Call for Submissions: Epiphany: A Literary Journal

We hope that when you read Epiphany: A Literary Journal, you'll get a sense of the great variety of stories, poems, essays, and genre-bending work that we like, and the recurring themes to which we keep returning. We hope that you'll enjoy and connect with the work of your fellow writers, and that you'll feel you're a valued part of our community, rather than just another lonely writer sending your beloved work out into some unsympathetic void. We hope you'll see what makes us different. We hope you'll feel you have a stake in our endeavor.

GENERAL FALL/WINTER SUBMISSIONS will be open from May 1, 2025 through June 15th, 2025, 12AM EST.

To expedite our response, please remember these GUIDELINES FOR GENERAL SUBMISSIONS (FICTION):

1. Submit one story at a time.
2. Format in 12-pt font, double-spaced.
3. Withdraw promptly through Submittable should your work be accepted elsewhere.
4. We only consider previously unpublished work (online or in print).
5. Please include your name, title, and word count on the first page of the submitted file.
6. Fiction contributors will receive a payment of $175, and two contributor's copies of the journal.

To expedite our response, please remember these GUIDELINES FOR GENERAL SUBMISSIONS (POETRY):
1. Submit up to 5 poems at a time.
2. Format in 12-pt font, single-spaced (where appropriate).
3. Send us a Message (not a Note) informing us if a poem in your submission has been accepted for publication elsewhere.
4. We only consider previously unpublished work (online or in print).
5. Poetry contributors will receive a payment of $75 per poem and two copies of the journal.ent stage.

GUIDELINES FOR PROSE SUBMISSIONS (Translations):

1. Submit one story at a time.

2. Format in 12-pt font, double-spaced.

3. Withdraw promptly through Submittable should your work be accepted elsewhere.

4. Please include your name, title, and word count on the first page of the submitted file.

5. Translations require rights permission from the original writer.

6. Prose contributors will receive a payment of $175, and two copies of the journal.

GUIDELINES FOR POETRY SUBMISSIONS:

1. Submit up to 5 poems at a time.

2. Format in 12-pt font, single-spaced (where appropriate).

3. Send us a Message (not a Note) if one of the poems from your submission has been accepted for publicattion elsewhere.

4. Please include your name and title on the first page of the submitted file.

5. Translations require rights permission from the original writer.

6. Poetry contributors will receive a payment of $75 per poem and two copies of the journal.

To expedite our response, please remember these GUIDELINES FOR GENERAL SUBMISSIONS (Essays):
1. Submit one essay at a time.
2. Format in 12-pt font, double-spaced.
3. Withdraw your work promptly through Submittable should it be accepted elsewhere.
4. We only consider previously unpublished work (online or in print).
5. Please include your name, title, and word count on the first page of the submitted file.
6. Excerpts from books in progress, memoirs, or longer works are welcome.
7. Nonfiction contributors will receive a payment of $175 and two contributor's copies. 

Please submit your photography or artwork to be considered for the cover art of Epiphany, or as art for inside the magazine.

The cover will be printed in full-color with the magazine’s logo in overprint, and will be reproduced on the magazine’s website and electronic publications.

If your work is selected for use on our cover, we will ask you to grant us a one-time use of your image. You will also need to provide a high-resolution scan of the artwork (300 dpi), at the inch dimensions of our issue, for print-quality reproduction.

You can submit up to five images at a time. In the cover letter, feel free to provide any information about your artwork that we should know. Low-res images are acceptable for submissions, as long as high-res images can be provided when necessary. Please also specify if you are submitting art intended for inside the magazine or for the cover. Compensation offered for licensing this art is $100 per piece for art inside the issue and $300 for a cover.

Deadline for Art/Photography: Oct. 15, 2025

Submit your work here.

Writing Competition: The Tusculum Review 2025 Chapbook Prize

Contest Judge Jaime Cortez

Three-Part Award | A prize of $1,500, publication of the story in The Tusculum Review’s 21st volume (2025), and creation of a limited edition stand-alone chapbook with original art is awarded for the winning story.

