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!
Crab Creek Review is hosting a themed fiction submission period this spring! Exploring themes of displacement and the immigration experience, this submission period will be edited by by guest editor, Lana Spendl.
Submissions will run March 1st through April 1st. All work must be submitted through Submittable.
What We Are Seeking:
We are looking for short fiction that explores the displacement or immigration experience. Separation from one’s country or culture—whether voluntary or not—generates a range of feelings/experiences: disorientation, grief, nostalgia, curiosity, surprise, and a negotiation of a new sense of self, to name a few. Send us fiction—flash or full length—that uncovers some nuance of this experience. Pieces may include characters moving countries or characters being displaced within their country of birth due to a change in circumstances. They may include experiences of internal displacement from a previous, defining situation. They may include the visceral, the poignant, the philosophical, even the humorous. This call is merely a starting point, as we are interested in being surprised by any aspect your work seeks to explore in connection to the theme.
We welcome work from writers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color, writers of all sexual orientations and gender identities, writers of varying socio-economic status, and writers with physical or mental differences.
The Specifics:
- Fiction may be up to 3,500 words.
- Flash fiction (stories under 1,000 words) may include up to three pieces per submission.
- All work must be previously unpublished.
- All works must be submitted through Submittable.
- Simultaneous submissions accepted, however please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
- Work not originally in English must be translated into English. For work in translation, translators are responsible for obtaining permission to reprint any material under copyright that exceeds the guidelines of fair use or does not have a Creative Commons license.
- We only accept work that is the creative effort of humans. Crab Creek Review is dedicated to publishing work by diverse writers whose voices need to be heard. The lived experience of being human is critical to our mission, therefore we are not open to work that has been fully or mostly written or generated by AI (artificial intelligence). We are open to prose and poetry that has experimented with and incorporated technology in creative ways, as long as the role of AI is clearly explained. All submitters will be asked to confirm and disclose the role that AI and other non-standard technologies have played in the creation of their submitted work.
The entry period for the 2024 Crab Creek Review Poetry Contest begins on February 15th with entries accepted until May 15, 2024. A $500 prize will be awarded for the winning poem. All entries considered for publication. Winner and finalists will appear in Crab Creek Review.
The entry fee is $16 per submission. Multiple submissions are allowed, but each batch must be submitted separately, with its own entry fee. This submission fee funds the print production of each issue.
About the Judge
Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Kelli's newest book Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press) was named a Finalist in the Washington State Book Awards and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize in Poetry. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and book cover designer. Her other books include Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (Winner of the Foreword Indies Book of the Year in Poetry, Washington State Book Finalist, and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Prize), The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice (coauthored with Martha Silano), and the newly released Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems which she coedited with Susan Rich. Kelli lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional lands of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also currently part of a project between local land trusts and artists to help raise awareness for the preservation of land, ecosystems, and biodiversity called Writing the Land.www.agodon.com/www.twosylviaspress.com
Submission Guidelines:
- Please do not include your name in your submission. All submissions should be kept anonymous.
- Only original, previously unpublished work will be considered.
- Include a cover letter in the provided space in the Submittable form (not in the document). Include your mailing address, social media handle, email and phone number, a 50-word bio, and the titles of the pieces you are submitting.
- Should you submit something that is under simultaneous consideration, please indicate this in your cover letter and notify us immediately by adding a note to your Submittable account if the piece is accepted elsewhere.
- Send your work as a SINGLE attachment (.doc; .docx; .rtf; PDF); docx preferred.
- Please only submit up to four (4) poems in a submission.
- We aim for a response time of 8 weeks, but please do not query your submission status unless 3 months have passed.
- If you need to update us on the status of your simultaneous submission, please do so by adding a note to your submission, in Submittable.
- The entry fee is $16 per submission. Multiple submissions are allowed, but each batch must be submitted separately, with its own entry fee.
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.
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