Call for Submissions on Theme of "Branching Out--All About Trees": Prairie Fire

 

Prairie Fire 

Do you remember a time in childhood when you made friends with a particular tree, perhaps built a tree fort, climbed its branches and found solace, or whittled a piece of wood. Have you ever planted, nurtured, admired and taken delight in a tree, or its fruits? Perhaps you’ve planted a tree in memory of a loved one? Or, you may have found comfort in hugging a tree. And, in this time of ecological crisis, when climate change and deforestation are creating mass die-off for some trees, have you ever protested and fought to preserve them?

Throughout history, trees have served us from cradle to grave. They have been the foundation for our survival providing shelter, safety, cooling shade, tools, transportation, nourishment, medicine, companionship, stress reduction and a deep sense of connection. For writers and artists in particular, trees, forests and wood have served as inspiration.

Indigenous Peoples in Canada (and elsewhere) have a profound spiritual, cultural, and physical connection to trees. We have much to learn from this. Just this past spring, a small town in Quebec adopted a resolution that recognizes trees as living beings with rights. This is the first in Canada.

Prairie Fire invites you to branch out, go out on a limb, and shake the tree for your poems, stories and creative non-fiction that in some way includes and celebrates trees, forests and wood as central or supporting characters or themes.

Deadline: November 15th, 2026 11:59 p.m.

Submissions for this issue may be emailed or mailed. Emailed submissions still need to follow the submission guidelines.

Emailed submissions should be sent to:

prfire@prairiefire.ca

Subject: Branching Out

International submissions accepted.

The Cover Letter

The cover letter should be typed. Be sure to include the following:

***Please state in your cover letter that you are submitting to “Branching Out”*** 

Your pronouns

A two or three sentence biographical statement (in third person, if possible);

Your full mailing address, e-mail address and phone number;

The title of the piece you are submitting;

Let us know if you are just starting to send out your work.

The Manuscript

• Please only send on piece of creative non-fiction, fiction or up to 3 poems. We will not be accepting multiple submissions for this call.

• Please do not send updated versions of pieces once you have submitted. The piece you submit is the piece we review.

• Maximum length for creative non-fiction & fiction: 5000 words.

• Prairie Fire does not accept previously published work.

• Prairie Fire does not accept AI generated or AI assisted work. We want to hear your voice, not a computer’s.

• We ask that you let us know if your work is also submitted elsewhere, and, if it is accepted, to notify us right away.

• Your submission should be typed (double-spaced) on one side of the page only (for print submissions).

***Please Note: Due to the high volume of submissions we receive for special calls, we are only able to notify successful applicants. We will post a message on our social media when all successful applicants have been contacted, as well as on the Prairie Fire website. All successful applicants will be contacted by early January 2027 or sooner. If you do not hear from us by then, please assume we were unable to take your work.

***As well, please make sure prfire@prairiefire.ca and lindsey@prairiefire.ca are added as ‘safe senders’ in your email. We would hate to end up in your spam folder! Prairie Fire encourages persons of colour, LGBTQ+ & disabled writers, as well as writers from any other (or more than one) underrepresented community to submit.

Call for Submissions: Doric Literary

Doric Literary

To submit, simply attach one short story, saved as an MS Word document, to an email and send it to:

doric.literary@gmail.com

No cover letter is required* but be sure to include your story’s title, a word count, publication ready bio, and your social media handles in the body of the email.

GUIDELINES

We accept classically inspired short stories of 1,000 to 8,000** words. We want to be the venue for those harder to place, longer works of fiction. Please submit one story at a time and wait at least two weeks after receiving a response before making another submission.

By “classically inspired” we mean that the more it reads like something from Flannery O’Connor or Katherine Mansfield, the better. Other classic short story writers we like include: Somerset Maugham, James Baldwin, Anton Chekhov, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Guy de Maupassant, Bernard Malamud, Alice Munro, Philip Roth, & John Steinbeck. Contemporary settings are fine: think of stories like “Peach Cobbler” by Deesha Philyaw or “Sexy Motherfucker’s Mom” by Maureen Langloss.

This is a two-person operation, so sending a manuscript that is clear, polished, and as close to publication ready as possible will greatly improve your odds of acceptance.

Also, please do not send us the same story twice. It happens a lot – but it shouldn’t. Writers who keep track of their submissions are very wise.

We will never publish anything that promotes hate in any form, including racism, misogyny, sexism, homophobia, violence, ableism, transphobia, etc.

Here’s a list of likes and dislikes so you might have a better idea of what we’re looking for (and what is likely to turn us off):

Likes: 

• Compelling openings.

• Tension, especially tension that is introduced very early in the story.

• Stories with depth, layers of meaning, and symbolism.

• Realism, effective details, and visual writing.

• Satisfying conclusions.

• Fiction that feels like it was inspired by any of the classic short story writers listed above.

Dislikes:

• AI generated or AI assisted work.

• Experimental stories.

• Genre fiction: science fiction, vampires, mysteries, police/detective, or romance.

• Gun violence.

• Excessive drug use.

• Post-apocalyptic settings.

• Re-imagined fairy tales.

• Punch line endings.

• References to American Presidents.

• COVID stories.

• Office stories.

• Meandering plotlines.

• Directly quoting song lyrics. (Music industry lawyers are fierce and effective. Titles are safe to use but anything else might lead to a lawsuit. For example: You can say “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” but you can’t say “It’s a gas, gas, gas.”)