To Enter | The entry fee is $20 per manuscript. Entry fees include a one-year subscription to The Tusculum Review (an annual publication) and consideration for publication in our 21st volume (2025). We encourage international submissions but must charge an additional $15 fee to mail the journal to locations outside the U.S.

Deadline | The deadline for submitting is June 15, 2025. All entries should be sent through Submittable:

tusculumreview.submittable.com

We do not accept mailed or emailed submissions, but if Submittable is a hardship, let us know at:

review@tusculum.edu

Single Story Length | Each manuscript should consist of a single story in a standard 12-point font, double-spaced. Stories may be between 2,000 words (about 7 manuscript pages) and 7,000 words (22 pages).

Unpublished Entries | Stories may not have been previously published nor be forthcoming. You are welcome to submit your story to other publications or contests while we consider it for the prize, but please alert us if your story is going to be published or honored elsewhere, so we can take it out of the running. If you have more than one story to submit, create a new entry for each.

Anonymous Manuscripts | Please do NOT include your name or any other identifying information on any page of the story manuscript.

Contest Judge | Contest judge Jaime Cortez and editors of the The Tusculum Review will determine the winner of the 2025 prize. Family, friends, and previous students of the contest judge and the The Tusculum Review editors are disqualified from the competition, as are those with reciprocal professional relationships. Previous winners of Tusculum Review contests are also disqualified. Previous finalists and honorable mentions may enter.

Blind Judging | Names and identifying information will not be visible to the judges. The Tusculum Review reserves the right to extend the call for manuscripts or cancel the award. We have only canceled one of the 30+ contests we’ve hosted, due to single-digit entries. We look forward to reading your work.

Publication Rights | Except for second printings of the journal due to demand, all rights to material in The Tusculum Review and chapbooks revert to the individual authors and artists after publication (first serial rights). We request that you acknowledge us if you reprint work we published first. The chapbook design belongs to The Tusculum Review. Tusculum University does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, identity, religion, veteran or military status, citizenship status, ethnic origin, or disability.

Chapbook Launch and Marketing | The debut of the prizewinning chapbook is our most important annual event. When possible, we bring the prizewinner to campus for the live launch, where they read for, and take questions from, an audience of community members and students, many of whom have already read and discussed the writer’s work: the prizewinner is greeted by fans. The visiting writer may be asked to lead a workshop of student fiction earlier in the day. A student editor will interview and write a profile of the winning author for publication on our website in advance of the launch event. We will use photographs of the author, quotes from their story, and blurbs from the contest judge to market the prizewinning chapbook and the event. After filming the live launch, we’ll include portions of the recording on our website. We will submit the prizewinning story for consideration for the Pushcart Prizes, the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and other relevant recognition.

Contest judge Jaime Cortez is a California writer and artist based in Watsonville and the SF Bay Area. His writing and drawings have appeared in Kindergarten: Experimental Writing For Children (Black Radish Press), No Straight Lines (Fantagraphics), Street Art San Francisco (Abrams Press), and Infinite Cities (UC Berkeley Press). He wrote and illustrated the graphic novel Sexile for AIDS Project Los Angeles. His debut short story collection, Gordo, was published in 2021 by Black Cat, an imprint of Grove Atlantic. Gordo received national acclaim from the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It was nominated for the Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Fiction and the Lambda Literary Award for fiction, and was named a best book of the year by National Public Radio and Bookpage. Cortez received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and his MFA from UC Berkeley. Jaime’s website is www.jaimecortez.org

Call for Submissions: The Disappointed Housewife

The Disappointed Housewife seeks fiction, essays, and poetry – along with unclassifiable writings, photos, and drawings – that stretch genre definitions, break the rules, challenge readers, and bend their brains, all while maintaining the highest levels of style and substance.

We think that literature has to evolve, that it should keep up with the world around it even if it doesn’t reflect it so much as use it. Taunt it. Remold it, when required.

We’re looking for stories that strike us as different, always with that idiosyncratic touch. Iconoclastic. Kind of bent. Humorous. Poems that find the metaphors we’ve been looking for but never quite landed on. Essays that take us away from the usual and into the world of the unseen and overlooked.

