Writing Competition: Hayden's Ferry Review Fiction & Poetry Contest

We will accept submissions to the Hayden’s Ferry Review Fiction & Poetry Contest between February 1-28, 2026. 

There will be two prizes of $1000 each and publication in HFR (online in summer 2026 and in the fall/winter 2026 print issue) for a poem or a group of poems and a work of fiction. A runner-up in each category will receive $250 and publication. All entries are considered for publication.

This year’s fiction judge is Gina Chung, author of Sea Change and Green Frog. Our poetry judge is Sarah Ghazal Ali, author of Theophanies.

View a list of our past winners and judges here.

Submit 1-3 poems totaling up to 10 pages or a short story or novel excerpt of up to 20 pages with a contest entry fee.

You can choose between a $15 entry fee, which comes with a 1-year digital subscription or a $23 entry fee, which comes with a 1-year print subscription. For international addresses outside of the US, please select a digital subscription. Your 1-year subscription will begin with our spring/summer 2026 issue. Current subscribers will receive a 1-year renewal. Writers may submit multiple entries, but each entry must include its own entry fee.

*If you have an international shipping address and are interested in a 1-year print subscription, we are happy to accommodate this with an additional shipping fee. Please get in touch before submitting and no later than February 20th to discuss details at haydensferryreview (at) gmail (dot) com.

Judges will pick the winners and runner-ups from a list of finalists chosen by HFR editors. All entries are considered for publication in the fall/winter 2026 print issue. We do not read submissions anonymously.

How to submit

Between Feb 1-28, 2026 submit your work to the appropriate genre at https://hfr.submittable.com/

Submitted work must be original work by the writer and unpublished. If your work is accepted elsewhere for publication, please withdraw your submission. If only a part of your poetry submission has been accepted elsewhere, please leave a note in Submittable.

Eligibility

Close friends, family, or former and current students of the judges should refrain from submitting. We define a "former or current student" as someone who has done a semester-length course with the judge or who the judge has served as a thesis advisor. If you attended a one- or two-week-long workshop or similar with the judge, you are still eligible.

If you were published in one of HFR's print journals or web issues in the past two years, you CAN submit to this contest. (See our "general notes on submission" for specific guidelines for our print and web issues, which may differ from contest guidelines.)

Anyone affiliated with ASU (staff, faculty, and graduate/undergraduate students) is not eligible to submit to this contest and should refrain from submitting to HFR until they have been unaffiliated from ASU for three years.

We do not accept work that was produced wholly or in part by AI.

All individuals are able to submit without regard to sex, race, national origin, religion, disability or any other characteristic protected by law.

Call for Submissions: Tarry Magazine

tarry is…

an annual literary magazine of original short fiction, poetry, art and other creative works inspired by the people, history, and geography of the Tarrytowns.

At the turn of the 19th century, this area inspired Washington Irving to write some of our nation’s most enduring stories, giving a voice to Americana and forever shaping our country’s folklore.

tarry builds on that legacy to entertain, delight, and inspire—and to tell some good stories.

Thank you for your interest in submitting to tarry! The best way to know what we’re looking for is by reading our inaugural issue, which you can find at Transom Bookshop in Tarrytown and other wonderful local bookstores.

Want something a little more succinct? Ok, sure—check out our frequently asked questions. Other than the guidance there, we’d say that we love pieces that:

• have a strong sense of place, whether that place happens to be where Irving lived and set his stories, or anywhere else;

• are inspired by or offer a different take on some aspect of folklore;

• offer a “slice of life” look at a particular place at a particular time, commenting or analyzing some aspect of either;

• and of course, reflect on, illustrate or explore some aspect of the Tarrytowns’ past, present or future.

This year, we’re excited to announce that contributors will be paid for their work! The payment amount will be determined after we finalize all selections.

 

Deadline: March 15, 2026 

You may submit up to

5 poems (max 100 lines per poem),

3 pieces of artwork (black and white preferred; no photography),

1 short story (1,000- 7,500 words),

2 flash fiction pieces (500-1,000 words each),

1 essay (1,000- 3,000 words).

 

You may submit across multiple categories by completing the form multiple times.

 

Each piece must be submitted in a completely separate file (including poems) so they can be judged on their individual merit.

 

Submit your work here. 

Call for Submissions: Haven Speculative

Fiction Guidelines

We like stories that are subtle in their telling and stick with us long after we've finished, and we're more likely to buy stories that balance a sense of wonder with a bold plot and emotional depth. For our two issues focused on the climate crisis, we're particularly interested in publishing stories from people displaced by or threatened by the climate emergency. For our other four issues, we're open to a wide variety of stories across the SFF and weird spectra.

