Seattle-based Crab Creek Review is a woman-run journal publishing new voices, as well as emerging and established writers. Discover your new favorite poet by subscribing today!
The general reading period is open from September 15 through October 15, or when our 300 Submittable Cap is hit. The editors seek original, unpublished poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction via Submittable. Submissions are free, and payment is in contributor copies. We look forward to reading your work, and encourage early submissions.
If you do not see a submission category, that means it has reached its submission cap.
Order your copy of Crab Creek Review's 2023 Spring/Summer issue here!
From cathedrals to dance floors to climate change, this issue tackles our loftiest questions while celebrating the most personal. It shifts from deep meditations to startling crystallizations as each work takes on a new form and shape. With this latest issue, you'll find writing from Jory Mickelson, Jared Beloff, Rebecca Martin, Rodrigo Toscano, Julia Mallory, Shilo Niziolek, Sarah Dalton, Forester McClatchey, Shannon K. Winston, David J. Bauman, Melody Wilson, Stephanie L Harper, Benjamid D. Carson, Carolyn Oliver, Jane Zwart, Jude Dexter, Lauren Camp among so, so many others. And we can't wait to share them all with you.
Subscribe to Crab Creek Review, a Seattle-based literary journal featuring poets and writers from the Pacific Northwest and all around the globe. Crab Creek Review has been bringing brilliant, original poetry and prose to Seattle and the rest of the world since 1983. We appreciate your support!
The night shift is a period of time—say, 11 p.m. to the early morning hours—in which a person is scheduled to work. The night shift also describes people who keep these hours while others sleep. Night shift workers are often engaged in critical infrastructure: they are healthcare workers, truck drivers, firefighters, public safety officers, utility workers, store attendants, the list goes on.
This summer, we invite works of creative nonfiction that respond to this theme in honor of Cathy Cochrane whose essay, “Night Shift,” appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Crab Creek Review. Cathy’s essay brought to life the uncanny magic of night shift work as a young nurse-in-training caring for a dying woman. We were incredibly proud to be her first literary publication. Cathy died in March 2026 after battling ovarian cancer for nearly seven years.
For this year’s issue of The Spring Crab, we invite writers to submit essays that explore the world of labor during the witching hour and the graveyard shift. Darkness and light, humor and uncertainty, action and reflection—these night shift stories wouldn’t unfold or resonate the same way if they took place during the day.
We welcome well-crafted narrative prose, lyric essays, zuihitsu, and hybrid or experimental creative nonfiction.
Guidelines
- 1,500 words max.
- One submission per writer.
- We accept simultaneous submission, but please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere. Original, unpublished work only.
- We value the work of humans. No AI-generated writing, please.
Submissions will be accept July 6–July 12, 2026 through Submittable.