Griffin Poetry Prize

Submit to Tint Journal
2025-10-13 08:00 - 2025-11-30 17:00 (Europe/Vienna) | Online
Share your short stories, creative nonfiction essays, flash and poetry, as well as your artworks from October 13 to November 30, 2025 (CET midnight) with us to be considered for our 15th issue, Tint Spring ‘26! We’re looking forward to receiving your work at submissions@tintjournal.com!
In view of the diverse backgrounds of our contributing writers, any subject matter which does not violate our values of acceptance and inclusivity is welcome. Check our submission guidelines and our previous issues to find out what we are looking for. Submissions which do not follow these guidelines will not be considered.
Submissions for our In Conversation section (book reviews, interviews, profiles, other related articles) are received year-round. Please review our submission guidelines and contact our In Conversation editors Andrea Färber and Chiara Meitz.

Vancouver Writers Fest
2025-10-20 08:00 - 2025-10-26 17:00 (America/Vancouver)
The 38th annual Vancouver Writers Fest takes place from October 20–26, 2025, featuring a scintillating lineup of exceptional books, ideas, and dialogue in 87 events.
Our 2025 Festival Guest Curator is the brilliant, multi-award-winning poet and novelist Canisia Lubrin. She has curated four events for us in a program called Cycling and Renewal for the Earth, taking an approach based on the idea(l) of literature’s unique ability to broaden the scope of dialogue between people—and that this, in turn, can fortify the work of cultures, institutions, and literature itself.
The events at this year’s Festival will explore the issues and themes dominating the cultural and political sphere, that would benefit from deeper examination and understanding. They’ll spark reflection, curiosity, and laughter. Most of all, they’ll offer an opportunity to hear from some of the finest authors working today, and discover new books that deserve a place on your shelf.

Masterclass with Canisia Lubrin and Jillian Christmas
2025-10-22 13:00 (America/Vancouver) | YouTube
This Masterclass is an extraordinary double-bill, featuring two icons of contemporary Canadian poetry. Canisia Lubrin is the author of the multi-award-winning Code Noir and The World After Rain, a poetry collection epic in its vision and intimate in its exploration of grief and loss. Jillian Christmas is a spoken word poet, author of The Gospel of Breaking, and a passionate organizer and activist in our local arts community. Both authors are deeply knowledgeable about the wider literary scene, and their insight and curation has helped shape this year’s Festival. This unmissable session will give students the chance to generate new poems together and alone, learn reading and recitation techniques, and listen to a short craft talk, followed by a Q+A. Grades 10–12.
Presented thanks to the generous support of The Pitfield Family in memory of Ebie Pitfield.
Themes: Creative writing, BIPOC, poetry, spoken word, storytelling, technique
Curriculum Connections: Creative Writing 10-12

Jillian Christmas

JILLIAN CHRISTMAS is an artist, creative facilitator, curator, consultant, and arts advocate. She is the long-time spoken word curator of the Vancouver Writers Fest, and former artistic director of Verses Festival of Words. She is the author of The Gospel of Breaking, The Magic Shell, and My Sweet Baby Book.

Canisia Lubrin

CANISIA LUBRIN, author of Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst, has won the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Windham-Campbell Prize. She coordinates the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Guelph and is the poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. Her debut fiction, Code Noir: Metamorphoses, won the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. She is the 2025 Vancouver Writers Fest Guest Curator.

Submit to Poetry London
2025-10-24 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
Poetry London is a leading international magazine, where new names share pages with acclaimed contemporary poets. We also publish a wide range of poetry in translation.

The magazine is published in March, June and October. We receive a vast amount of submissions, so reading can take up to four months, and if your work is shortlisted, maybe even longer. You might find it helpful to read the magazine first, to see if your work is suitable.
Subscriptions
We appreciate subscriptions, as we depend on these to survive, though if you don’t subscribe it won’t affect your chances!
Subscribe today!

Costs & Fees
Please ensure that you pay the correct postage when submitting poems and books for review. As a small charitable organisation, we don’t have the resources to pay for any additional costs incurred and won’t be able to collect any post where incorrect postage has been paid. Thank you!We pay poets £35 per poem, though appropriate adjustments may be made for very long poems. Review and interview fees are agreed in advance with the Reviews Editor and benchmarked at £50 per 1,000 words.

Submitting poems
Poetry London aims to publish the best, most exciting poetry being written now, and we are always interested in work by unpublished poets, as well as celebrated ones.Submissions are read by Niall Campbell, Poetry Editor.Both electronic and postal submissions are welcome and all are carefully read.

Electronic submissions: For online submissions, please click the button below and follow the instructions.
Submit via Submittable
Postal submissions
Please send a maximum of six poems to:
Niall Campbell
Poetry London
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross
London
SE14 6NW
UK
Always include a stamped addressed envelope for our reply.We will reply by email if you are sending your work from abroad. In these circumstances you may submit your poems by post and request an email response in your cover letter. Unfortunately we cannot return manuscripts from outside the UK.
Simultaneous submissions
Simultaneous submissions are acceptable if you are submitting online through Submittable. Please withdraw your poems if they are accepted elsewhere.

Terms & Conditions
—We do not print previously published work except in exceptional circumstances. If we do, then approval will be sought from the poetry editor. Poetry London undertakes not to change republished work in any way, including layout and punctuation, without prior consent from the author, and the author has the right to see a proof of the poem in question before publicationThe author will be sent proofs of their work for approval. Proofs must be returned within 10 days. Poetry London undertakes not to change work in any way, including layout and punctuation, without prior consent from the author.
—The author will always be credited for their work. Please let us know the preferred form of name for the credit. When asked to approve a proof, authors will also have the opportunity to ensure their name is spelled correctly.
—The author will receive one complimentary copy of the issue in which their work is featured.
—We take the first non-exclusive right to publish the author’s contribution in the next issue of Poetry London in print form and verbatim digital form, in the English language.
—We retain the non-exclusive right for the full term of copyright to publish or make available as part of that issue of Poetry London as part of an archive. We will not allow third party downloading, copying or any other use without your permission.
—We may wish to use the author’s work later for anniversary editions or anthologies, in which case we will seek the author’s permission and agree a fee.
—Following publication, we encourage contributors and/or third parties to republish, syndicate or blog their work. We will never ask for permissions fees and only ask that the author/third part publisher indicates that the contribution ‘originally appeared in Poetry London’.
—If we receive requests from publishers or others for re-use of your contribution, we will forward them to the author and facilitate contact between the publisher and said author.
—Payment for the author’s work will be made within 30 days following publication of the print issue in which their work appears.
—Payment will only be made upon receipt of an invoice. Your invoice should contain the title of your poem, the issue in which it appeared and either your bank account details, or another accepted method of payment, including, for example, PayPal. We will pay VAT on receipt of a valid VAT invoice.

Submitting books for review
Poetry London publishes reviews of around seventy or eighty titles a year. We concentrate on single author collections of poetry in English or translated into English, including some pamphlets and chapbooks. In addition, there are occasional reviews of significant anthologies or relevant critical writing.We will review collections in English from anywhere in the world, but predominantly the books reviewed are from publishers (large or small) in the UK or Ireland. We cannot accept self-published books for review or return books which are not selected for review.All reviews are commissioned in advance by the editor.