• Pay: 8¢ per word for original fiction

• Word limit: 5000 words

• Language: English

• File type: .doc, .docx, .rtf

• Rights: We buy first serial print and electronic rights for publication of the story in the English language and throughout the world. We also buy non-exclusive archival rights for our website and non-exclusive anthology rights.

Poetry Guidelines

We like poems that use complex fixed verse forms (think sestina, awdl gywydd, masnavi, etc) as well as free verse. Most important to us is vivid imagery, clever lyricism, and a strong emotional core. For our two issues focused on the climate crisis, we're particularly interested in publishing poems from people displaced by or threatened by the climate emergency. For our other four issues, we're open to a wide variety of poems across the SFF and weird spectra.

• Pay: $20 per original poem

• Limit: Five poems, submitted in a single submission

• Language: English

• File type: .doc, .docx, .rtf

• Rights: We buy first serial print and electronic rights for publication of the story in the English language and throughout the world. We also buy non-exclusive archival rights for our website and non-exclusive anthology rights.

February: General Submissions Window

A brief note on AI/LLMs: Haven Spec Magazine is only interested in stories, poems, and art created by humans (and maybe very smart whales). Please do not use AI or LLMs to generate your fiction, poetry, or art, in part or in whole. Any submissions which are determined by our editorial team to have used AI or LLMs will be rejected.

Acolyte Submission System 

• We are testing out our new submission system (the Acolyte Submission System), and there will undoubtedly still be bugs to work out. So, when you submit, please keep the following in mind:

• Your submission may take several seconds to go through.

• You can only submit one story at a time, but if we pass on it, feel free to submit again without waiting.

• You can only submit five poems at a time, and they should all be in a single file.

• You will get an email confirming your submission. If, after an hour or two, you haven't gotten confirmation (and you've checked your spam folder), you should feel free to submit the same piece again. Just indicate in the cover letter that it is a do-over. This will also help troubleshoot any lingering problems in the code. 

More information and submission portal here. 

Call for Submissions: Ecotone

 

Ecotone, the literary magazine dedicated to reimagining place, welcomes work from a wide range of voices. We are particularly interested in place-based work by people and from perspectives historically underrepresented in literary publishing and in place-based contexts: writers and artists who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, people with disabilities, people who are gender-nonconforming and LGBTQIA+, women, people with low access to wealth, people from rural places, and others. We welcome the work of emerging writers of all ages and walks of life. Please review our complete guidelines before submitting. We strongly encourage writers to read work we’ve published before sending their own. A selection of writing and art from recent issues is featured on our website, where you can also order a copy of the magazine or subscribe.

Spring 2026

We will open to general submissions in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction this spring, and will be reading for upcoming unthemed issues and for the Delight Issue. Given the overwhelming response to our recent reading periods, for our fee-free window we will cap submissions at 250.

Opening Feb. 2: Fee-free submissions (closes after 250 submissions)
Feb. 2–4: General window ($3 fee via Submittable)
Feb. 2–March 2: Current subscribers may submit (no fee)

Valentine’s Day 2026

Happy Valentine’s! For our annual fee-free Valentine’s Day window, we invite submissions of work we love and would like to see more of. This year we’re looking only for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that engage directly with the climate crisis, and for work that responds to our call for the Delight Issue. Please do send us work that directly addresses these things, and don’t send anything else—if you have other work to share, wait for our next reading period. Thanks, Valentines!

If you already submitted during one of our general windows, but have additional work that fits these criteria, feel free to send one additional submission on Valentine’s Day.

This reading period is one day only: February 13. 

Prose

We appreciate a wide range of essays, and are especially interested in nonfiction that engages deeply, but not overly seriously, with the sciences—ecology, natural history, and other fields, in both Western and non-Western contexts.

We like to see fiction that is deeply rooted in place, and/or that engages similarly with ecology, natural history, climate crisis, et al.

A prose submission consists of one prose piece (fiction or nonfiction) of no more than thirty double-spaced pages (approx. 10,000 words).
Most work we run is shorter than this upper limit.
We are also interested in shorter prose works (minimum 2,000 words, please).

Poetry

We are especially interested in poetry that engages with the social and natural sciences and/or considers place, ecology, identity, and climate crisis, as well as poetry that uses form, meter, and/or other poetic constraints in innovative and expansive ways. Work in the French repeating forms (rondeaux, ballades, rondelets, and the like) as well as in newer forms (golden shovels, fibs, etc.) is especially encouraged, as is work that employs meters other than iambic.

A poetry submission consists of three (minimum) to five (maximum) poems.