Above all, The Disappointed Housewife is a literary journal. We aren’t looking for genre material, though if your submission manipulates a genre in a literary way, we might just bite.

A little more specifically: we aren’t interested in romance, science fiction, thrillers, horror, fantasy, or erotica in their typical forms. We’ll cut you some slack, though. Just be sure that your work adheres to the general mission of The Disappointed Housewife.

Which is, to put it more plainly, to provide readers with great writing they can’t get anyplace else.

Submit your previously unpublished work by email to:

thedisappointedhousewife@gmail.com 

and paste the entire submission in the body of the email. We do not open unsolicited attachments. For poetry, do your best to recreate line breaks and other layout elements in the email, with the understanding that it will appear on the site, if it’s accepted, exactly the way you want it. For all submissions, provide a brief bio written in the third person; feel free to include links to your work available online.

By submitting to The Disappointed Housewife, you grant us first electronic rights, nonexclusive anthology rights, and archival rights should the work be accepted. All rights revert back to you after publication. If you elect to publish the piece elsewhere, you agree to cite The Disappointed Housewife as the original publisher.

We do consider simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere while under consideration here. Submit to only one category at a time.

Understand that if your work is accepted, you will likely not be able to publish it elsewhere (i.e., at another, perhaps more famous, magazine). Most outlets don’t consider previously published material, and your piece’s appearance here will be considered a publication.

If your work is rejected, please wait thirty days before your next submission. If your work is accepted and published, we ask that you wait one year before submitting new material.

Flash fiction and creative nonfiction should be 1000 words or less. Submit only one piece at a time. Submit up to three poems. For items that are harder to categorize (lists, faux official documents, parodic advertising, humorous-text tattoos …), we’ll know the right length when we see it, but understand that exceptions to the word limit are going to be rare.

A word on form

There’s so much that can be done in terms of the way readers “read” literature now. Words on a page, sure. But you could construct a short story entirely in tweets or phone texts. Or handwrite poetry on 3 x 5 index cards and photograph them (please write legibly). A photo slide show with enigmatic captions. A facsimile of someone’s job application. The menu of a hip restaurant that’s on the forefront of insect haute cuisine. A story made up of urls that readers click on to go on a virtual journey.

There’s a story in almost anything that’s written, even if it was told unintentionally.

In other words, writers who can think of unorthodox and offbeat ways to tell their stories will be highly appreciated here at The Disappointed Housewife.

We hope to be challenged, and if your idea isn’t easily translated to basic website conventions, we’ll work with you to figure out a way to get it out there.

Think multimedia. Think imagistic. Sound clips. Facsimile. DIY. Objects as literature. “The medium is the message.”

Call for Submissions: Taco Bell Quarterly

We are back, pretending to make our literary magazine again. We are the Taco Bell Quarterly, a Prestigious Literary Magazine that is opening for submissions on 4/20/25.

We are looking for prose, poetry, art, and beyond for our eighth issue, which will be available to read for free online, and to buy in print in the late fall.

We will pay $150.

What are we looking for: works of literature that intersect with Taco Bell.

Does it have to be about Taco Bell? Does it have to mention it? It’s the Taco Bell Quarterly. The joke is that it’s our only guideline. Also, we do not have any guidelines. We have no rules. You can say whatever you want. We have an aesthetic. We have a vibe. Read our last 3 issues especially to get a sense of the direction we’ve been going in.

But also, yes, it can and should be about Taco Bell too, because that is the joke of the literary magazine, in which every piece has a recurring product placement. Because life might happen in a Taco Bell, or with a Taco Bell logo in the background for a moment. That moment of product placement may be chosen sincerely, sarcastically, however you see fit to tell your story and land in The Taco Bell Quarterly. Why that moment? Why are you telling that story? It’s probably not the Taco Bell. And we’re not Taco Bell. We’re just the strangers in the background listening in on your conversations. Tell us a good story.

We are interested in presenting pieces that are in conversation with one another, and often the mention of Taco Bell is the tiny thread that connects these larger stories.

Send us your war plans, stories, poems, art, comics, scientific research banned by the government, manifestos, Spanish language pieces, sea shanties, deep dives, recipes, games, and other things that would scare the Dandy and make him puke in his top hat.