Postal submissions
Please send all books for review to:Isabelle Baafi
Poetry London
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross
London
SE14 6NW
UK

The Poetry Society 2025 National Poetry Competition
2025-10-31 00:00 (Europe/London) | Online
Judges: Denise Saul, Ian Duhig, Susannah Dickey
Prizes: First prize £5,000, second prize £3,000, third prize £2,000, commended prizes £500
Run by The Poetry Society since 1978, The National Poetry Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for an unpublished poem of up to 40 lines, open to all poets worldwide aged 18 or over
Closing date: 31 October 2025

Rules

We recommend all entrants read the rules carefully before entering. If you have any questions please see our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Rules: General

The competition is open to anyone aged 18 or over at the time of entering. International entries are welcome.
The closing date of the competition is midnight (GMT UK time), 31 October 2025.
There is no limit on the number of entries a single entrant can make. All entries will be considered anonymously by the judges.
Entries will not be returned, so please keep a copy.
Under no circumstances can alterations be made to poems once entered.
Online entries made via the website will receive automatic confirmation at the time of submission.
Telephone or email confirmation of receipt is not available. Poetry Society staff are unable to confirm the content of documents submitted online, so please ensure you send the correct version.
The competition organisers reserve the right to change the judging panel without notice and not to award prizes if, in the judges’ opinion, such an action is justified.
The judges read all the entries; their decision is final. Neither the judges nor Poetry Society staff will enter into any correspondence.
No current employee or Trustee of The Poetry Society is eligible to enter the National Poetry Competition.

Rules: Poems

All entries are judged anonymously and the poet’s name must not appear on the poem itself.
All poems must have a title and must not exceed 40 lines in length (excluding title). Entries can be on any subject.
Poems must be written in English.
Poems must be the entrant’s original work. AI-generated work is prohibited.
Entries must not have been published, self-published, published on a website or made public on social media, broadcast or featured among the winners in another competition before 31 March 2026.

Rules: Fees

The first poem submitted costs £8. Subsequent entries in the same submission cost £6 per poem. Poetry Society members (including those joining at time of submission) get one free second poem, with subsequent poems at £6.

Rules: Winners

Prizewinners will be notified by the end of February 2026 and invited to an awards event in spring 2026. All winners will be expected to provide a biography and photograph.
All entrants who provide a valid email address will be notified about the outcome of their entry by the end of March 2026.
The copyright of each poem remains with the author. However, authors of the winning poems, by entering the competition, grant The Poetry Society the right in perpetuity to publish and/or broadcast their poem. Use of the poems elsewhere for one year from March 2026 is subject to permission from The Poetry Society.

Diaspora Dialogues: Apply for Long Form Mentorship
2025-10-31 11:59 (America/Toronto)
Diaspora Dialogues invites submissions from emerging writers in both the GTA and across Canada who currently have a full or near-full draft of a manuscript. We accept novels, short story collections, creative non-fiction/memoir, works intended for young adults and poetry. Complete or near complete means that the writer has up to 85,000 words or 300 double-spaced pages of prose; or up to 25 poems (50 pages maximum). Submissions will consist only of excerpts from these works (see guidelines below).
Diaspora Dialogues is committed to supporting a literature that is as diverse as Canada itself. Writers are encouraged to keep this mandate in mind, but addressing this theme directly is not essential in the submission.
Notifications will be made at the end of December. The mentorships will begin in early 2026 and run for six months. Assigned mentors are at the discretion of Diaspora Dialogues.
The deadline to apply is 11:59 EST on October 31st, 2025.
Discover all the details here.

The Adroit Journal Seeks Translation Readers
2025-11-01 00:00, 2025-12-01 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Online
The Adroit Journal seeks readers in translation to join our growing team. This is a volunteer, remote position with a start date of ASAP. The monthly commitment is approximately 6-8 hours when the submissions portal is open. Readers will read, discuss, and vote on submissions of translated work, and will attend monthly meetings, convened by the section editor.
Candidates need not be expert in multiple languages to apply. We’re looking, first and foremost, for experienced readers who are passionate about language and story, who are willing to read across genres, and who are enthusiastic about literary translation as an art form.
Please apply with a statement of interest (no more than a page) detailing your experiences as a writer, editor, and translator, if applicable; and what you would add to the journal’s literary and/or artistic community. You are encouraged to include things such as experience in the specific field(s), writing and publication, and other commendations and accolades, but this statement should NOT read like a résumé.
Your statement should highlight your history, passion, and experience with the areas of the position and creative writing. Feel free to discuss other topics you feel are appropriate, as well as any specific connections, measures, or initiatives you might have (or aspire to have) with The Adroit Journal’s staff community.
Please upload a cv/résumé.
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. This position is volunteer and remote, with a start date of ASAP. Due to the volume of applications, we can only respond to people we wish to interview for an opening.
Before applying please familiarize yourself with the journal by visiting our About page, and perhaps also an issue or two.

Submit to Crannóg
2025-11-01 08:00 - 2025-11-30 23:59 (Europe/Dublin) | Online
Crannóg welcomes general submissions of fiction & poetry
Crannóg is published in March and September. Submissions will be open in the month of November for the March issue and in the month of May for the September issue. Submissions sent outside these times will not be read.
If you have been published in the current issue of Crannóg we ask that you do not submit for the immediately subsequent issue.
If you have never been published in Crannóg we would appreciate that you first purchase the current issue and ensure you are familiar with what we publish, and the style of the magazine including bio style.

We accept simultaneous submissions on the condition that we are informed immediately if accepted elsewhere and we thank you in advance for doing this. However, we do not accept third party submissions. Submissions are accepted in good faith that they are the original work of the sender and that the attributed author is holder of copyright.

Submission Guidelines

Send no more than three poems. Each poem should be under 50 lines.
Send one story. Story should be under 2000 words.
Ensure each poem begins on a new page.

Include a brief bio in the third person. Bio should conform to the style of bios in past issues of Crannóg.
Include a postal address for contributor’s copy. We do not accept postal submissions.
There is no need to enquire about the status of your submission. We reply to all submissions whether accepted for publication or not.

Writer Benefits
A publication fee of €120 per poem and €200 per story, €200 per author interview and €200 per cover image.
A contributor’s copy.
An invitation to attend/read at the launch of Crannóg in ‘The Listeners Club’ at The Crane, Galway, Ireland.
Three contributors will be nominated for the Forward Prize for best single poem.
Six contributors will be nominated for a Pushcart Prize, (poetry and fiction).
Selected contributions may be posted on the magazine’s website and on our social media platforms.

