Call for Submissions: Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art

Five Points welcomes unsolicited submissions of fiction, poetry, flash fiction, literary non-fiction, and translations in these genres. We encourage you to send us your work. The best way to learn about what we are looking for is to order sample copies of the magazine through our website.

GENERAL GUIDELINES:

Include a cover letter with your submission. Simultaneously submitted works are permitted. Prose pieces should be typed double-spaced on one side and be no longer than 7500 words total. Submit one prose work per submission. Submit up to three poems per poetry submission. Each poem should be no longer than fifty lines. Poems should be individually typed either single- or double-spaced on one side of the page. Please make sure your name appears on all of the pages of your manuscript. See Submittable for further guidelines.

DEADLINES: Submissions will open for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction on September 1, 2025. Please visit our Submittable site for our most recent guidelines and reading period dates.

Current deadline: Dec. 31, 2025

Reading Fees: $3.00-$5.00 

NOTIFICATIONS AND QUERIES: Our response time varies and may range from four weeks to four months or more. We receive a high volume of submissions and appreciate your patience. Please do not query us until five months have elapsed; we are unable to respond to email inquiries concerning the status of a manuscript any sooner than this. We thank you for your patience.

Our submission process for general submissions and our poetry contest is handled exclusively online via Submittable. We are unable to consider manuscripts or queries sent via the post office and cannot return mail that has been sent to us.

Submit your work here. 

Call for Submissions on Theme of: "DOUBLE/TWIN": Witness

 

The theme of this issue is: DOUBLE/TWIN. What do you see in a mirror? What is reflected back? What kinds of twins—elemental, emotional—appear in the world around us? We invite you to interpret our theme “Double/Twin” imaginatively, beyond the looking glass, across winding roads that double back yet lead to somewhere new. As always, we seek work that complicates and confounds us, work that makes us see and feel seen; words that bear witness through strange and unexpected lenses.

About the Magazine

Witness seeks original fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photography that is innovative in its approach, broad-ranging in its concerns, and unapologetic in its perspective. The magazine blends the features of a literary and an issue-oriented magazine to highlight the role of the modern writer as witness to their times.

 

Our mission is to amplify extraordinary voices, feature writers from every part of the globe, and highlight pieces that speak to the present moment in an enduring and distinctive way. The magazine seeks to open up conversations surrounding oppression and transcendence, prejudice and compassion, fear and raw honesty. The editorial team is also proud to feature the work of emerging voices alongside that of established writers.

 

Reading Periods

Witness is published twice a year: a Spring print issue, and a Fall/Winter online issue. Please note: submission windows are subject to change based on submission capacity. Additionally, your submission may be considered for future issues--regardless of the submission window--depending on the volume and quality of work submitted in a single reading period.

 

General Guidelines: 

• We do not accept previously published work. This includes material that has appeared online in any form or format, including personal blogs.

• We do not accept more than one submission per genre, though you may submit up to five poems and three flash pieces as a single submission. We work to respond to all poetry submissions within four months; response times for fiction and nonfiction may be six months or longer, depending on the volume of submissions.

• Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please withdraw your work promptly if it is accepted elsewhere. If submitting multiple poems or flash, if any of your pieces has been accepted by another publication, please notify us directly by sending a message through Submittable.

• If Witness publishes your piece, we ask that you wait two years following your publication date before submitting to us again. We love our contributors, but seek to platform as wide an array of authors as we can.

• Graduates and current UNLV MFA/PhD candidates or other students affiliated with the university are asked to wait two years post-graduation before submitting work for consideration at Witness.

We pay our contributors $150 for prose and $75 for poetry, whether in the print or online issue. We suggest a reading fee of $3 for a general submission. If you have any questions or requests, please email:

 

witness@unlv.edu

 

Submit your work here. 

 

Deadline: Oct. 2, 2025

Call for Submissions: The Southampton Review

 

Reading period: September 10 – October 15 

We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit only once per reading period. We do not accept emailed submissions.

WHAT we publish

We encourage submissions from unpublished authors. We’re interested in voice-driven writing that takes risks with structure and content.

fiction

- We accept short stories and novel excerpts.
- 5,000 words max.
- Flash Fiction is welcome!

poetry

- 5 poems max per submission.

nonfiction

- We accept creative nonfiction, memoir, personal essay, and traditional essay.
- 5,000 words max.

fine art / photography
illustration / graphic story
comic

Artwork should conform to the following specifications:
- 10 images max.
- Raster based images (photos/scans) must be 300dpi at 7” wide at least (larger is okay).
- All files should be in CMYK color mode.

Submissions are $3

All submissions will be considered for the print edition or TSR Online.

PRINT EDITION PAY RATES

Prose: $100+
Poetry: $75 per poem
Art Portfolios: $200
Illustration: $100 per page

Every contributor receives one copy of TSR.

TSR Online contributors receive a one-year subscription.
* For reasons related to the university with which we’re affiliated, we are prohibited from paying current students or employees of any SUNY or CUNY institution, or anyone who’s been a student or employee of a SUNY or CUNY institution within the past three years from the date their work is accepted for publication.
* We are prohibited from paying for work published on TSR Online.

cover letter

Please include your name, telephone number, address, and email address.

