Writing Fellowship: The 2026 Fresh Voices Fellowship

The 2026 Fresh Voices Fellowship is currently OPEN for applications and will close on November 1st, 2025.

The Fresh Voices Fellowship supports one emerging Black, Indigenous, or other writer of color who does not have an advanced writing degree and is not currently enrolled in a degree-granting creative writing program. Our fellows have gone on to sign with agents, publish books, win prizes, and develop their careers in writing and publishing.

One writer, in poetry or prose, will receive:

• A $2000 stipend 

• A year-long editorial fellowship at Epiphany, which entails the opportunity to participate in the editorial and publication process of a small non-profit literary magazine, and to build close relationships with the editorial team 

• Publication in a print issue of Epiphany

 Because this opportunity is designed to support writers currently working outside traditional literary and academic systems, applicants must not have an advanced degree (MA, MFA, PhD) in creative writing or English and must not be enrolled at the time of application in any degree-granting program. A BA in Creative Writing or English is acceptable, as is a Masters or PhD in an unrelated field. Applicants must also not have published or be contracted to publish a full-length book (excluding self-publication). Applicants must also be based in or be living in the United States during the twelve-month fellowship.

Application Requirements:

1) Work Sample: Please include a 5-page, double-spaced sample of work you feel most represents you, your interests, and your literary style. (If you’re sending a novel excerpt, please include a short synopsis of the novel and an explanation of where, in the story, the excerpt falls.) This sample need not be unpublished.

2) Cover Letter: Please tell us a bit about yourself as an artist, your relationship to the mainstream literary/publishing world, and what you are hoping to gain by working in a literary magazine environment for a year.

Submit your application here. There is no fee to submit.

Writing Competition: The River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize

 

Deadline for Submissions: October 31

Final Judge: Ander Monson

Complete Guidelines:

• Entries must be submitted online through Submittable. Manuscripts must be in English, double-spaced, and between 35K-85K words long (approximately 150-350 pages).

• The winner will receive book publication with The University of New Mexico Press and a $1,000 honorarium.

• The reading fee is $27 (which includes a one-year subscription to River Teeth to begin in the spring). While our contest is open to entries outside of the U.S., we cannot offer free subscriptions to international submissions because of high mailing rates.

• The deadline for submissions is October 31. The contest winner and finalists will be announced by April.

• Submissions should be previously unpublished as a complete book; if excerpts or individual essays have appeared in literary journals or magazines, that is acceptable. Any literary nonfiction (including memoir, personal essays, investigative reporting, et cetera) is eligible.

• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but as ever, be sure to withdraw your manuscript immediately if it is accepted elsewhere for publication before the conclusion of the contest.

• The editors make every effort to screen manuscripts without bias of identifying author details; however, because the contest is nonfiction, it is not always possible to eliminate identifying characteristics about the author from the manuscript. Do not include your name on the title page or in the header or footer of the manuscript, but otherwise do not fret too much over anonymity. Please include a brief bio in the cover letter section of Submittable.

• River Teeth encourages underrepresented voices to submit their work for consideration, including but not limited to: BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled writers.

• Close friends, family members, and former students of the judge may not submit during the year of the judge’s service. (Writers who have had short-term interactions with the judge at residencies, conferences, or fellowships do not count as students.) Current Ball State University faculty and students (including interns) are ineligible.

Please direct all questions to:

riverteeth@bsu.edu

Writer-in-Residence: The Camden Festival Residency

The Camden Festival of Poetry is pleased to announce an open call to its first annual juried Festival Residency. The mission of the Festival is to create community and connection through poetry, and this residency is meant to expand our poetic community. The winner will receive a month-long stay at Millay House Rockland in May 2026, and a $500 travel stipend. This is an opportunity to attend the week-long events of the Camden Festival, as well as time to work on a project during the month. Applicants must propose a workshop that they may be selected to offer at the Festival. The winner will have an opportunity to read either at the Tuesday evening Festival "Preview" event, or later in the month at the Millay House.

Application Fee: $25.00

Deadline: Nov. 30, 2025  

DETAILS: 

• Applicants must be U.S. citizens, 21 years or older, not a resident of the state of Maine, and not enrolled in an educational program at the time of the residency.

• The residency is for the month of May 2026 and is open to poets only.

• The residency is open to individuals with or without an accompanying partner or spouse. No group projects will be considered. The writer is expected to have time to focus on a project during the period of their residency. Please indicate if you would like to bring a partner.

• Submissions open September 15, 2025 and close on November 30, 2025. Winner will be notified no later than January 15, 2026.

• Submissions will not be considered anonymously.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Applicants will submit examples of their work in a PDF format. Submit 10-12 pages of poetry, with each poem beginning on a new page, formatted in 12-point type. Works may be previously published or in process.

• Applicants will submit a proposal for a 2-hour workshop that they would lead at the 2026 Camden Festival if selected to do so.

• Applicants will submit a short statement about the project they plan to work on and why they want this residency.

• Applicants will submit their resume in a PDF format.