The Malahat Review's Open Season Awards 2025
2025-11-01 23:59 (America/Vancouver) | Online
Our annual Open Season Awards accepts entries in poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction.
The contest is open to Canadian and international writers anywhere in the world.
Deadline: 11:59pm (PST) on November 1, 2025
The winner in each genre will receive a prize of CAD$2,000 and be published in the magazine’s spring 2026 issue #234.
Entries accepted via Submittable only. (See below for instructions.)
Contest Judges
Manahil Bandukwala (poetry)
H. Felix Chau Bradley (fiction)
Shane Neilson (creative nonfiction)
Book Prizes
In addition to the three $2,000 prizes, we’re giving away book prizes to three lucky contest entrants! All you have to do is submit your work to the contest, and you’ll be automatically entered to win. After the deadline, we’ll pull three names from the list of entrants.
Guidelines
— poetry: up to 3 poems per entry (must be submitted in a single document), no individual poem more than 100 lines long, line count must be given for each poem.
— short fiction: 1 story per entry, 2,500 words max, word count must be given at the top of the first page.
— creative nonfiction: 1 piece per entry, 2,500 words max, word count must be given at the top of the first page.
All entries are judged anonymously. No identifying information is to be included on any poem, story, or nonfiction piece submitted.
— Multiple entries are allowed (at a reduced fee, if paid for at the same time as the initial entry: see Entry Fees and How to Submit below).
— Entrants may submit work in more than one genre (see Additional Entries below).

Entry Fees
— CAD$35 for each entry from Canada
— *Early Bird discount until Sep. 30: CAD$20
— CAD$45 for each entry from elsewhere
— *Early Bird discount until Sep. 30: CAD$30
— CAD$10 for each additional entry (any writer, any country)
— See How to Pay (below) for detailed instructions.
— Entrants receive a one-year print subscription to The Malahat Review for the initial entry only.
— Additional Entries: To receive the reduced entry fee(s) of CAD$10, any additional entries must be paid for at the same time as the first entry; such additional entries should be submitted on Submittable within 24 hours of the initial entry.
— Additional entries may be submitted in any genre (e.g., an initial entry in poetry may be accompanied by an additional entry or entries in poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction).
Eligible Entries
— No work simultaneously submitted elsewhere, already published, or already accepted for publication is eligible for consideration (even if only excerpted, or even if revised since original publication). We consider any appearance in print or online to be a publication, including newspapers, newsletters, magazines, anthologies, chapbooks, books, websites, blogs, social media, etc. This restriction applies regardless of the size of the print run or the extent of the circulation of previously published work.
— Failure to comply with these criteria for eligibility will immediately disqualify any entry, regardless of when the ineligiblity is discovered in the process of adjudication (submission, processing, screening, shortlisting, final judging
— The entry fee for a disqualified submission will not be refunded, and the entrant will still receive a one-year print subscription to the magazine.
Notification
— The winner in each genre will be notified by email.
— Other entrants will receive notifications of the shortlists and winners via Submittable messages.
— The shortlists and winners in each genre will be announced in January 2026 on our website, Instagram, and Facebook.
— The winners will be interviewed, and the interviews will be published on our website and in a spring edition of Malahat lite.
How to Pay (credit card)
— Go to our online store to pay your contest fee(s).
— Payment must be made online through our store before submitting, since you must include your ORDER# with your submission. We accept VISA, Mastercard, or American Express. No profile is needed in order to pay your entry fee on our store website—simply choose guest checkout.
— Online payments will not be accepted after the contest deadline (if you have any problems with such payment, please write to malahat[at]uvic.ca).
How to Pay (cheque or money order)

— If you are unable to pay by credit card, you can mail a cheque or money order made out to The Malahat Review in CAD$ or USD$ to: The Malahat Review, Clearihue Bldg, University of Victoria, PO Box 1700, Stn CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 2Y2, Canada.
— Instead of an order#, you must indicate “cheque” or “money order” as required on the submission form.
— Cheques or money orders must be mailed with a postmark date of no later than November 1, 2025.
How to Submit
— Only online submissions made through The Malahat Review‘s Open Season Awards portal on Submittable will be accepted.
— Acceptable file formats: Word (.doc or .docx) or PDF.
— A single entry is defined as 1 to 3 poems (uploaded in a single document, maximum 100 lines per poem), or 1 short story or 1 creative nonfiction piece (max 2,500 words in each case).
— You can make only one entry at a time on Submittable; to submit additional entries, whether at the reduced rate (paid for at the same time) or at a standard rate, simply follow the same process as with the initial submission (the ORDER # will be the same for additional entries paid for at the same time as the initial submission; it will be different for an entry or entries made at a later date, since these require the full fee).

Submit to The Stinging Fly
2025-11-04 08:00 - 2025-11-18 17:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Submittable
‘The Stinging Fly is an essential part of the thriving ecosystem of Irish literary life. When people ask me how to break into publication I tell them to try there first. It is where the seeds of future writing careers are sown.’—Anne Enright
Thank you to everyone who submitted work for our special issue on the climate crisis. We are aiming to get back to everyone before the end of August and we will be publishing the issue in November.
We will next be open for submissions fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry between Tuesday November 4th and Tuesday November 18th 2025 (at 5pm Irish time). This will be for our Summer 2026 issue.
The link for submitting your work to us will be active here from when the submission round opens on November 4th.
To keep up to date with all our submissions, workshops, readings, and events, we recommend you join our Newsletter.
What We Publish
During our November 2024 open submission round, we hosted an information session on Zoom for new writers interested in submitting to the magazine. Magazine editor Lisa McInerney and poetry editor Annemarie Ní Churreáin spoke about submissions and the editorial process and answered some commonly asked questions.
You can watch a recording of the session here.
We publish new, previously unpublished work by Irish and international writers. We have a particular interest in promoting new writers, and in promoting the short story form. Each issue of The Stinging Fly includes a mix of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, alongside our Featured Poets and Comhchealg sections, occasional author interviews and novel extracts. We also welcome submissions of poetry and prose in translation.
We are always excited to read new writers and to hear new voices in literature. Many of the writers we publish have never been published before.
We believe that a proactive approach to diversity and inclusivity is important in redressing imbalances of representation and diversity, both in the pages of our magazine and in the wider cultural landscape. As such, we strongly encourage submissions by writers from underrepresented areas of society.
You can read more about The Stinging Fly and our team on the About Us page.

Guidelines:
Work must be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere.
Only work submitted through our Submittable account will be considered. Submittable is free to use, and there is no fee to submit your work to us.
We currently accept submissions in the following four categories: short fiction; novel extracts; non-fiction; poetry. Writers may only submit work to us under one category per submission period. Graphic fiction and non-fiction submissions are welcome.
Your work should always be just as long (or as short) as it needs to be. If you are sending us a novel extract, please don’t send us your full novel! Just a chapter or a section or a story-length passage will suffice, so long as it can be enjoyed as a standalone piece.
For general poetry submissions, you may send up to 3 poems. Your poems should be submitted together in one single file.
Featured Poets: In each issue we seek to publish a number of poems (usually 5 or 6) by a poet who is working seriously towards putting together a first collection. To be considered, you must already have started publishing poems in other journals and magazines and supply us with a minimum of three publication credits from the past three years. We welcome poets who have previously had work appear in The Stinging Fly. Please send 8 of your previously unpublished poems together in a single file. If we want to see more, we will get back to you. If submitting for the Featured Poet slot, please do not make a separate general poetry submission. We will also consider individual poems within your Featured Poet submission for publication.
Comhchealg: Is í ‘Comhchealg’ cuid Ghaeilge The Stinging Fly. Cuirtear fáilte roimh phíosaí Gaeilge ó scríbhneoirí úra. Is nós linn aistriúcháin Bhéarla a chur ar fáil i gcás na ndánta a roghnaítear. Chuige sin, déanaimid filí Béarla a chur ag obair ar shaothar a gcomhúdar. Leantar na treoirlínte iarratais thuas a bhaineann le filíocht Bhéarla.
All submissions are read. The editors’ decision may not be correct but it is final. We aim to contact everyone within four months of the closing date.
Work accepted for publication in the magazine will also be added to our online archive, which is accessible to magazine subscribers and to members of our Friends of The Fly programme.

