January 2023 update: While our high school poetry contest remains open, we have closed all other submissions portals so that we can concentrate on publishing the print edition of the Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience, and thank you for your interest in our publishing projects. Please check back with us in the future!
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Map Literary publishes poems & prose poems, short stories & short-shorts, scholarly essays & creative nonfiction, and art.
We also run the Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award every other year, as well as a writing contest for New Jersey high school students.
We do not consider work that has previously appeared elsewhere, either in print or on the web.
Please include a brief bio in the "cover letter" field when you submit.
We accept simultaneous submissions but expect to be notified in a timely manner if the work has been accepted elsewhere.
For fiction and nonfiction, submit one piece at a time for consideration; do not send a second piece until you have received a response to the first. You may, however, submit in more than one genre at a time. For poetry, submit 3-5 poems at a time; please send only one file.
We value provocative themes, experimental works, genre confoundings, fugue complexities, beautiful syntax, original voices, aesthetic risk-taking, creative research, ethnic hybridity, gorgeous paperweights.
We dislike clichés, gimmicks, SUVs, righteousness, PowerPoint presentations, nuclear arsenals, talking heads.
Thematic cartographers, we want to model today’s ethical, ethnic, and aesthetic realities. We look foward to hearing from you.
Please be so kind as to subscribe to our occasional newsletter.
Please submit one poem only. The poem must be previously unpublished.
The poem should be about 14 - 24 lines long. Slightly shorter or slightly longer poems are fine--but please don't send a poem of more than 500 words.
The first one hundred entries to this contest are free of charge; after that, there is a $2 entry fee.
The winner will receive $250 and publication in Map Literary; runners-up will also be considered for publication.
Note that you may enter the contest only once, and submissions are accepted only from students who are currently enrolled in a high school in New Jersey.
The deadline is March 15th, 2023, at 11:59 PM.
Please be so kind as to subscribe to our occasional newsletter by clicking on this link.
Next year our High School Writing Contest will focus on short fiction, so please stay in touch!