Deadlines: February & March 2024
Every middle of the month: new deadlines, new contests, and new opportunities for your work to find its audience. Here is a roundup of ten submission opportunities with deadlines in February or March, including Variant Lit, Game Over Books, Alien Magazine, and more.
DEADLINE: 2/14
For this February 2024 (Not) in Love Challenge, we invite you to share your most vulnerable work on the topic at hand, but in the form of a tanka. A tanka is one of the oldest Japanese forms of poetry, similar to a haiku and derived from waka, another form of Japanese verse. The tanka is a thirty one-syllable verse in the form of a five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count, sometimes with three “upper” lines and two “lower” lines. The tanka is a fascinating poetic form because its constraint requires the most concise honesty of its writer. Read more about the tanka here, and then try your hand at the form. We can’t wait to read your latest work! The first-place winner will receive $500, with the second- and third-place winners receiving $200 and $100, respectively.
And in the meantime—
Cheers to (not) being in love.
Reading Fee: $15
DEADLINE: 2/15
The winner of our annual Editors’ Prize in Poetry will receive $1,000 and publication. Winners will be announced in March.
Reading Fee: $12
DEADLINE: 2/28
For this reading period, we ask that you send us the full manuscript.
Game Over Books generally offers 30% royalties and 25 author copies. Sample contracts can be found here. If you have questions, notes, or concerns about our contract, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
What We’re Looking For!!
Game Over Books is looking to publish work that is entertaining and thought-provoking, cheery, dark, or otherwise. The type of work that makes you say “oh shit!” and you have to pause and look around to make sure no one actually heard you say that out loud.
We like manuscripts that tell a story and have an overall arc to them.
Be honest. Be weird. But most of all, be you!
Reading Fee: none
DEADLINE: 2/15
The prize includes $3,000, publication of a full-length collection of poetry, and a standard royalty contract. Kathryn A. Morton was a published author and devotee of fine literature, especially poetry.
ELIGIBILITY
This contest is open to any poet writing in English. Employees and board members of Sarabande are not eligible. Agented manuscripts are not eligible. Individual poems from the manuscript may have been published previously in magazines, chapbooks of less than 48 pages, or anthologies, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. Translations and previously published collections are not eligible. To avoid conflict of interest, close friends of a judge or current students in a degree-granting program with a judge are not eligible.
Reading fee: $29
DEADLINE: 2/29
B O D Y: 2024 Spring Issue – Poetry
B O D Y wants to read your poetry — lyric, narrative, prose poetry — whatever form you write, send us your best:
- Submit 3 to 5 poems, up to a total of 5 pages of poetry
- Work must be in a single document
- Each poem should start on a new page
Reading Fee: none
DEADLINE: 2/29
Do not make more than one submission per submission period. There are no format restrictions. Limit your submission to 5 poems totaling no more than 10 pages.
We do not accept e-mail submissions; all work must be submitted through Submittable. Submissions that are emailed to any of our editors will not be read. Submit your best and submit often. We’re excited about your work!
Please send all work in one file. When submitting multiple poems, please start each poem on a new page.
We work hard to give our full attention to your work and regrettably cannot read submissions that do not follow the guidelines.
Reading Fee: none
DEADLINE: 3/1
Ninth Letter is accepting poetry submissions for our Spring/Summer 2024 print edition from August 15th to February 28!
Submit 3-5 poems (max. 8 pages) at a time. We do not accept previously published work, including self-published work on websites, blogs, etc. Simultaneous submissions are okay as long as they are identified as such in a cover letter. Please send a message withdrawing your poem(s) immediately upon acceptance elsewhere. Please only send only one submission per genre at a time. We do not accept submissions by email attachment–email submissions will not be read.
Ninth Letter pays $25 per poem and $100 for prose upon publication and two complementary copies of the issue in which the work appears. Ninth Letter acquires First North American Serial Rights (FNASR). We ask that you acknowledge Ninth Letter upon reprint of your work.
Reading fee: $3
HFR will accept contest submissions in poetry and fiction between Feb 1-29, 2024. This year’s poetry judge is Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Ghost Of and Root Fractures, forthcoming 1/30/24 from Scribner. This year’s fiction judge is Venita Blackburn, author of How to Wrestle a Girl and Dead in Long Beach, California, forthcoming 1/23/24 from Macmillan.
There will be two prizes of $1,500 each and publication in Hayden’s Ferry Review (online in summer 2024 and in the fall/winter 2024 print issue) for a poem or a group of poems and a work of fiction. A runner-up in each category will receive $250 and publication. All entries are considered for publication.
Reading Fee: $20
DEADLINE: 3/1
- Please send us only one poem per author, per submission period.
- Use a 12-point standard font and single space your submissions (except for form poems).
- While there are no strict word limits for poetry, we tend to like poems that fit on one page.
- Attach your piece as a Word doc, docx, Google doc, or PDF.
- Please include a brief third person bio and a short cover letter, if you so desire.
Reading fee: none
DEADLINE: 3/1
Alien Magazine: Poetry
We are open to all types and themes of poetry. However, to guide you, we find that topics dealing with current societal issues (and there are so many societal issues currently) work best for us.
We pay $20 for each accepted poem. Payments can be done via Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal.
Specific Poetry Guidelines:
- Only submit up to one poem, of any length, per document
- Use standard formatting
- Submit as a .doc or .docx file
- Only submit previously unpublished work
- Please wait until you receive a response for your submission before submitting again. You are free to submit multiple times per reading period, but only one at a time
- We accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know as soon as it’s accepted elsewhere
Reading fee: none