Submission Sunday 6.23.24
Dzanc Books, Pleiades: Literature in Context, The Lascaux Review, Contrapuntos, Granum Foundation, Raising Mothers, The Gravity of the Thing, and Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises
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This edition of Submission Sunday has calls and contests from Dzanc Books, Pleiades: Literature in Context, The Lascaux Review, Contrapuntos, Granum Foundation, Raising Mothers, The Gravity of the Thing, and Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises. More details below.
The Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction, Short Story Collection Competition, and Poetry Collection Prize (Deadline September 30)
The Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction recognizes daring, original, and innovative novels. Sarah Yahm, author of The Moveables, was chosen as the winner of last year’s Prize for Fiction. A $5,000 advance and publication by Dzanc Books will be awarded to the winner.
The Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize celebrates imaginative and inventive writing in book-length collections (generally over 40,000 words, but there is no hard minimum). The winning submission will be awarded a $2,500 advance and publication by Dzanc Books.
The Dzanc Books Poetry Prize, run for the first time in a decade, recognizes daring, original, and inventive writing in book-length collections. The winning submission will be awarded a $1,000 advance and publication by Dzanc Books. This year’s judges are Keith Taylor (All the Time You Want) and Jonathan Fink (The Crossing, Barbarossa).
The contests are open to new, upcoming, and established writers alike.
Pleiades: Literature in Context Call for Submissions (Deadline June 30)
Pleiades: Literature in Context is a literary biannual featuring poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews by authors from around the world. Past contributors include winners of the Nobel, Ruth Lilly, Pulitzer, Bollingen, Prix de la Liberté, and Neustadt Prizes, recipients of Guggenheim, Whiting, National Book Critics Circle, and National Book Awards, and many writers seeing their work in print for the first time.
The Lascaux Prize in Flash Fiction (Deadline June 30)
Stories may be previously published or unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are accepted. True stories are welcome as long as they’re written in a narrative style. Winner receives $1,000, a bronze medallion, and publication in The Lascaux Review.
The Lascaux Review publishes accessible fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction of literary quality. Book excerpts are welcome.
Writing of literary quality venerates the language and speaks to the human condition. We make no effort to define these terms—we know it when we see it. Accessible literature is poetry and prose that can be understood and appreciated without annotation.
Contrapuntos Call for Submissions (Deadline August 31)
Digitus Indie Publishers was born out of the necessity of having a multi-language publishing house. Our team has built a community of writers, editors, and translators based in California and continues to grow. Our primary publication is the literary journal Contrapuntos, which has received and published works in Spanish, English, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Arabic.
Digitus Indie Publishers is announcing the call for Contrapuntos XI, scheduled for release in 2025. This edition does not have a specific theme, although consideration will be given to prose, poetry, essays, reviews, photography, and academic works.
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Granum Foundation Prizes (Deadline August 1)
The Granum Foundation Prize ($5000) will be awarded annually to help U.S.-based writers complete substantive literary works—such as poetry books, essay or short story collections, novels, and memoirs—or to help launch these works. Additionally, the Granum Foundation Translation Prize ($1500) will be awarded to support the completion of a work translated into English by a U.S.-based writer.
Funding from both prizes can be used to provide a writer with the tools, time, and freedom to help ensure their success. For example, resources may be used to cover basic needs, equipment purchases, mentorship, or editing services. Competitive applicants will be able to present a compelling project with a reasonable timeline for completion. They also should be able to demonstrate a record of commitment to the literary arts.
Raising Mothers Call for Submissions
Since 2015, Raising Mothers has served as a digital literary platform publishing creative writing and art in all genres and media that honors both the parenting and personal narratives of the Global Majority. Raising Mothers publishes experimental and traditional fiction, micro and flash, creative nonfiction, interviews, book reviews, photo essays, and comic/graphic narratives.
Raising Mothers exclusively seeks out and supports submissions by self-identified mothers and parents: biological, non-biological, step, foster, grand, or adoptive that are often marginalized in literary spaces.
We are also looking to include the voices of people (there is no requirement to be a parent) who were un-mothered, under-mothered, have toxic parental relationships; people who are adoptees, and other child-centered perspectives. We are interested in non-heteronormative ideas of parenthood including queer parenting, chosen families, and any other ways not mentioned that reconceptualize “family.”
The Gravity of the Thing Call for Submissions (Deadline June 30)
The Gravity of the Thing is an independent magazine dedicated to defamiliarized creative writing. Our publications have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions, noted in the Best American series, and named finalists in the Shirley Jackson Awards, and we are also the grateful recipient of a grant from Oregon’s Regional Arts & Culture Council. Our ongoing goal is to publish work that defamiliarizes literary forms, writing that stranges to achieve a renewed sense of discovery.
Defamiliarization: an artistic or literary technique that presents the common in unfamiliar ways; that which has been taken for granted is reenvisioned, made strange, to heighten a reader’s perception of the familiar.
The Gravity of the Thing publishes creative work by writers with varying experiences and perspectives. We encourage previously unpublished writers to submit, and we aim to support work by writers historically underrepresented in literary publishing.
Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises Open to Queries
Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises is a full-service literary agency located in Los Angeles, California. We handle publishing rights and all ancillary rights (such as film, TV, audio, electronic, and foreign) for the authors we represent. We work with both first-time and established writers and are known for our expert attention to every aspect of the publishing process.
Before opening the agency, principal Betsy Amster spent ten years as an editor at Pantheon and Vintage and two years as editorial director of the Globe Pequot Press. She has been described in the Los Angeles Times as "a dogged prospector of...literary talent" and celebrated in a profile in the American Society of Journalists and Authors newsletter for her "no-nonsense style and whimsical sense of humor." She frequently teaches classes on publishing at UCLA Extension's Writers Program and participates in panels at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
Here’s a reminder of the deadlines coming up from previous posts. Please note that archived posts might also include calls that are open year-round. If you sign up for Substack Notes, I also post deadline reminders there. If you submit to any of the Submission Sunday calls and publish or win, let me know and I’ll broadcast your success in a future post.
The MacGuffin Call for Submissions (Deadline June 30)
Bellevue Literary Review Call for General Submissions, 2025 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, 2025 Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction, and 2025 John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry (Deadline July 1)
Epiphany Call for Submissions (Deadline July 8)
At Length Call for Submissions (Deadline End of Summer)
River Styx Castro Prize 2025 (Deadline September 30)