Frequently Asked Questions
Have questions? More information is available in our Submissions FAQ.
And this interview with incoming editor Lisa McInerney focuses a lot on the Stinging Fly’s submissions and editorial processes.

Payment
We pay the following fees for first serial rights. Work published in the magazine is also published on our website as part of our online archive. Copyright remains in all cases with the author.
Fiction and nonfiction: €50 per magazine page, but with a minimum/maximum payment of €350/€1250.
Flash Fiction/shorter essays (1 – 2 pages): €150
Poetry: €50 per magazine page, but with a minimum payment of €75 per poem.
Featured Poet: €600
Cover artwork image: €450
Contributors also receive a copy of the issue in which their work is featured and can order further copies at a discounted rate.

Virtual Poetry Masterclass: Erasures, Insertions, Collages with Anne Simpson
2025-11-04 08:00 - 2025-11-25 17:00, 2025-11-11 08:00 - 2025-12-02 17:00, 2025-11-18 08:00 - 2025-12-09 17:00, 2025-11-25 08:00 - 2025-12-16 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Working with various texts, we will find a way to erase, resist, or obscure other words to find the thread of a poem. Insertions will come into it too. We’ll play with other texts to find our own way, our own poems. We’ll read the work of Mary Ruefle and Layli Long Soldier, among others.

About the instructor: Anne Simpson writes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Among her poetry collections, Loop was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2004. Her most recent novel, Speechless, was awarded the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award in 2021. She has mentored many writers as a writer-in-residence in libraries and universities across Canada. Currently, she is working on a new novel.

Recommended experience level: Early-career, established, and professional poets (About recommended experience levels)
Participant cap: 12
Location: Zoom
Dates of 4-week workshop: Tuesdays, Nov 4 + Nov 11 + Nov 18 + Nov 25, 2025 (7:00pm to 9:00pm Atlantic)
Registration for 2025 General Members: $189
Registration for non-members: $219 (includes discounted fall 2025 General Membership in WFNS)

Poetry Society Annual Lecture – Diane Seuss
2025-11-10 19:00 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Zoom
Burlesque Picaresque in the Rural Midwest: My Education in Poetry
The lecture will address an education in poetry from outside the borders of academia, specifically that of a poet from the rural working class. Seuss will frame the discussion by considering how the literary burlesque, and the ethos of the picaresque hero, provide models for the outsider poet whose marginality is the source of her power.
FREE TO ATTEND
Diane Seuss is the author of six books of poetry, including Modern Poetry, a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize; frank: sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Voelcker Prize; Still Life With Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2021 she received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Michigan.

Submit to Ploughshares
2025-11-15 23:59 (America/Toronto)
The Regular Reading Period is open!
We welcome unsolicited submissions of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction during our Regular Reading Period, open from June 1 to November 15 at 12:00pm EST.
Ploughshares is published four times a year: blended poetry and prose issues in the winter and spring, a prose issue in the summer, and a special longform issue in the fall. Our spring and summer issues are guest-edited by different writers of prominence. Guest editors are invited to solicit up to half of their issues, with the other half selected from manuscripts submitted to the journal and screened for them by staff editors. This guest editor policy, which we have used since our founding in 1971, is designed to introduce readers to different literary tastes, and to offer a fuller representation of the range and diversity of contemporary letters than would be possible with a single editorship.
Guidelines
Manuscript Guidelines
For our regular submission period, please submit up to 6,500 words of prose or 3-5 pages of poetry, with each poem starting on a new page.
The editors are particularly interested in translation submissions, as long as permission has been granted by the original author, or, in the case of deceased poets and writers, from the copyright holder or estate.
If you are submitting to our Fall Longform issue, we accept prose submissions up to 15,000 words and poetry submissions between 6-10 pages. We define longform poetry as a single long poem, variations on the epic poem, or a sequential poem such as a crown of sonnets or numbered series. Longform poetry does not include a series of poems with related themes or titles; rather, we are looking for cohesive sequences that do not stand alone. We welcome narrative, lyric, formally inventive, and hybrid work. Please note that we cannot print in color at this time.
Past contributors should wait one year after their most recent publication in Ploughshares before they submit again. Please note that past Longform issue contributors may not be published again in a future Longform issue.
When formatting your manuscript, we prefer the following:
Typed, double-spaced pages (single-spacing is welcome for poetry).
Numbered pages with the author’s name and email address at the top of each page.
We do not consider:
Previously published work. If your submission is part of a forthcoming book, let us know in your cover letter and the expected publication date.
Work written by individuals currently affiliated with Ploughshares or Emerson College as a volunteer screener, intern, student, staff member, or faculty member.
AI-generated manuscripts.
We cannot accommodate revisions after a manuscript has been submitted. If your work is accepted, you will have the opportunity to provide a revision before it is published.
Contributor Honorarium
Payment is upon publication:
$45/printed page, $90 minimum per title, $450 maximum per author.
Two contributor copies of the issue.
A discounted rate for additional contributor copies.
A one-year print subscription.
Simultaneous vs. Multiple Submissions
We do not consider multiple submissions, so please send only one manuscript in one genre at a time. Simultaneous submissions to other journals are welcome as long as they are identified as such and we are notified immediately upon acceptance elsewhere.

Submit to Yolk
2025-11-30 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
Yolk is a Montreal-based literary journal that publishes fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and visual arts in our print (Canadian citizens and residents of Canada) and digital (Canadian + international) publications. Our mandate is to publish fine work by established and emerging artists. We encourage submissions from all artists and writers, including those from marginalized communities and those generally under-represented in literature, in particular Indigenous writers, writers of colour, LGBTQ+ writers, and writers with disabilities.
Yolk is currently accepting submissions for our Digital Publication, from August 1st–⁠November 30th.
Our annual submission windows is as follows:
–Spring Print: January 1st–⁠January 31st
–Digital: February 1st–⁠May 31st
The Montreal Fiction Prize: May 15th–⁠June 15th
–Fall Print: July 1st–⁠July 31st
–Digital: August 1st–⁠⁠November 30th
–We do no accept submissions of any kind during December and June (except for The Montreal Fiction Prize in June).
Payment: Yolk believes in paying artists. We offer a $100CAD honorarium for our digital publication. For print, we offer $30 per page up to a maximum of $200. We also pay $200 for our cover art. Prizes are handled separately. All contributors whose work has been selected for publication in our print issues will also receive a free copy of the journal.
There is a nominal $3 submission fee. Yolk is a registered NPO and these charges will go towards sustaining operating costs. We will always have a free submission option available for those for whom the submission fee is preventative. In recognizing the additional cultural and socioeconomic barriers Indigenous people overcome, we are waiving submission fees for submissions by Indigenous people for print and digital publication (see “INCLUSIVE ACCESS” in Submittable).
We submit work published in our journal to the National Magazine Awards, the Best Canadian Anthology series, the Best American Anthology series, Best of the Net, and for Pushcart prizes.
We are now exclusively accepting submissions through Submittable (see button below). You will find the rest of our general and genre-specfic guidelines in Submittable.
For all other general inquiries, please contact us at themail@yolkliterary.ca.
Copyright: Yolk does not accept written work that has been previously published in print or online (we also will not consider work that has previously appeared on social media or on personal blogs). For visual arts, we do not accept work that has been previously published in print. We will consider visual art that has appeared on personal blogs/social media and in galleries/exhibitions. Yolk acquires First Serial Rights and the right to archive your work on our website, though copyright reverts to the author upon publication.

