James Frankie Thomas is a lifelong New Yorker. He attended the City College of New York and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has worked as a video store clerk, a Shakespeare tutor, and the “YA of Yore” columnist for The Paris Review; he was most recently a theater critic at Vulture. Idlewild is his first novel.

Carl Phillips is the author of 17 books of poetry, most recently Scattered Snows, to the North (2024) and Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the 2021 Jackson Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the PEN/USA Award for Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of American Poets. Phillips has also written three prose books, most recently My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing (Yale University Press, 2022); and he has translated the Philoctetes of Sophocles (Oxford University Press, 2004). He lives on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts.

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Contest Rules & Guidelines

One winner will be selected in each genre. The winners will each receive an award of $500 and publication in our journal. First and second runners-up will receive $200 for fiction and $50 for poetry. All submitted works will be considered for publication.

The submission fee for this contest is $10.00. However, between January 5-7th, this submission fee will be waived. While we rely in part upon submission fees to pay our contributors, we are also dedicated to offering free submission periods as we recognize these fees may present a hardship to submitters. Whether a submission was received during a paid period or a waiver period will have no bearing on its consideration by our editors and judges.

Fiction

We seek to publish fiction that is emotionally affecting, haunting, bizarre, and in firm control of the machinations of storytelling (e.g. character, scene, plot, and momentum). We welcome both traditional short stories, flash fiction, and other hybrid forms.

Please limit your submissions to 5,000 words or fewer. Submissions should be typed, double-spaced, paginated.

Poetry

We seek poetic works that capture experience by reinvigorating the language of the everyday, or surprising readers with novel, rarefied text. We are particularly interested in poetry that champions inventive forms and content.

Submit a maximum of 5 poems or fewer. Please include the number of poems you are submitting in your submission title.

Other General Notes

All entries will be read blind. To that end, please remove your name and any other identifying information from your manuscript. Texas State University students, alumni, and faculty members are not eligible.

Please send work that is previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please immediately withdraw from our contest if you place your work elsewhere.

Finally, all work must be submitted through our Submittable portal. We do not accept paper or emailed submissions.