Accepted Work

We are dedicated to supporting our contributors with a thoughtful editorial process.

We use Microsoft Word to send edits. If Word is not a good option for you, we can also work in OpenOffice or Pages.

Contributors receive an honorarium upon publication, with a $100 minimum; two copies of the issue in which their work appears; and a one-year subscription beginning with the subsequent issue.

Thanks for thinking of Ecotone! We look forward to reading your work.

More information and submission link here.

Call for Submissions: The Celestial Glossary Literary Magazine

 

Submissions Open February 1st!
The first 100 submissions are free, after we have reached our limit there will be a $3 dollar fee to submit. This fee will be used to help us pay our authors.

Estrella House Publishing accepts work from new and established authors. Our interests are in poetry that questions and maintains a sense of beauty, narrative or not. We want fiction with an intriguing narrative or characters. Nonfiction should leave us with seduced and thoughtful.

Whatever you write, bewitch us! Allow us to be absorbed in your world.

We do not, and will not, accept any works that promote any form of hatred, bigotry, or violence. Likewise, AI-generated works will not be considered nor accepted. Please do not send it in.

Format

• Length Fiction and creative nonfiction: 1 piece up to 7,000 words

• Comic strips: up to 15 pages

• Visual art submissions: up to 4 per submission

• Poetry: up to 5 poems per submission

Please only submit once per open call.

Genre

While we do not limit around genre, certain genres will have a lower chance of success. Those genres are: 

Sci-Fi
Erotica
Mystery
Thriller
Technical Specifications

Please submit your manuscripts in any legible 12-point font with double-spaced paragraphs, page numbers in the footer, and 1-inch margins.

Please ensure that all written submissions are in one document.

On page 1 please include the author’s name, submission title, genre, and 75 character bio.

If you are writing in genre fiction, please make a note of that genre as well.

How to Submit

We consider submissions online via submission portal only. Snail or e-mail submissions will not be considered.

We do not consider unsolicited submissions via email.

Simultaneous Submissions

We are happy to consider manuscripts that have also been submitted elsewhere. Though, please notify us immediately if your work is accepted by another journal.

Rights

Estrella House Publishing reserves First North American Rights to any work that is published on our platform.

We do not accept any work that has been previously published in a literary or arts journal, forum/archival site, or an online blog.

Payments

We are excited to pay our authors. Estrella House utilizes a revenue share system where authors get a portion of ad revenue generated from views to their work and a portion of submission fees. Because we are a new publication, we cannot yet guarantee any flat rates.

Fees

We are submission fee free for the first 100 writers. After that, we will have a small $3.00 fee to help pay our writers.

We offer a fee waiver for people who identify as a historically marginalized group. To apply: email us with the subject line: Fee Waiver – Your Name. 

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: The Rebis

 

Submissions are open January 18-February 17, 2026.

The fifth anthology of The Rebis will focus on The Moon (XVIII), and we are open for submissions from January 18-February 17 at 12pm PT.

As with previous issues, the work should be deeply intimate. We are looking for original writing, artwork, and any other form of creative expression that you dream up inspired by the 18th card of the Major Arcana. Send us work that is subversive, provocative, erotic, and deliciously alive.

We are interested in exploring: 

• nonlinear time, ancestral time, dream time

• ancestry, inherited memory & collective grief

• disorientation & bewilderment

• resistance to Western logics of coherence

• diverse cultural understandings of the Moon

• tidal intelligence & water stories (Tidalectics, flood states, brackish zones, amniotic memory)

• lunar states beyond Full/New Moon (progressed lunations, eclipses)

• subcultural spaces & underground worlds

• nonhuman consciousness, shapeshifting, anti-anthropomorphism, biodiversity

• themes inspired by Borderlands/La Frontera (Gloria Anzaldúa)

• protection magic

• decolonial, Black, feminist, and mythic frameworks

• work inspired by thinkers such as David Abram, Bayo Akomolafe, Octavia Butler, Gloria Anzaldúa, Edouard Glissant, Hélène Cixous, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Toni Morrison, Rebecca Solnit, Christina Sharpe, Simone Weil, Francis Weller

The ideas shared here are simply thought-starters. We encourage you to take an imaginative, deconstructionist lens. We are looking for diversity and originality in both creative techniques, artistic formats, and concepts explored.

To submit, please fill out this form.

Writing: We are especially interested in publishing experimental and genre-bending work (creative non-fiction, short stories, flash fiction). Personal memoirs, researched articles, interviews, and poetry are all welcome, too. For full guidelines, please refer to the submissions form.

