summer Poetry Series is now taking applications for poets to read in the 2011 8-week series, June through July.

The readings take place in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., at the site of nineteenth century poet Joaquin Miller's cabin.

To apply please mail five poems, a brief bio paragraph, and an SASE for reply to:

Rosemary Winslow, Co-Director

Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series

Department of English

The Catholic University of America

Washington, DC 20064

Applications must be postmarked by March 31, 2011.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Twitter Pitch Contest to Agent Michael Carr

The Beyond Words blog is offering a Twitter Pitch Contest, a chance to pitch your book to Michael Carr of the Veritas Literary Agency. Pitches will be accepted until March 7, 2011 or until the first 75 have been posted. Good luck. You must post the pitch at the blog.

Here are the rules:

1) The contest is now live!
2) It will be capped at the first 75 entries or, if we don't get 75 entries, it'll cut off at Midnight GMT on the 7th March.
3) You have to be a follower of my blog to enter.
4) You have to blog about this contest and post your link along with the twitter pitch. (If you don't have a blog, then Twitter or Facebook will do. But only if you don't have a blog - not instead).
5) Alongside your 140 twitter pitch (you'll be disqualified if it's longer) you'll be asked to submit the first three sentences of your manuscript - so make sure they're polished and ready to go!
6) Once the contest opens, it'll be first come first serve to enter. Anything after 75 entries won't be counted.

Remember, Michael Carr is looking for any age any genre. And works should be completed if he was to request the full manuscript, but you may take the risk without a finished manuscript if you choose.

Good luck! And don't forget to include a link to your blog post/twitter/facebook with your entry. Please use the format as below:

Your name:
Title:

Genre & Age:
Twitter pitch:

3 Sentences:
Link to blog/twitter/facebook post:

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Call for Submissions: (chapbooks of poetry and mixed genre) Slash Pine Press

Call for Chapbook Manuscripts (Poetry and Mixed-Genre): Postmark May 1, 2011
Housed in the Department of English at The University of Alabama, SLASH PINE PRESS locates itself in an intellectual space where forms and intuitions make writing a process of risk and otherness—a space where the high stakes of creative inquiry make self-effacement impossible. Slash Pine fosters work that investigates the dimensions of place, whether construed as location or situation. Such work is, like the slash pine itself, able to survive in swamps and sandhills, to thrive in salt and heat, to occupy an imaginative landscape that is raw and
abrasive, and to expand its territory toward the interior. Neither cynical nor rhetorically meek, the work is concerned with but not limited by the map; its logic is global, written against the grain of history and biography. And where there is a cut, a thick sap flows.

Guidelines:

Deadline: Postmark by May 1, 2011.

Multiple submissions are acceptable; so are simultaneous submissions, but please notify us if manuscript is accepted elsewhere.

Include two copies of manuscript with two title pages; one with title only; one with title, author’s name, and full contact information.

Manuscripts should be no longer than 24 pages and be either poetry or mixed-genre.

No more than one poem or mixed-genre piece per page, please. No electronic submissions.

Do not send SASE. Manuscripts will be recycled.

All manuscripts receive a blind reading.

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

Reviewers: francine j. harris, Nathan Hauke, Abraham Smith, Patti White, Joseph P. Wood

Manuscript selections will be announced on our web site and Facebook page in late August.

SLASH PINE PRESS
Department of English
Box 870224
The University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Call for Submissions: Ontologica

Ontologica, a Bi-annual literary magazine of art and thought is open for submissions starting 3/1/2011 to 4/30/2011. We will be accepting submissions in Non-Fiction, Fiction, Poetry and Art.

Ontologica aims to present an eclectic mix of prose and art. Ours is a journal of differing perspectives. Readers will be just as likely to encounter the Christian as the Marxist, the relative as the absolute, the liberal as the conservative in the essays we present. We want to offer material that is illuminating, challenging, and, if need be, antagonizing. Above all it must accessible. Accessibility here doesn't just mean a lack of specialized language, but a writing style that invites the reader in. Work with a philosophical slant is preferred, but not required. What is required is contemporary relevance and, more or less, general appeal. (An essay on the difference between Transcendentalist and Romantic poetry, no matter how well written, will most likely not find a home in Ontologica). Unless you lived a sublimely amazing life, no so-called creative non-fiction or memoirs.

We will include a small amount of poetry, fiction, and visual art in every issue. There is no clear-cut definition of what we're looking for in fiction and poetry, though, like non-fiction, accessibility is a good keyword. We want fiction and poetry that moves beyond simple entertainment. In the words of Robert Bly, we want work that punches a hole in the pervading culture of denial: The health of any nation's soul depends on the capacity of adults to face the harsh facts of the time. Pieces that point to the injustices of the world and reminds us of our own mortality, rather than giving us reason to ignore them, will be greeted here. Genre pieces are okay as long as, like the work of Cormac McCarthy or Robert Heinlein, the story transcends the limitations of the genre. Pieces that treat intense subjects without linguistic finesse or subtlety will not likely appear in the magazine--bring us to the battle lines without blatant preaching, childish whining, or melodrama.

All this applies equally to visual art submissions. Above all the work must have a distinct sense of subject. No ultra-modern, Jackson Pollock slapdashery. This doesn't mean we want black-and-white photos of your lawn furniture. The art we present must engage our readers, whether through shock or awe.Ontologica wants art that fantastically suggests the possible, or horrifically portrays the actual.

Non-fiction and fiction submissions should be no more than 20 pages. Please send no more than five poems. Send all submissions to:
ontologicajournal(at)gmail.com
For more information visit our website.