ACCOMMODATIONS:

Your accommodations include one-half of a “double house” located at 198 Broadway in Rockland, Maine, a city that combines an historically significant working waterfront with a flourishing art scene. The duplex, built in 1891, provides a living/dining room, fully equipped kitchen, two bedrooms, a study, one and a half baths, WiFi, and off-street parking. A bicycle is available for your use. Food is not included but there are grocery and specialty stores nearby. If you aren't driving here, we do recommend that you plan to rent a car to explore the area, pick up groceries, etc.

An easy walk to downtown Rockland will bring you to a vibrant array of art galleries and museums, restaurants and coffee shops, a public library and bookstores, the Harbor Trail, a boatbuilding school, windjammer cruises, and daily ferry service to the islands, as well as the weekly farmers market.

The Festival activities will take place in Camden which is about 10 miles from Rockland.

YOUR HOST:

Founded in 2023 by Meg Weston of The Poets Corner and poet and translator Mark S. Burrows, The Camden Festival of Poetry brings distinguished voices in poetry to Camden for an annual Festival, celebrates Maine poets and singer-songwriters, and encourages young voices in poetry throughout the year.

Acceptance will be made by the Camden Festival Residency Selection committee.

Send your application here. 

Call for Submissions: Strange Pilgrims

Strange Pilgrims 

We believe in narrative as pilgrimage — a journey through wild and wounded places into strangeness and transformation. We read to arrive somewhere we haven’t been before, to glimpse life through another’s eyes in an attempt to understand. The work we’re drawn to is surreal, philosophical, sincere, and unforgettable — stories and essays that get under your skin and reach the heart of the human condition.

We see writers as essential voices in the fabric of society, articulating our delights and sufferings. Each piece we publish is accompanied by a brief interview with the author, offering readers a deeper sense of their world. Together, we hope they form a map of the strange pilgrimages we take through language and life.

Deadline: Nov. 30, 2025 

꧁ WHAT WE PUBLISH ꧂
We publish one piece each week, alternating between flash and long-form writing:

🜂 Short Stories (up to 5000 words)

🜁 Essays / Narrative Nonfiction (up to 5000 words)

☉ Flash Fiction (under 1000 words)

☾ Flash CNF (under 1000 words)

We’re not married to any genre, structure, or subject. We love surreal, speculative, and fabulist stories; unhinged, lyric, and fragmented essays; voice-driven experimental narratives and slow-burn realism; cultural and literary criticism; hyper-intellectual riffs and children’s stories — so long as they move. If your work is honest, well-crafted, and offers something emotionally and intellectually vivid, we want to read it.

Some of the writers who guide our taste: Gabriel García Márquez, Susanna Clarke, Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, Brian Doyle, Han Kang, Kelly Link, Lydia Davis, Roland Barthes, Franz Kafka, James Baldwin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Geetanjali Shree, Leo Tolstoy, Mariana Enriquez, David Foster Wallace, Lidia Yuknavitch, Chuck Palahniuk, Clarice Lispector, Ted Chiang, Ali Smith, Milan Kundera, Saadat Hasan Manto, Karen Russell, Fernando Pessoa, and many, many others.

PAY ˗ˋˏ$ˎˊ˗

We pay all our contributors:

$200 per short story/essay

$50 per flash piece

Payments are made via PayPal within one week of publication.

Writers are at the center of everything we do, and raising our contributor payments is one of our highest priorities.

Submission Guidelinesજ⁀➴ ✉︎

We welcome submissions from anywhere in the world.

We publish one piece each week, which means we’re highly selective and read with care.

Multiple submissions are not allowed. Please only make one submission (whether that’s a story, essay, OR flash piece) at a time. After you've heard back from us, you may submit again right away if you wish to.

Simultaneous submissions are fine — just let us know immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

We do not currently accept previously published works. Self-published pieces (on your blog, Substack, etc.), however, are welcome.

All submissions are handled through our custom submission portal.

Submissions are always free for general categories. If you’d like to support the magazine, you can become a paid subscriber, leave a tip, or request paid editorial feedback. These options help us sustain the magazine and pay our writers.

Currently, our general response time is ~4 months. We offer a $10 Fast Response option, wherein we’ll respond within 4 weeks.

We nominate for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net.

More information here. 

Call for Submissions: Banshee Press

Banshee welcomes submissions from both Irish and international writers of any background, including first-time writers. We welcome work from members of groups or communities typically under-represented within literature, whether or not the work addresses this.

All submissions should be previously unpublished.

Our guideline maximum word count for stories and essays is 5000 words. Flash fiction should be under 1000 words, poems no more than 40 lines.

We are happy to read: one story or one essay or two flashes or up to four poems. Please submit in one category only.

Submissions should be in one .doc or .docx attachment. Prose submissions should be double-spaced.

Please include a third-person biography (max 50 words) in the body of your email. If you are sending a prose submission, please note the word count of the piece in the body of the email.