Internet submission is preferred

We urge all of those who submit work to read copies of TSR or visit TSR Online in order to have a better idea of our editorial range. The Southampton Review is published twice each year. Annual subscriptions are $25. Individual copies are $15.

Purchase a copy of TSR or subscribe here.

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions on Theme of "Arts & Crafts": Last Stanza Poetry Journal

 
The theme for Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Issue #22, is Arts & Crafts. The cover is a portrait of Gertrude Jekyll, the most influential Arts & Crafts garden designer of the early 20th century. Let her inspire you to write of gardens, design, or any arts or crafts.

The deadline for submissions is September 30th, 2025.

A single $100 award will be given for an outstanding poem.

There is never a reading fee. An interview with the Editor’s Choice Award winner will be published in the same issue (optional).

Poems may be any style, but preferably non-rhyming. Submit up to three poems, each no longer than 64 lines, to:

laststanza@outlook.com

as a single Word document or within the body of an email. There is no budget for author copies, as proceeds are used to purchase copies for libraries. Published poems will be considered for a Pushcart Prize nomination. Authors retain all rights to their poems. Reprints are no longer accepted.

Last Stanza Poetry Journal is published worldwide in ebook, softcover, and color-illustrated hardcover editions. It is available primarily from Amazon, but some issues are also available via these and other sites: Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Book Depository, Blackwell, and Powell’s.

Call for Submissions: Booth

 

We are currently open to new submissions until midnight on November 30, 2025.

Our next submission period runs from January 1, 2026 until midnight, April 15, 2026.

See below for more information and happy writing!

General Submission FAQs

Q:What do you pay your writers?

A: We pay $50, regardless of length. This will be issued via Paypal after the online publication of your work.

Q: What kind of stuff can I send?
A: Poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, lists, and audio files. Especially the last four. We want more of those.

Q: Simultaneous submissions okay?
A: You bet. But you should know that if your work is accepted elsewhere and you don’t bother to withdraw it from our submission manager, your name goes on the Secret Blackball Wiki shared by every lit mag editor on the planet. If you’re submitting Poetry, please add a “note” to your submission with the title of the piece you’re pulling so that we can still consider your other two submissions.

Q: How about multiple submissions? I’ll send you my whole collection, and you guys can pick which villanelle you like.
A: With poems, send up to 3 and with flash, send up to 2 of 500 words or less. With everything else, just send one thing at a time, please. If we kick it back, you can send us something else right away.

Q: If accepted, will my work go into the print issue?
Maybe. We publish around 48 pieces a year online. Twice a year we design and release print issues, which are curated from material that appeared on the web .

Q: Do you take submissions during the summer?
A: We are open to new submissions from September through half of April, with a December, coming-up-for-air break. We continue to read existing submissions from April to June. Once July hits, we put our brains in the chest freezer so we can pursue other interests.* Look for our contests, though! We don’t run them every summer, but we always post in advance of opening.

Q: What is your acceptance rate?
A: Our acceptance rate is typically around 1% or lower.

Q: How much can I submit?
A: Depends on the category:Poetry: up to 3 poems
Fiction or Creative Nonfiction: up to 7,500 words
Flash: up to 2 flash pieces of 500 words or less
Comics: up to 20 pages, JPEG, width: 850-900px, Landscape preferred
Audio: up to eight minutes of content

Q: Is it cool if I just send you an email with my work, or mail you a hard copy?
A: Sorry, no. We have a workflow and reading teams and a process.

Q: How many submissions do you receive?
A: Through our reading period, we typically receive around 3,000 submissions, an average of around 15 per day.

*Wiffle ball, naps, reading comics books, and naps while reading comic books.

Submission Fee: $3.00 

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: A Short Story, Long

A Short Story, Long 

Short stories, 2k-8k words long (with the 3,000-5,500 range being our real sweet spot).

What are we looking for? Honestly, best indicator is to read a story or two we've already published. Second best indicator is to generally be familiar with Aaron's taste and what he's published on HAD, and Hobart before that.

Every published story will be paired with original art, and I am paying both writer and artist $100. (Becoming a paid subscriber helps pay contributors!) 

Deadline: Oct. 1, 2025

Submit your work here. 

Call for Submissions and Writing Competitions: Tampa Review

 

Tampa Review is the faculty-edited literary journal of The University of Tampa. We publish two print issues a year and also publish complementary work on our blog. Our editorial staff considers submissions between September 1 and December 31 each year for publication in print or online during the following year.

Please read our publication ethics statement before submitting and note that we follow COPE Guidelines on AI usage: “Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.”

We consider submissions made online through Submittable only. There is a small processing fee ($3 for poetry; $4 for prose) for online submissions.

Tampa Review is open for submissions September 1 – December 31, including for the Danahy Fiction Prize and Richard Mathews Poetry Prize.

Our payment for work accepted for the print edition of the journal is ten dollars per published page for both prose and poetry (payable upon publication), together with one free copy of the issue in which the work(s) appears, and a 40% discount on any additional copies you may wish to purchase. International authors will receive a digital issue.

Please note that prize entries appear as categories distinct from general poetry or fiction.