How do you know where to submit your enthusiastically crafted, thoughtfully critiqued, and carefully revised short stories? I’ve recently started down this journey toward publication and thought it would be helpful to share my submissions calendar, a curated list of contest deadlines and calls for submission. These are opportunities I believe are at least worth considering for your short story submissions (and in many cases poetry and creative nonfiction). Some are regional to the San Francisco Bay Area but most are not.
Below is what my calendar looks like today. Click each submissions deadline for more information and a link to submissions guidelines. Each literary journal is scored according to Clifford Garstang’s Pushcart Prize Rankings.
Thanks to Poets & Writers, Submittable’s newsletter, and the #contests channel in WriterHangout for helping source these and future short story submissions.
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Wow, this is great! There’s nothing more disappointing than thinking you’ve finally found the perfect fit for your story and then looking at the reading period/deadline and realizing you can’t submit for 6 more months. I’ll definitely be coming back here. Thanks for sharing!
[…] stories to contests and literary journals over two years ago, founded a critique group, curated a submissions calendar, and wrote contest roundups for Writer Unboxed. But this week and with this email, I achieved my […]
This is fantastic! Have you ever considered populating the calendar with the date each submission opportunity opens, rather than closes? Lit mags fill up at the beginning of their submissions periods, and acceptances become increasingly difficult (or so I hear).
Thanks! I add deadlines to the calendar when I find them. Most opportunities are only consistent with giving a deadline, not when the submission period opens. It’d be handy to have both.
I’ve heard of submissions periods closing when they have enough content, but in my experience those tend to be periods with soft deadlines and they mention so in their guidelines.
[…] kept The Common on my list of deadlines, and decided to submit again despite not being encouraged to do so. “Reading Willow” […]