Call for Submissions: The Penn Review

Deadlines
Our Reading Period is now open! We are accepting submissions for poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and art from September 15th to November 5th.

The Penn Review only accepts submissions during our biannual reading periods: the Fall Reading Period (September – November) and the Spring Reading Period (February – March). Please submit your work to us using our Submittable platform. Submissions received outside of these reading periods or through e-mail will not be read.

Response Time
We aim to respond to all general submissions within two weeks, and usually reply within 1-2 days. Currently, we are listed as one of the 25 Fastest Poetry and Fiction Markets on Duotrope. Our editorial team works hard to fully deliberate over each work while ensuring that our submitters are not left waiting for months on end without a reply. We respond to every single submission, so an extended delay in response time means your work is still under consideration by our editorial team. If you haven’t heard from us within 30 days, you may query.

Please help us by reporting our response time on Duotrope.

Submission Guidelines
We accept submissions in the categories of Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Art. Individual submission guidelines for each category can be found on our General Submissions Form. Submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will not be considered. Submissions that are not received through our Submittable platform will also not be considered. Please do not e-mail us your submissions, as they will not be read.

Submissions are always open to the general public, there is no minimum age requirement or fee to submit. All submissions are read blind by our editorial team. For more information about the kind of work that we are looking for, you can refer to this interview.

Simultaneous Submissions
We accept simultaneous submissions, but please specify them in your cover letter and notify us immediately if your submission is accepted by another magazine.

Multiple Submissions
Please submit up to 5 poems, 3 short stories or nonfiction pieces, or 10 works of visual art at one time. As a general rule, fiction and nonfiction pieces should not exceed 2500 words in length. In addition, if you have received a rejection letter, please wait a week before submitting again.

Reprints
We don’t accept work reprinted from other magazines. Unfortunately, this includes submissions that have been published on a personal website or blog.

Rights
We require First North American Serial Rights. Following publication, all rights revert to the author, but we ask that The Penn Review is credited in subsequent reprints. In addition, we reserve the right to edit submissions in accordance with the rules of our style guide.

For updates on reading periods and issue publications, you can follow us on Facebook. 

Access our online submission form here.