Email to:

subs dot bansheelit at gmail dot com (Change dot to . and at to @) 

indicating the category of your submission in the subject line (e.g. Flash/Story/Essay/Poetry).

We are happy to consider simultaneous submissions, but ask that you notify us as soon as your work is accepted elsewhere.

Please note that we cannot offer feedback on unsuccessful submissions.

We believe in paying writers. We can offer contributors a small fee as well as a copy of the journal. 

Deadline: October 31, 2025.

Call for Submissions: Kismet Magazine

The best way to know if your work is a good fit for Kismet is to be familiar with Kismet. We’re not prescriptive about things like length and form—we publish style-forward writing with an interest in mystical, spiritual, and religious elements, broadly interpreted. To find out more about our approach, please read “Spirits of the Times,” an introductory note from Kismet 001.

That said, here are some specifics: 

• We publish essays, fiction and poetry.

• From 2026, Kismet will publish 3 annual print editions.

• We accept submissions on a rolling basis.

• Please send one prose piece at a time.

• We publish poetry folios, not individual poems—please submit a selection of up to 5 poems, in one document.

• We prefer essays that expand beyond the personal, that persist beyond the news cycle—i.e. stretch beyond reported pieces.

• We love work in translation; please ensure you are in touch with the rights holder.

• All contributors are paid for their work.

Submissions (in a Word doc) should be sent to:

info@kismet-mag.com

We’re a very small team. We’ll endeavor to read and respond to all submissions within each issue cycle. But if you don’t hear from us, please forgive us—even if the gods don’t—and consider it a respectful pass.

Pitching Book Reviews

Beginning in October, Kismet Magazine will publish one book review online per week.

We review the kind of books that fit with the magazine’s ethos, as described above: style-forward writing with an interest in mystical, spiritual, and religious elements, broadly interpreted.

We are currently accepting pitches for books forthcoming from December 2025 onward. All reviewers are paid $250 per review. And reviews should be between 1500-2000 words in length.

Guidelines for Reviewers: 

• Books must be forthcoming (not already published).

• A lead time of at least 2-3 months is preferred.

• Please briefly outline the relevance of the proposed title to the Kismet readership.

• Please include a brief contributor bio and links to up to 3 relevant bylines.

• We ask that reviewers do not pitch the work of friends, family, or close acquaintances.

Guidelines for publicists:

Please consider if the title you are pitching is a fit for Kismet before sending promotional materials.

Pitches should be sent to:

info@kismet-mag.com

Call for Submissions on Theme of "Lost": Ivo Review

What We Look For

We are looking for prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, hybrid works, and dramatic works from emerging and established writers from around the world, particularly writers from historically underrepresented communities. We love the concept of narrative - we want to read storytellers telling stories in whatever form that takes for you. 

Works should be primarily in English. 

We consider simultaneous submissions but if a work is accepted elsewhere please let us know. We will be thrilled for you! We consider reprints but please indicate the original publication so that it can be credited - with a link to the work if possible so that we can also link to that publication. 

We love visual art submissions and are always looking for cover art.

We will not consider AI generated work.  At this time we are also not considering translations. 

How to Submit

For art, please submit one piece that you would like considered for as cover art. 

For poetry and flash or micro-fiction, please submit up to five (5) pieces of up to 100 lines for poetry. We consider micro-fiction to be up to 350 words, and flash to be 351 - 1000 words.    

For longer works of fiction, non-fiction, or dramatic works please send up to two (2) pieces of up to 3000 words. 

For dramatic works, we consider works that would be able to produced as a 10 minute play or shorter. We love long dramatic monologues, but will also consider ensemble pieces. 

Send submissions to:

editorivoreview@gmail.com

The subject line should be the THEME of the issue for which you are submitting work and the CATEGORY of the submission. (Example: LOST - POETRY)  Please include a short cover letter with a short author's bio in the body of the e-mail and attach submissions in a single .docx attachment.

Submissions that do not follow these simple guidelines will not be read.   

Currently we are reading for Issue Two: LOST until October 31st, 2025.   

Rights and Expectations 

You retain all rights to your work. By submitting work to Ivo Review you are granting us the non-exclusive rights to publish your work in our online issues and to continue the display of that work on the online site. You are confirming that you are the author of the submitted work and that you retain the rights to submit it for publication. Works published online in Ivo Review will be considered for future anthologies, and authors will be contacted for permission and with information about payment if we are interested in using your work again in that way.  We will promote your work, but we will never attempt to sell your work or to include it in any publication other than the issue in which it was originally published without your permission. 

If a piece has not been previously published before Ivo Review, please credit us in any future publications. 

At this time, we are not a paying market - though we do hope to be able to correct that soon. We do have every intention of nominating for Pushcart and other prizes including Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net.

We anticipate that we will respond to submissions two to four weeks after the end of the reading period for that issue, but we are a very small operation and so cannot promise that it will not take us a bit longer. If you have not heard from us after six weeks from the end of the reading period for the issue you submitted for, please feel free to contact us for an update. We will not take it personally!