TLDR: we’re like the Paris Review but with bean burritos

Prose: The sweet spot we usually publish is 500-2500 words, but we’re open to considering up to 4k words. Short stories for when my attention span which has been whittled down 1.2 seconds by the internet and weed. Why are you making this up, ask yourself with a violent shaking of the self

Flash fiction yes of course we love it and we love you

Creative Non Fiction: moments, essays, hybrid autofiction undefinable art as self, realizations, peer reviewed studies, primal screams

CNF but it’s longer, more involved, and needs editing. Pitch me in email in a paragraph, but you’re going to have to look up my email, impress me with your bylines, or have an idea that is so good that I can’t say no, which is equally as difficult as just pitching it to a general submission pile. Choose your own adventure.

Poems: someone said about one poem in our last issue (paraphrasing) “I want to write like this but then I don’t think anyone will get it, but TBQ gets it, so I should just do it”

Actual editorial guidelines: 1-4 poems, yeah fine, and there can be 5 or 6 if you’re undecided. Try me. The 5th one you almost left out because of some dumb guideline is the one I’m going to like the most.

Art/Visuals: Art that touches. Art that jumps off the page and touches. The touch the feel of cotton the fabric of our lives. Whatever is the opposite of art in hotel rooms. Unexpected art. Found art. No AI bullshit. We will shame you in front of cool writers.

Comics: Our comics have been fucking amazing and honestly could have been published literally anywhere else so we have no idea why their artists chose us. Send us something distinct, in your style, make it pop, give it narrative; we’ll take pencil pen watercolor digital. Send us stuff that TERFS wouldn’t re-tweet and weird teenagers would like on Tumblr.

Things That Are Not Literary: Smut, romance, aliens, elves, serial killers, detectives, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and beyond. We want to publish more, but we are also looking for Literary writing. Whatever that means to you. – see Rae Wilde in TBQ6 for a good example of something that worked.

Other: I want to find Waldo trying to escape the pit of hell. Think outside the bun / think outside the crossword puzzle. RPGs. I would love to see an old school board game across two pages.

Deadline: The last time we were open we got 3k subs in just a little over 3 months, so we will not be open that long. We will probably cap about 1500 subs, so we may be open for a month -ish? If you miss the cap, you can always email it. Don’t stress. We’re barely a real lit mag.

Submit here.

Call for Submissions: M E N A C E: a magazine of the literary weird

We are always open for submissions. Before submitting, read our mission carefully to understand if your work is a fit.

Requirements by Genre

Fiction — Limit 10k words, double-spaced, standard font.

Flash (fiction or CNF) — Limit 1k words, double-spaced, standard font.

Poems — Submit up to 5 poems in one packet, limit 10 pages.

Art — Submit up to 3 pieces at a time, black/white or color.

Reviews, essays, and cultural critique — Please query the editors at:

menacesubmissions[AT]gmail[DOT]com (Change [AT] to @ and [DOT] to .)

with a pitch for your piece. We do not accept completed reviews at this time.

We do accept hybrid work. Please submit work to the category most associated with your work. Indicate the work is a hybrid piece within your submission email.

How to Submit

Email your submission to:

menacesubmissions[AT]gmail[DOT]com (Change [AT] to @ and [DOT] to . )

Please attach your submission as a .DOC, .DOCX, or .PDF file using a standard serif font. For art submissions, submit as a .JPG file.

In the subject line of your email, please indicate the category to which you’re submitting. EXAMPLE: “Fiction for Menace”

In the body of your email, please include the title of your piece(s), word count (prose only), and a brief third-person bio (<100 words), and content warnings (if applicable). That’s it. We don’t want anything else.

Note that “transgressive” does not mean “traumatizing.” We reject work that uses trauma purely for shock value. Do better. Transcend the tired tropes.

Please do NOT include any verbiage in your email to explain your submission, whether about theme, topic, inspiration, or mission. Let your work speak for itself.

We accept simultaneous submissions. Please let us know immediately if your work has been accepted elsewhere.

We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit to one genre and wait to hear back before submitting again.