• Stories of the ancient world. (Note that we use the Doric temple as a metaphor for the classic short story form. We’re not looking for stories about Pericles, Aphrodite, Isis, or Neptune, but stories that feel like they were inspired by any of the classic short story writers listed above.)

SIM SUBS: Simultaneous submissions are fine and we trust you to let us know if your piece has been accepted elsewhere.

REPRINTS: Reprints are also fine as long as you own the rights and your submission does not currently appear, for free, elsewhere on the internet.

PAYMENT: Submissions are free. Although we do not pay for reprints, we offer a tiny honourarium (currently $15.00 USD / $20.00 CAD / £10.00 GBP) to writers for each piece originally published on this website. This payment can only be made via PayPal.

RIGHTS: We ask only for First Serial Rights, along with non-exclusive Electronic Archival Rights to showcase your work for the duration of the Doric Literary website. If you republish the work elsewhere, please credit us as the original publisher.

EDITS: Works that have been accepted for publication are edited in direct communication with the authors.

HOUSE STYLE: We cater to an international audience and accept whatever grammatical style each author prefers. You may find words on this website spelled with a superfluous “u”, or a “z” where you might expect an “s”, quotation marks may be double or single, regional dialects or colloquial expressions are fine with us. Don’t like the Oxford comma? No problem (You’re wrong but we’ll humour you). All we ask of writers is that the style remains consistent throughout their submission.

NOVEL EXCERPTS: We will consider novel excerpts, or chapters, provided they are within the word count listed above. Any excerpt must be able to stand alone and leave the reader feeling they have read a complete story.

LINKED FLASH PIECES OR MICROS: We’ll also consider submissions consisting of a series of flash fiction stories, or microfictions, provided that they clearly tell one unified story, add up to more than 1,000 words (and less than 8,000), and can be referred to by a single title. (Here’s an example from our editor: https://moonparkreview.com/issue-seventeen-fall-2021/frightened-animals/)

QUERIES: We’re a small team and we pride ourselves on a fast response time. Although most pieces are read and decided upon within a single day, please only query if you have waited more than two weeks for a response.

Call for Submissions: Amsterdam Review

Thank you for your interest in Amsterdam Review.

The magazine accepts poetry (including translations), flash fiction, essays, and interviews. We also accept photography and other fine arts. Please read our current and past issues to get an idea of the work we publish.

We read work during two submission windows: October 1 to December 31 for the Spring issue

April 1 to June 30 for the Fall issue. Work submitted outside of these periods will not be read.

We nominate select published works for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Please follow the guidelines below based on the type of material you are submitting. Submissions that fail to do so will not be considered for publication.

We want the words and stories that come to you, not those you have to go after.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

• Send all submissions to:

 AMSTERDAMREV@GMAIL.COM

• Simultaneous submissions are accepted and encouraged but please let us know if your piece is accepted elsewhere in the same email chain you sent the piece.

• No multiple submissions. Please leave at least six months between each submission.

• If we have published your writing or art before, please wait a year before submitting again.

• Only submit previously unpublished material that is your own work. You must own the copyright to any text or image you send us. If you are submitting translated work, you must have obtained permission to translate from the original author/publisher.

• We do not accept submissions of any kind that were written, developed, or assisted by AI tools such as ChatGPT.​

• Please allow up to 90 days for a response. You can contact us if you haven’t heard back from us after this time. We will respond to all submissions.

HOW TO SUBMIT WRITING

• Please submit your written content as a Microsoft Word attachment (.doc or .docx). 12-point Times New Roman is preferred. If submitting several pieces (e.g. poems), include them all in one document.

• Include the following information in the email:Name (as you would like printed)

• Email address

• Third-person bio (100 words max)

• Author website and any social media links – optional

• We recommend you also attach an author photo (JPEG or PNG file, 600 x 600 pixels preferred).

• Email subject line should be the genre followed by your name (i.e. Poetry – Robert Johnson).

GENRE-SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

Poetry

• Submit up to three poems (maximum of three pages each).

• Start each poem on a new page in your document.

• Title your poems, or specify ‘Untitled’ at the top of the piece.

Flash Fiction

• Submit one flash fiction piece (maximum 1,000 words).

• Add page numbers to your document.

Nonfiction (interviews and essays)

• Submit one nonfiction piece (maximum 3,000 words).

• Add page numbers to your document.

• We do not publish book reviews.

Photography (and Fine Arts)

• Email photographs as attachments or via G-drive. Share access with amsterdamrev@gmail.com

• Limit submissions to 15 images at a time.

• We are interested in photographs that center around architecture, nature, landscapes, urban scenes, etc. Abstract photos are also accepted.

• If submitting photos of people it is your responsibility to hold the person/people’s permission to be photographed, as well as their model release. Do not include photographs of anyone under 18 or who has not expressly given their consent to you in written form.

• Downscale large photos to a maximum of 1920px wide before submitting.

• Title your collection and send an artist statement outlining your creative process and methods used. You can see examples of these under our Photography and Fine Arts sections.

• We reserve the right to select accepted photos to accompany a piece of writing and/or to use on our website and promotional materials (we will always credit them).

Please note:

We are unable to offer paid compensation for accepted submissions at present.
If you are successful we will allow for one round of small edits to the work you have submitted; however the finished work must remain close to the material you originally sent.
By submitting to Amsterdam Review you will automatically be subscribed to our mailing list. You can unsubscribe at any time.