Submission Sunday 3.22.26
Writer’s Digest, The Adroit Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Disappointed Housewife, American Literary Review, Black Lawrence Press, Journal of Fandom Studies, and The Jane Rotrosen Agency
Happy Sunday, writers! Thank you for subscribing. Every other Sunday, you’ll receive eight literary submission opportunities, varying in audience and genre, that have been selected for quality and relevance.
Submission Sunday relies on the support of paying subscribers. If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider an upgrade! I’m planning some additional online events available to paid subscribers as well as the usual benefits: craft essays by writers, interviews with published authors about their submission process, interviews with editors about what they’re looking for, round-ups of articles about submitting and writing in general, and full access to the archives.
This edition of Submission Sunday has calls and contests from Writer’s Digest, The Adroit Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Disappointed Housewife, American Literary Review, Black Lawrence Press, Journal of Fandom Studies, and The Jane Rotrosen Agency. More details below.
Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition (Deadline May 4)
Writers helping writers improve their craft, achieve their goals and recognize their dreams—since 1920. Our mission is to help ignite writers’ creative vision and connect them with the community, education and resources they need to bring it to life.
Writer’s Digest has been shining a spotlight on up-and-coming writers in all genres through its Annual Writing Competition for over 90 years. Enter our 95th Annual Writing Competition for your chance to win and have your work be seen by editors and agents! Almost 500 winners will be chosen.
The Adroit Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline April 1)
The Adroit Journal is a registered literary and arts nonprofit organization that was founded in 2010 by poet Peter LaBerge. At its foundation, the journal has its eyes focused ahead, seeking to showcase what its global staff of emerging writers sees as the future of poetry, prose, and art.
We’re looking for work that’s bizarre, authentic, subtle, outrageous, indefinable, raw, paradoxical. We’ve got our eyes on the horizon. Send us writing that lives just between the land and the sky.
Michigan Quarterly Review Call for Submissions (“The New Age of Fascism” – Deadline April 1)
Michigan Quarterly Review, founded in 1962, is an interdisciplinary and international literary journal, combining distinctive voices in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, as well as works in translation. The flagship literary journal of the University of Michigan, our magazine embraces creative urgency and cultural relevance, aiming to challenge conventions and address long-overdue conversations.
MQR invites submissions for a special issue on the rise of fascism, broadly defined, as a political and cultural force in the U.S. and around the globe. This special issue is to be published in Winter 2027. While fascism is often associated with historical interwar regimes, scholars increasingly identify “strongman” tactics in the present day: elected leaders who consolidate power, undermine democratic institutions, delegitimize opposition, and cultivate loyalty to personality over policy. In the U.S., these dynamics have manifested in practices that echo key elements of fascist playbooks, from attacks on critical media and courts to the undermining of agreed-up facts and shared understanding.
The Disappointed Housewife Call for Submissions
The Disappointed Housewife seeks fiction, essays, and poetry—along with unclassifiable writings, photos, and drawings—that stretch genre definitions, break the rules, challenge readers, and bend their brains, all while maintaining the highest levels of style and substance. We think that literature has to evolve, that it should keep up with the world around it even if it doesn’t reflect it so much as use it. Taunt it. Remold it, when required.
We’re looking for stories that strike us as different, always with that idiosyncratic touch. Iconoclastic. Kind of bent. Humorous. Poems that find the metaphors we’ve been looking for but never quite landed on. Essays that take us away from the usual and into the world of the unseen and overlooked. Above all, The Disappointed Housewife is a literary journal. We aren’t looking for genre material, though if your submission manipulates a genre in a literary way, we might just bite.
📚 Every other week, I’ll be making space for up to three online writing classes or programs (and the occasional retreat or conference). Learn more about getting your own classified ad. 📚
American Literary Review Call for Submissions (Deadline May 2)
Since 1990, the American Literary Review has been published through the Department of English at the University of North Texas. We feature poems, stories, essays, reviews, and interviews that reflect the diverse tradition of writers living in the United States and abroad. Our aim is to expand the notion of publishing literature that is American. We welcome work that speaks to American place, culture, history, and future, among other subjects.
We are particularly interested in writing that speaks to underrepresented and historically disadvantaged communities in the United States. Including such a diversity of perspectives in our journal is essential to our mission of expanding the breadth of American literature. This mission also entails welcoming authors of varying experience. From the journal’s inception, we have made a point of publishing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by writers at all stages of their careers. We revel in the opportunity to be a promising writer’s first publication, just as we relish the chance to publish writers with multiple books.
Black Lawrence Press The Hudson Prize (Deadline March 31)
Black Lawrence Press is an independent publisher of contemporary poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. We also publish the occasional translation from German. Founded in 2004 by Colleen Ryor, Black Lawrence became an imprint of Dzanc Books in 2008. In January 2014, we spread our wings and became an independent company in the state of New York.
Each year Black Lawrence Press will award The Hudson Prize for an unpublished collection of poems or prose (short stories or essays). Novels are not eligible for this prize. The prize is open to new, emerging, and established writers. The winner of this contest will receive book publication, a $1,000 cash award, and ten copies of the book. Entries are read blind by senior Black Lawrence Press editors and a rotating panel of former Hudson Prize winners.
Journal of Fandom Studies Call for Pitches (“Heated Rivalry” – Deadline April 13)
In the Heated Rivalry fandom, the politics of sports are contested with the politics of queerness, gender, sexuality, and race, and it is doing so in the pop culture zeitgeist. It is transforming the popular understanding of hockey, but also potentially transforming the structure of fandom itself; Heated Rivalry has built fandom across networked platforms, in conversation with sports fans, and with potentially new aesthetics of fan production. While there are strong intellectual histories in both sports fandom and transformative media fandoms, they are rarely studied in conversation with one another. This Special Issue will explore the impact of Heated Rivalry in both subcultural fan spaces and mainstream pop culture.
The Jane Rotrosen Agency Open to Queries
The Jane Rotrosen Agency has represented authors of fiction and nonfiction since 1974. Our client list includes over 1,000 international and domestic bestsellers in all formats.
JRA maintains long-term partnerships with our clients. Their goals are our goals: financial success, brand recognition, career longevity, and an engaged and active audience. We partner with both established names and new voices, and provide personalized service to meet the individual needs of each client. While continually strengthening our traditional publishing relationships, we also find innovative avenues for growing our authors’ success. Welcome to JRA and our dog-friendly townhouse in midtown Manhattan.
Here’s a reminder of the deadlines coming up from previous posts. Hot tips:
If you go into the archives and revisit posts from this time of year during previous years, you’ll find additional calls that are open annually.
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.
Ploughshares Emerging Writers’ Contest (Deadline March 31)
THREE Call for Submissions (“Boundless” – Deadline March 31)
The Masters Review Prize for New Narratives (Deadline March 31)
Oxford American Call for Pitches (“Home” – Deadline April 3)
Palette Poetry 2026 Rising Poet Prize (Deadline April 12)
Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence Program Call for Applicants (Deadline April 17)
Outskirts Literary Journal Call for Submissions (Deadline April 18)
Fractured Lit Ghost, Fable, and Fairy Tales Prize (Deadline April 19)
Beaver Magazine Call for Submissions (Deadline April 22)
Redivider Call for Submissions (Deadline April 30)
Soft Focus Zine Call for Submissions (“Tearjerkers” – Deadline May 1)
Cow Creek Chapbook Prize (Deadline May 15)
Kweli Call for Submissions (Deadline May 30)
AGNI Call for Submissions (Deadline May 31)
*This newsletter does not guarantee the unimpeachable behavior of all venues shared here but the odds are good.