Artwork: Photography, illustrations, paintings, comics/graphic stories, digital art, and collage art are all welcome. Multimedia work that weaves print + digital into an immersive and/or interactive experience is always fun. Artwork needs to fit into our vertical magazine orientation. For full guidelines, please refer to the submissions form.

Collaborative work: We enjoy seeing work incorporating multiple collaborators—art and writing that pair together, dual bylines, an epistolary project, etc. If you are submitting as a collaborative project, please submit one time only, but include the names, bios, and links to examples of work for all people involved.

Only submit unpublished work: Please submit previously unpublished work. By "unpublished" we mean that it hasn’t appeared in any print or digital publications beyond your own social channels or website.

To submit: Please fill out this form by 12pm PT February 17, 2026. Contributor decisions will be made in February, and complete/final work will be due in mid-April.

Questions: If you have any questions about the submissions process, please email:

submissions@therebis.com

We love workshopping ideas and helping you bring your concepts to life.

AI policy: We do not accept AI-generated content or artwork.

Payment: The Rebis believes in compensating writers and artists for their work. Right now, we can afford to pay each contributor $200 for longer-form essays or short stories, and two pages of poetry or artwork. We pay $100 for pieces of flash fiction, single page poems, and one page of artwork.

Disclaimer: By submitting your work to The Rebis, you agree to grant our publication first serial rights as well as electronic archival rights. If your submission is accepted, you’ll grant The Rebis a license to use the submission on all its assets; however, you’ll retain ownership. By submitting your work, you confirm that your work is original and does not violate copyright laws. Full terms will be sent out in a Contributor Agreement.

Writing Competition: Pride MicroChapbook Series

pride microchapbook series

During the month of June 2026, fifth wheel press will publish 22 queer single-author or collaborative microchapbooks (one each weekday). These small collections will be available to download digitally for free.

First, credit where credit is due: the idea to run this series is heavily inspired by the Ghost City Press Summer Series (Kevin Bertolero), which published my first micro-collection in 2023. I also owe credit to Katherine Fallon from Whittle Micro-Press for showing me the true power a tiny collection can wield, as well as Kendall A. Bell from Maverick Duck Press and Aldrin Badiola from Artists from Maryland for implementing similar micro publishing practices.

Send us anything—any genre, any style, any subject. The only restriction is a hard page count cap of 10 pages of content (not including title page, acknowledgments, etc). Please do include acknowledgments if there is anything previously published in your collection; a ToC is not needed. Pieces in the collection may have been previously published, but please don't send us something that's been published before as a whole.

Additional specifics

Selected manuscripts will be published digitally by fifth wheel press for $0+ on Ko-fi. Any tips received will be paid to you, the author, on a biannual basis at the end of June and December.

If selected, your collection’s cover will be designed in house style for your approval. We are not able to accommodate outside cover artists at this time.

This does not come with our standard publishing contract—for simplicity’s sake, we’re treating it more like a big issue of a literary magazine than a book. Your agreement to participate in the series upon acceptance will grant us first global electronic publishing rights to all works contained in the collection (or second rights, if they’ve been published before).

No waiting period for previous fwp authors! We’d love to get some of y’all in the mix.

Submissions are open and close on March 10.
Submit via Duosuma

Call for Submissions: Shadowplay

Shadowplay is currently OPEN to submissions.

Our reading window is from October 15th to March 15th.

How to submit your work.

We will only accept previously unpublished work—including digital/online content—submitted through email at:

shadowplaylit@gmail.com

Please put “Genre: FirstName LastName” as your email subject line (for example, Fiction: Elvis Presley). We aim to respond to submissions within six months.

Length and styling

There is no minimum word count, but please make sure fiction and nonfiction submissions are at 2,500 words or under. Poetry must be at or under five typed pages, with each new poem beginning on a separate page.

Keep submitted work in a single document, attached as a .doc or .docx. Do not copy and paste work into the body of the email and do not use .pdf unless the format requires it.

Bio

Include a third-person bio—100 word maximum—in the body of your emailed submission. A cover letter is not necessary.
Submission fee
Submitting material to Shadowplay is absolutely free.

Multiple submissions
You are welcome to submit once per period to each genre. If submitting to different genres, please do so in separate emails.

Simultaneous submissions
Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. We do request that you notify us as soon as possible if you intend to publish your piece elsewhere.

Feedback and payment
We regrettably cannot give individual feedback on submissions, nor are we a paying market. All contributors will receive one complimentary print copy of their contributing issue. Additional copies may be purchased from Amazon.

 

Permissions
We will consider all submitted work for the print journal; some work will additionally be featured on Shadowplay’s website. We acquire first North American serial rights for all accepted work.