The Fiddlehead’s 2025 Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem
2025-12-01 23:59 (America/Vancouver) | Online
Good luck to all entrants. This year’s contest deadline is December 1, 2025 (postmarked for mailed entries and 11:59 pm Pacific Time for Submittable entries).
Douglas Walbourne-Gough
Douglas Walbourne-Gough is a poet and mixed/adopted status member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation from Elmastukwek (the Bay of Islands), Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). His poetry and reviews have been published throughout Canada, and his poetry has garnered several awards and grants. His first collection, Crow Gulch, was published with Goose Lane Editions in 2019, has been nominated for several awards, and won the 2021 EJ Pratt Poetry Award. In 2024, his chapbook Colour Work was published with Anstruther Press and, later that year, he published his second collection, Island, also with Goose Lane Editions. Island centres around the Newfoundland Mi’kmaq experience in the wake of the Qalipu enrolment process, and was shortlisted for the 2025 J.M. Abraham Poetry Award. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC Okanagan) and a PhD in English/Creative Writing (UNB Fredericton).
T. Liem
T. Liem is the author of Slows: Twice (Coach House 2023), and Obits. (Coach House, 2018). Their writing has been published in Apogee, Plenitude, The Boston Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, Catapult, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. They live in Montreal / Tio’Tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territories.
Bertrand Bickersteth
Bertrand Bickersteth is the 2024-2025 Writer in Residence for Athabasca University. He is the author of the multi-award winning The Response of Weeds and the forthcoming Canadian Colored. His current project features the history of Black cowboys in western Canada. He lives in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary) and teaches at Olds College, both in Treaty 7 Territory.
Contest General Rules and Information:
— Entries must be original and unpublished. No simultaneous submissions and no previously published (or accepted for publication) submissions. This means that an entry must not be under consideration elsewhere for publication, nor accepted elsewhere for publication, nor entered in any other contest. Work that has appeared on the internet (e.g., online magazines, blogs, or social media sites) is considered published for the purposes of this contest and is ineligible.
— In solidarity with authors whose work has been used to develop LLMs without permission or payment, The Fiddlehead will not publish submissions that have been AI-generated or have been developed using AI as a tool.
— An entry must be the original work of the person who is submitting it and the name and contact information provided must be the author’s. Contest entries should be submitted under the author’s real name. If you use a pseudonym for your published works, you will have a chance to inform the editor of this should your work be selected by the judges
— All entries must be submitted by mail or via Submittable. This year’s contest deadline is Decmeber 1, 2025 (postmarked for mailed entries and before 11:59 pm Pacific Time for Submittable entries). No faxed or emailed submissions are allowed.
— The Fiddlehead will not read work that is ableist, misogynistic, queer-phobic or racist.
— No revisions or changes may be made to an entry once you have submitted it. So please carefully check your entry before you enter it into the contest.
— Judging for the contest is anonymous. Do not put your name or contact information or other identifying information (e.g., publishing pseudonyms) anywhere on your actual entry. For mailed entries place your name and contact information on an accompanying cover page along with information about the submission requested below. For Submittable entries, there will be a place on the Submittable form for your name and contact information.
— One poetry entry is up to 3 poems; no more than 100 lines per poem, including blank lines. If a poem is longer than one page, please make sure that each page is numbered and has the poem’s title in the header. Each poem should start on a new page. Poems may be single spaced. For mailed entries the title and the number of lines for each poem should be noted on the cover page. For Submittable entries, the title and the number of lines for each poem should be noted in the Submittable form.
— The entry fee for your first entry depends on where you are living. If your address is in Canada, then the fee for first entry is $35 CAD. Additional entries after that first contest entry are $10 CAD. If you do not live in Canada, then the fee accounts for the exchange rate and is $50 CAD (approximately $40 USD) for the first entry and $10 CAD for additional entries.
— You must submit a first entry (and pay the first entry fee) before submitting an additional entry. If you submit an additional entry without first submitting that first entry, your entry may be disqualified, and the entry fee will not be returned.
— You will receive a one-year subscription to The Fiddlehead with your first entry. New subscriptions will start with the next issue published after the contest closes. Already a subscriber? — you’ll receive a one-year extension to your current subscription. Additional entries do not receive an additional subscription or subscription extension.
— The Fiddlehead occasionally swaps its subscription list with other literary organizations. If you don’t wish to be included in such exchanges, please state this on your entry’s cover page.
— The contest winner will be contacted directly (by either email or telephone) 2-3 months after the contest deadline. Other entrants will not be individually contacted about the results. Authors’ names and the titles of the works that make a shortlist of 10-15 will appear on The Fiddlehead website. The winner will be announced on the website and on The Fiddlehead social media spaces at a later date.
— The winning entry will be published in Issue 307 (Spring 2026) of The Fiddlehead and on the website. There is a publication payment in addition to the contest prize. The current publication payment rate is $65/page.
— The winner will be interviewed. The interview will be published on The Fiddlehead website when the issue featuring the winning piece is published.
— An entry will be disqualified (no matter at what stage in the contest process it is at), if it is discovered that an entry has violated the contest rule on simultaneous submissions, prior publication, or original authorship. The entry fee will not be reimbursed; however, the entrant will still receive the one-year subscription if the entry was an initial entry.
— An entry may be disqualified (no matter at what stage in the contest process it is at), if it is discovered that the author entered that entry as an additional entry and never submitted and paid for a first entry. The entry fee will be not be reimbursed; and if a subscription was started in error, it will immediately be cancelled.
For Submittable entries:
— You can only upload ONE file when entering via Submittable, (pdf, doc or .docx preferred; rtfs acceptable). Do not include a cover letter or bio as part of that file. Cover letters and bios will be deleted from any entry file.
Remember only use the additional entry category IF you have already submitted and paid for a first contest entry.
— For mailed entries: Please send mailed submission to:
The Fiddlehead
Campus House
11 Garland Ct
University of New Brunswick
PO Box 4400
Fredericton NB
E3B 5A3
Canada
Please make cheque payable to The Fiddlehead.

The Capilano Review’s Fall Writing Contest
2025-12-05 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
The Capilano Review is pleased to invite submissions to our Fall 2025 Writing Contest, “Connective | Uncontainable,” guest-judged by Hari Alluri. Submissions are open November 11 – December 12, 2025.
These are times—again, ongoing—in which so many of us are forced into existences and lives that harm us. And borders, their inherent falsity is why they are such overpoliced things: the binary of belonging must be constantly reinforced. And here a river overflows its banks constantly: every evaporated drop exceeds the category of the body it was named within. Alive means filled with so many desires to become uncontainable: modes of connective relationships that reach across, above, beneath.
Maybe we are in need of initiations, intimacies, and intonations that exceed their own categories. Maybe also remembrances of pasts, presents, and futures that rebel, invoking transformative relations to earth, each other, and spirit.
This call especially invites work that connects against expectations, that refuses the regulation of your identities / subject positions / experiences / writing itself, that connects beneath the surface of social, cultural, interpersonal and beyond-human relationships, that ascends towards possibilities beyond this world. If you’re infuriated by this call for work, maybe your work is calling you to send it in.