After you receive our decision on your submission, please wait three months before resubmitting unless we have expressly requested new work from you.

We do not accept previously published work.

We do not accept AI-generated content.

Submissions that do not follow these guidelines will be disregarded.

Upon acceptance, we request First North American Serial Rights for publication. Following publication, all rights revert back to the author. We ask that you credit M E N A C E as the place your work first appeared.

Feedback/Tip Jar Submissions

If you would like feedback from our editors, including in-text markups and a 1-2 paragraph overall response, we offer the following tip jar submission options. Make payments via PayPal to:

menacesubmissions[AT]gmail[DOT]com (Change [AT] to @ and [DOT] to .) 

and indicate your feedback request within your submission email.

M E N A C E is a paying market:

1-3 poems — $15

Flash (fiction or CNF) — $15

Fiction — $30

Writing Competition: Salamander 2025 Fiction Prize

Salamander 2025 Fiction Prize

First Prize: $1,000 and Publication
Second Prize: $500 and Publication

 

$20 Reading Fee: Includes One-Year Subscription

 Final Judge: Helen Phillips

SUBMISSIONS OPEN FROM MAY 1 – JUNE 1, 2025

All entries will be considered for publication. All entries will be considered anonymously.

• Send no more than one story per entry. Each story must not exceed 30 double-spaced pages or 7500 words in 12 point font. Multiple entries are acceptable, provided that a separate reading fee is included with each entry.

• Please submit a separate cover sheet with each entry, containing the title of the story and your name, address, phone number, and email. Your name or any other identifying characteristics should not appear anywhere on the story itself.

• Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but the contest fee is non-refundable if the submission is withdrawn. Please notify the editors as soon as possible if a submitted story is accepted elsewhere.

• Previously published works and works accepted for publication elsewhere cannot be considered. Salamander’s definition of publishing includes electronic publication.

• Salamander will not consider work from anyone currently or recently (within the past 4 years) affiliated with Suffolk University or the prize judge.

Contest results will be posted on:

 

salamandermag.org

 

by September 1.

Contest reading fee includes a one-year subscription. We will send your subscription to the address given unless instructed otherwise. If more than one subscription is purchased, additional subscriptions may be gifted to another reader. International addresses will receive a one-year online subscription; those who prefer a print subscription, please add $20 for subscription postage.

WE ARE ONLY ABLE TO ACCEPT ONLINE SUBMISSIONS IN 2025. We apologize for any inconvenience, and thank you for your understanding.

 

Submit your entry here.

Call for Submissions to Anthology: Made from Midnight

Made from Midnight Anthology

We are a small group of women---poets, editors, and authors---who started this project last year with one goal: collaboration. We've seen first hand the amazing things connection can do for our spirits, minds, and bodies. We would love nothing more than to have you join us! It gives us great pleasure to write these next words: Welcome to Poets in the Pines' very first anthology

Death, in all its forms, has the power to unravel us—one thread at a time. But in the unmaking, we are woven into something greater, something stronger. We are searching for works of short prose and poetry that explore this dark and often lonely quest through the graveyard, discuss the deals made with demons to grant us one more day, and most importantly, say the unsaid in a way that makes readers question if they’ve written the words themselves. Do not limit yourself to grief. Death involves many facets: the afterlife, the supernatural, transition, aging, etc. Be creative! We’re interested in exceptional writing, strong feelings, and vivid imagery—Gothic, floral, or whatever surprising images death evokes for you.

Please do not send graphic horror or gruesome violence.

A group of three professional editors and authors will judge each piece in an unbiased and anonymous process. Your writing will be scored a 1-5 on the following: creativity, technicality, imagery, and alignment to theme, with the highest score being a 20.

Submit your work here.

PLEASE NOTE: At this time, there are no costs for submission. However, offering a donation will allow us to give you honest and constructive feedback on your work, whether you are accepted or not.

A percentage of proceeds will go to a charity TBD.

If your entry is accepted, you will be sent a contract via email.

Contributors receive one free copy of the book after publishing. Global authors, we kindly ask that you cover shipping costs.

Deadline to submit: June 6, 2025.