Submissions

We are looking for poetry, fiction, personal essay, and one-minute plays. Click the button below to submit via our Submittable page.

Upon acceptance of your submission, you grant Free State Review First North American Serial Rights and the right to publish your work on our website for up to six months after your work is printed in our journal. Publishing rights revert back to the author after printing, but if you do print elsewhere, we ask you note us as publishing your work first. If you have a simultaneous submission please let us know. Prose should be 500-4,000 words; poetry can be any length or style. Poetry submissions can include 3-5 poems in a single document. Strange is not always better; simple and clear are not always memorable. Try to split the difference between the abstract and the concrete.

Hot Tips

Be literal, transitive, and associative all at once. Be genuine. We favor poetry with endings that don’t shut down the poem. In fiction, we’d rather not meet characters who overwhelm the plot they find themselves in. We’d rather not have plots that overwhelm the characters. Experimentalists: if you want to push the reader away, go ahead, but remember to also do something generous and honest to invite her back. Poets: you don’t have to die to write a poem about death. Strange is not always better. Simple and clear are not always memorable.

Six Questions for Barrett Warner, Editor, Free State Review