About the Judge
Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is the author of three poetry collections and two chapbooks, co-editor of several anthologies, and project editor for recently authored and forthcoming collections. A former Writer-in-Residence at The Capilano Review and one of the current mentors for the League of Canadian Poets P.K. Page Mentorship Program, siya is a recipient of the Vera Manuel Award for Poetry and the Leonard A. Slade, Jr. Poetry Fellowship, as well as grants and fellowships from the BC Arts Council, Canada Council, National Film Board, and Writers’ Union of Canada, among others. Recent collaborations include Aray YAAR Collective, Burnaby Art Gallery, Centre A, The Digital Sala, Filipino Canadian Book Festival, Gulf Islands Poetry Festival, Indian Summer Festival, Vancouver Poetry House, Write, Create, Transform in Crete, and many more. You can connect with his work through anthologies, journals, online venues—most recently in I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis (Fernwood Publishing), Wildness, and Poetry Pause—and more immersively in The Flayed City (Kaya Press), Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press), and Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books).

Contest Details
Submission period: November 11 – December 12, 2025
Submit your work via Submittable
Work must be original and previously unpublished
Submit up to 6 pages of poetry, prose, or other short experimental forms (PDF or Word formats only)
All entries will be considered anonymously. Please do not include your name or other identifying fields on your manuscript pages
Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere so that we can remove your entry from the contest
International entries are accepted
The winner will receive a $500 cash prize and publication in an upcoming print issue of The Capilano Review.

Submission Fees
$25 submission fee for all entries.
Submission fees include a complimentary one-year digital subscription to The Capilano Review.
The submission fee is waived for Indigenous entrants and those for whom the cost is a barrier. Please email contact@thecapilanoreview.com directly for alternate instructions to submit your work.

Ready to submit?
Upload your work via Submittable here.
The winner will be announced in January 2026.

Frontier Poetry — Family & Home Prize
2025-12-05 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
As the holiday season draws near, Frontier Poetry is delighted to announce the 2025 Family & Home Prize.

Family—whether chosen or given—shapes us in ways both tender and tumultuous. It can be a source of origin, belonging, community, and culture, while also holding heartbreak, loss, and complexity. During the holidays, these bonds often feel amplified: the absence of loved ones aches deeper, and their presence glows brighter—despite the occasional chaos. The annual argument before dinner. The uncanny regression that happens the moment we step through the door of our childhood home. The wild uncle with outdated views and too much eggnog.
We’re looking for poetry that pulls up a chair at your family table. The 2025 Family & Home Prize seeks poems that navigate the intimate terrain of family dynamics—rivalries, traditions, estrangements, reconciliations, grief, and love. Whether you’re honoring legacy or confronting trauma, send us work that is honest, unflinching, and crafted with poetic precision.
Frontier Poetry welcomes all interpretations of family. We proudly encourage submissions from poets of all identities, cultures, and backgrounds.
Guest judge Sean Hill will select the winners. The first-place winner will receive $3,000 and publication. The second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200, respectively, along with publication. All finalists will be considered for paid publication in New Voices.
This contest opens October 14th and closes December 14th.
Further reading for inspiration can be found here:
Dwayne | The Poetry Foundation
In the Hospital | The Poetry Foundation
My Own Private Patriarchy | The Poetry Foundation
Telemachus | Forward Arts Foundation
This is How to Make Barah | Honey Literary
fishing with dad |diode poetry journal

About the Guest Judge:
Sean Hill is the author of the forthcoming multi-genre collection, The Negroes Send Their Love
(Milkweed Editions, 2026), and two poetry collections, Dangerous Goods (Milkweed Editions,
2014), and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor (UGA Press, 2008). Hill has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Hill’s poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals including Callaloo, New England Review, Orion, and Poetry, and in nearly three dozen anthologies. Hill has served as the director of the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference at Bemidji State University since 2012. Hill lives in southwestern Montana with his family and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Montana.

What Sean Hill Is Looking For:
It’s an honor to judge Frontier’s 2025 Family & Home Prize. A relationship to family and home are two of the many things we all share as human beings. I’m interested in poems that explore the families and homes we’re born to, the ones we choose, and the families that choose us. I remember first encountering Etheridge Knight’s “The Idea of Ancestry” and being moved by how the speaker nearly escaped addiction by going back home to visit family. I was in college then, only seventy miles from my own home, and I felt the poem intensely. Around that same time, I read Heaney’s “Digging,” Komunyakaa’s “My Father’s Love Letters,” and Rita Dove’s “Daystar,” and began to understand other ways of seeing family and home. Poets like Jericho Brown, Remica Bingham-Risher, Donika Kelly, and many others continue to help me think and feel through these themes. I’m excited for what I’ll recognize—or be newly introduced to—about “home” and “family” in your poems.

Guidelines:
Submissions are open to all poets, regardless of publication history.
Send us only your best, polished work—unpublished poems only, please.
As part of our dedication to the pursuit of a more inclusive publishing world, we are offering a free submission window for poets from historically marginalized groups at the beginning of the contest until we reach our cap of fifty.
Please do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
We ask for no more than three poems (five pages) per submission. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. We have no particular aesthetic or formal requirements and consider all styles of poetry.
Each entry requires a submission fee of $20.
Multiple submissions (of up to three poems apiece) are allowed, but each requires a separate entry fee.
Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history and personal bio. Also include any content warnings in consideration of our reading staff.
Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing primarily in English. Some code-switching/meshing is very welcome.
Please do not submit work if you have a close relationship with the guest judge.
If you have any questions, please visit our FAQ page. If you don’t find the answer to your question, email us: contact (at ) frontierpoetry (dot) com.
The deadline is December 14, 2025. We plan to announce winners and finalists in Fall 2025.

Editorial Feedback Option:
This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on your submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The $149 option will provide you with three letters from three different editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and all are astute and professional poets. Please allow eight to ten weeks after the contest closes to receive your feedback.

