Call for Submissions on Theme of HOT MESS: Stirring

Stirring Seeks Work for Themed Issue: HOT MESS 

Stirring is excited to announce our fourth annual themed issue: HOT MESS. We are looking for poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction celebrating the fantastical failures that we can’t look away from, moments when steering into the skid is the best decision. We are seeking work that makes us laugh, cry, and nod in agreement at the hot mess situation because sometimes life is so bad, it’s hilarious. The purpose of this theme is to bring light to situations when we feel we are alone at rock bottom, when in reality, many of us are at rock bottom together and afraid to talk about it. Let us all laugh with reckless abandon at the HOT MESS before us.

This themed issue will be guest edited by Amy Smith. Originally (and proudly) from northern Illinois, Amy is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Northern Michigan University, where she wrote a hundred poems about one hot mess of a farm. In addition to managing a university writing center, Amy is very publicly narrating the hot mess of her divorce on Facebook, and she is excited to be inspired by your hot messes as she begins to write more formally about her own. Amy's other hot messes appear in Cream City Review, Hippocampus, LIT Magazine, Stirring, Yemassee, and elsewhere.

Please send up to five poems in the body of an email to Luci Brown and Andrew Koch at:

stirring.poetryATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

with the subject line HOT MESS.

Send fiction submissions to Shaun Turner at:

stirring.fictionATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

and nonfiction submissions to Gabe Montesanti at:

stirring.nonfictionATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

 with the subject line HOT MESS. 

You may refer to our general submission guidelines for more specific, technical details.

The deadline for submissions is June 1st, 2018.