The 2025 Love & Eros Prize — Palette Poetry
2025-12-07 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
This contest is open from October 6, 2025 – December 7, 2025.
Palette Poetry’s Love & Eros Prize is returning for its fourth run this fall! From October 6 to December 7, we welcome you to share your love poems that explore the many and varied iterations of love. From the romantic and platonic, to the sweet and queer—the reverential devotion and gut-wrenching longing. What emotions branch from love? How are we all touched by love, and what shape does it manifest as in your life?
This prize will be judged by 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, who asks submitters to consider the following prompt:
“Eros is an expansive and mischievous personage—perfect to inspire poems! In the Ancient Greek world, Eros was ‘limb-loosening, bittersweet, pain inducing, merciless, sweet-tempered, all abounding, languishing, invincible, irresistible, graceful, tender,’ as Eleni Vomvyla of the University College of London’s Institute of Archeology writes in an exhibition review for the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens. She also shares that he was perceived by the Greeks ‘in all his diversity: a divine figure, a human value and a daily practice.’ I am excited to read what Eros inspires in poets for this contest, a word that means to call forth witness. What kinds of eros exists in your life that is calling for witness?
“A fun fact from more recent times is that Eros is also the name of the first near-Earth asteroid, which was discovered in 1898 and is the only asteroid to be orbited by and landed on by a spacecraft. Eros the asteroid is part of the Amor group and orbits the sun every 643 days! To conclude, Eros-as-in-desire exists in so many dimensions of our lives; we are interdependent and bound together by the cosmic forces of gravity, natural forces of evolution, and perhaps divine forces of mystery. I am grateful to have the opportunity to encourage poets to embrace the multi-faceted, mysterious, orbital aspects of Eros.”
—Sun Yung Shin
Submissions are open from October 6, 2025 – December 7, 2025. Palette’s editors will choose the ten finalists and any honorable mentions that warrant extra attention. Our judge will then select the winner and runner-ups for publication. The winner will receive $3,000; second and third place will receive $300 and $200, respectively. Finalists may also be considered for publication.
신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is a Korean-born award-winning poet and writer based in Minneapolis on the Dakotah homeland. She is the author of five collections of poetry: Six Tones of Water co-written with Vi Khi Nao from Ricochet Editions and The Wet Hex and three other books from Coffee House Press. She is the editor of three anthologies of essays and the author of three picture books. Her prose book Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration, Belonging, and How We Find Ourselves in Language will be published in May 2026 and her latest picture book Revolutions are Made of Love: The Story of James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs will be released in November 2025. She is also co-adapting a young people’s edition of Asian American Histories of the United States by Cathy Ceniza Choy from Beacon Press.
Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!
Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is largely written in English. At this time, Palette does not accept translated work unless you are also the author of the original poem.
Your submission must be no more than three poems and under ten pages. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. Please begin each poem on a new page and include each poem’s individual title.
We do accept multiple submissions (of one to three poems apiece), but each submission will include the $20 reading fee.
Writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the fifty free entries budgeted for this particular contest. (This category is now closed.)
We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
We are only accepting unpublished work. If your poem has been published elsewhere, even on a blog or on social media, it is not eligible.
DO NOT INCLUDE your name or identifying information in the document OR submission title box.
Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with your publication history, if any. This text box is where you can include your name and/or bio! If you select the editorial feedback option, this cover letter is also where you can name which poem you’d like feedback on. To safeguard our reading staff, please include content warnings in the cover letter, if applicable, as well.
Review our FAQ page for frequently asked questions.
NOTE: If after submitting you notice an error in your submission, please message us rather than withdrawing and resubmitting your submission. We can open it to editing once so you can correct the error.
Palette Poetry does not accept AI-produced work.
Contest closes December 7, 2025. Submitters will be notified of their submission status within twelve weeks of the contest closing date.
Discounts for Submitters
As a way to show our appreciation, we would like to offer all submitters to this prize a $5 discount to our 2025 Winter Keynote! Join us on Thursday, the 4th of December at 7pm EST / 4pm PST for a virtual lecture and generative workshop lead by our Love & Eros guest judge, Sun Yung Shin. The discounted registration link will be included in your confirmation email for this prize.
As a thank you for your support for Palette, we’d like to offer a 10% off discount code on a writing class from The Writing Salon. Find a class and use the code included in the confirmation message at checkout.
Editorial Feedback Option
This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The three-letter option costs $149 and will provide you with six pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions, from three separate guest editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and are all incredibly astute poets.

Mslexia’s Women's Poetry Competition
2025-12-08 23:59 (Europe/London) | Online
Your Poems
This competition is open to unpublished poems of any length, on any subject. Your £10 entry fee allows you to submit up to three poems.
Prizes
1st: £2,000; 2nd: £500; 3rd: £250
Unpublished Poet Prize* is an additional award for the best unpublished poem by an unpublished poet: £250.
The four winners, plus sixteen additional finalists will have their poems published in the March 2026 issue of Mslexia.
Deadline
The deadline for all entries is 23.59GMT, 8 December 2025.
Results
Entrants will be notified of the outcome of their entry in February 2026.
The winner and finalists will be announced on 1 March 2026.
How to Enter
Add the entry fee to your basket and proceed through the checkout (you will be asked to set up, or sign in to you Mslexia account during the process). Once the order is completed you’ll be taken to a ‘Submit’ page where the entry form is located. You can submit at a later date by logging into your Mslexia online account and going to the ‘competitions’ tab.
*If you are an Unpublished Poet (i.e. you’ve never had a poem selected for publication, in print or online, by an editorial selection process) then you can enter our Unpublished Poet Prize. This is an additional prize awarded to poets who have yet to have their work published. Simply tick the box on the entry form when uploading your poems or, if submitting by post, mark your entry with a U, and your work will be entered into the award.
Please ensure that your name does not appear on the poems themselves.
Unsure of what we mean by Unpublished? Want more information on formatting and how to submit? Visit our Entry Instructions for a comprehensive guide. And be sure to read our Rules before submitting.

Emily Dickinson Award, judged by Suzanne Buffam
2025-12-15 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
For a short poem, no longer than 16 lines.
GUIDELINES
Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
The fee for non-members is $10 for this award.
Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
Only one entry per award.
You cannot submit the same poem to more than one award. The exception: Individual poems submitted to Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award or Robert H. Winner Award may be submitted to another PSA award.
The submission must not have been previously published or accepted for publication.
Simultaneous submissions are acceptable; please withdraw the submission if the poem is accepted elsewhere for publication.
Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
We cannot accept corrections after submission.
Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
All submissions are judged anonymously.
JUDGE
Suzanne Buffam is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently A Pillow Book, which The New York Times named one of the best books of poetry of 2016. Her work has appeared in Harpers, the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, A Public Space, and elsewhere. She teaches poetry at the University of Chicago.

Submit to Words Without Borders
2025-12-15 23:59 (America/Toronto) | Online
WWB is open for submissions from September 15, 2025, at 12pm ET through December 15, 2025, at 12pm ET. Please note that any submissions sent during our summer closure—from June 12 at 5pm ET through September 15 at 12pm ET—will not be considered.
Words Without Borders publishes original translations into English of contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and interviews, and related multimedia. We also publish critical essays, book reviews, and interviews written in English. We generally do not publish fiction, poetry, or drama originally written in English, and we do not consider work that has already been published in English translation. Our average word count is 2,000–2,500 words; in general, we do not accept work that exceeds 4,000 words. Please submit only one prose piece OR no more than five poems. Do not send multiple submissions at a time.
We welcome submissions in three categories: individual translations; proposals for themed features; pitches for book reviews, interviews, and essays. Submissions of individual works should include translations, brief bios of authors and translators, and information on the original publication. Proposals for features should describe the focus and provide summaries of the three to four pieces to be included, brief biographies of the authors and translator(s), and original publication information or other background of the works. Translators should confirm the availability of rights with the author or publisher before submitting. Pitches for interviews and essays should describe the focus and include a brief biography. Reviewers may pitch reviews for books with publication dates at least four months in the future. For all categories, please review back issues of the magazine before submitting. Proposals and submissions may be sent to submissions@wordswithoutborders.org. Please note the genre in which you are submitting in the subject line of your email.
Rates
Words Without Borders is proud to pay all its contributors for their work. Authors and translators are paid equal amounts for translated writing. Translators hold the copyrights to their translations. We review our payment policy every three years. Our current rates are as follows:
Poetry: $50–75 for a single poem, depending on length; rates for multiple poems are negotiated based on length
Fiction: $150/1,000 words, capped at $300
Nonfiction: $150/1000 words, capped at $300
Selection and compilation of features: $250
Interviews: $150
Book reviews: $150

Submit to The Ex-Puritan
2025-12-25 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
The Ex-Puritan accepts submissions via Submittable: check out our general submission guidelines here!
Regular submissions to the magazine are free of charge and should fall under one of six categories: fiction, essays, poetry, interviews, reviews, and experimental/hybrid work. To submit to the experimental/hybrid section of the magazine, please email our section editors at hybrid.experimental@ex-puritan.ca.
Unless we are soliciting your work, all submissions must be previously unpublished (this includes self-publishing, publishing on blogs, and in chapbook format). The entry fee for the Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence is $20; winners in fiction and poetry each receive $1,000 in cash prizes and runners-up are awarded $200.
Before submitting, we recommend that you review our past issues to get a sense of the pieces we publish.
Please note that in order to diversify the voices we publish, we have a limit on how frequently we will publish the same writer: you may publish with us once per year in up to two sections of the magazine.
All submissions received by March 25 will be considered for the spring issue, published in May [please note that the Spring 2025 issue will be published in June]. Those received by June 25 are considered for the summer issue in August. Those received by September 25 are considered for the fall issue, published in November. Those received by December 25 are considered for the winter issue, out in February. All submissions will receive a decision within four months of the submission date.
If you haven’t heard back from us in four months, please email our Managing Editor. For any other query, get in touch with us at expuritaneditors@gmail.com. Please note that we CANNOT accept email submissions. They will be discarded.
We are open to simultaneous submissions for all regular submission categories, but no simultaneous submissions are permitted for the Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. If your work is accepted elsewhere, please send us a note via Submittable to withdraw the piece.
Rates | Updated as of Fall 2023
$100 per interview
$200 per essay
$100 per review
$150 per work of fiction
$50 per poem, or $100 per poet if multiple poems are accepted
$50+ per experimental or hybrid work, at an increasing scale depending on the nature of the piece
Check back with the magazine regularly; The Ex-Puritan is working ever assiduously to increase these figures.
Please note that we can ONLY issue payments using e-transfer, PayPal or a cheque in the mail. We also pay in CAD. If you cannot accept payment via e-transfer, PayPal, or cheque from a Canadian bank, we cannot accept your submission.

Join Sarabande's Editorial Panel — Manuscript Reader
2025-12-31 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Online
Sarabande Books is seeking manuscript readers for poetry, essay, and short fiction. Each year, submissions to Sarabande’s annual prizes and open periods are read by a rotating panel of enthusiastic and highly-qualified manuscript readers in their respective genres.
If you’re interested in joining our panel of readers, we invite you to inquire by completing the form below.
We are accepting readers on a rolling basis, so we recommend inquiring early! The inquiry form should take approximately ten minutes to complete.
ELIGIBILITY
This opportunity is open to any reader of the English language who does not and will not have a manuscript under consideration with Sarabande Books through 2024.

Submit to Grain
2025-12-31 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
Published four times per year, Grain is an internationally acclaimed literary journal that publishes engaging, surprising, eclectic, and challenging writing and art by Canadian and international writers and artists.
Before submitting your work to Grain, we recommend you read a recent issue of the magazine. The latest issue of Grain is available to order by clicking here.
To help Grain support writers of diverse communities and identities, we encourage applicants to self-declare if they identify as a writer who is a member of group or groups experiencing marginalization and underrepresentation. (i.e. Black, Indigenous, or Person of Colour, 2SLGBTQ+, or Disability).
Please adhere to the following guidelines. Do not submit more than once and in one genre only (subsequent submissions will neither be read nor returned). Due to the high number of submissions, we are only able to publish one submission per author per volume year. If you have work currently under consideration by Grain, please do not submit again until you have received a response. Grain has a nine-month regular submission period that runs from September 15th to June 15th. Manuscripts received outside of this window will be automatically rejected.

Submit to Arc Poetry
2025-12-31 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
Arc accepts previously unpublished poetry in English or previously unpublished translations of poetry into English, on any subject and in any form.Poets may only submit once per calendar year.Poetry submissions must not exceed three poems or 360 lines of poetry.Submissions of more than one poem must be broken up into two or three files and submitted separately on Submittable, along with the poet’s biography. (This allows Arc to respond to poems individually and update submitters on their submission’s status more promptly.)Arc only accepts poetry submissions using the online submission manager Submittable, except when otherwise indicated.Arc does not accept paper poetry submissions. Submissions received by mail will not be read and will not receive a response.Arc aims to respond to unsolicited submissions of poetry within four to six months.Poets based in USA must pay a small submission fee of $2 per poem. If this fee is a barrier for anyone wishing to submit, please email us about having the fee waived.
Arc pays for poetry at the rate of $50 per page, with which Arc secures First Canadian Serial Rights (meaning that the poems should not appear in any print or digital publication before being published by Arc). Upon publication, all rights revert to the author and payment is mailed, as well as one free copy of the issue in which the work appears.
Poets are welcome to submit poems that are simultaneously submitted elsewhere. If a poem that has been submitted to Arc is accepted by another publication, it should be withdrawn from Arc immediately via Submittable or by notifying Arc using Submittable’s messaging feature.
Submissions must be typed and single spaced (double spaces will be interpreted as blank lines).Submissions must include the poet’s name, email address, and mailing address on each page.Submissions must include the poet’s biography, which should be two to three sentences or approximately 30 words long. Submissions of visual poetry or concrete poetry should be submitted as PDFs.

Pamenar Online Magazine
2025-12-31 23:59 (Europe/London) | Submittable
We seek innovative poetry, translation and hybrid formats!
We accept submissions of about 3-6 pages of poetry, prose or any hybrid formats. Our page limits are not super strict. We love seeing new and innovative works so if your piece is slightly longer we want to see it! We do not consider works that have been previously published in online or print format.

All publication rights remain with the author. Pamenar Online magazine does not retain the rights to any publications on our online magazine.
If your work has Audio-Visual elements, or if its Audio-Visual in nature, we highly encourage you to submit. We love multimedia submissions and have published many such pieces in the past.
Do understand that we are quite limited in our formatting, so if your piece employs experimental formatting we have to publish a PDF on our website.
Unfortunately we can’t offer payment for publication at the time but we’re hard at work making it happen!
Our preference is for innovative prose and verse that pushes the boundaries of poetry. We consider translations and multilingual pieces working across any linguistic groups, though if the majority of the piece is not in English we do ask that you elaborate on your work in your author and translator notes. Please send us the work in its completed form, as you like to see it appear on the website.
For Translations, the translator must have full translation rights before submitting.
Please submit only once per reading period. We try to get back to you within 3 months so please wait at least three months to inquire.
We encourage simultaneous submissions but please let us know if your piece is accepted elsewhere.
We consider work by writers all across the globe! So do tell us a little bit about yourself in the Cover letter and make sure to include a third-person bio. We also ask that you include an author photo with your submission to streamline our publication process.
