Call for Submissions

Submissions for Spring 2026 are now closed.  

The Margaret C. Annan Memorial Prizes
Established in Margaret Annan's memory by her students, the prize supports three summer writing projects—one each in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—and is awarded to third-year students in recognition of excellence in creative writing and in support of a summer writing project. 

• Prize: $1000 (one prize for each genre)
• Genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry
• Eligibility: Third-year students in the College.
• Guidelines:
  • Submit a maximum of 10 pages in PDF or Doc/Docx format.
    • Fiction and Nonfiction submissions must be double-spaced.
  • Entry is limited to one submission per genre. (Students can, however, submit different pieces to multiple genres.)
  • Please follow any additional formatting guidelines listed on the submission pages (links below).
• Submission Deadline: March 15, 2026 at 11:59PM
• Submission Links:
  • Fiction: https://forms.office.com/r/1H33c7X4t2
  • Nonfiction: https://forms.office.com/r/7yB1jGPFSV
  • Poetry: https://forms.office.com/r/3UUcfVvvC5 

The David Blair McLaughlin Prizes
Awarded for essays written by students in the graduating class who demonstrate special skill and sense of form in the writing of English prose.

• First Prize: $300 | Second Prize: $150
• Genre: Nonfiction
• Eligibility: Fourth-year students and/or College students in the graduating class.
• Guidelines:
  • Submit one submission (maximum of 25 double-spaced pages) in PDF or Doc/Docx format.
  • Entry is limited to only one essay submission per student. (Students can, however, submit to multiple prizes.)
  • Please follow any additional formatting guidelines listed on the submission page (link below).
• Submission Deadline: March 15, 2026 at 11:59PM
• Submission Link: https://forms.office.com/r/FnPGW8Tdn1 

The Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prizes
Awarded for original short stories or novel extracts written by students in the graduating class.

• First Prize: $1000 | Second Prize: $500
• Genre: Fiction
• Eligibility: Fourth-year students and/or College students in the graduating class.
• Guidelines:
  • Submit one short story or novel excerpt (maximum of 25 double-spaced pages) in PDF or Doc/Docx format.
  • If your submission is a novel excerpt, please note this at the beginning of the submission. You may also include a brief explanatory preference if necessary.
  • Entry is limited to one submission per student. (Students can, however, submit to multiple prizes.)
  • Please follow any additional formatting guidelines listed on the submission page (link below).
  • Submission Deadline: March 15, 2026 at 11:59PM
  • Submission Link: https://forms.office.com/r/50GBZ5GUpY 

The John Billings Fiske Poetry Prize
Awarded for the best original poem or cycle of poems by a student in the graduating class.

• Prize: $500
• Genre: Poetry
• Eligibility: Fourth-year students and/or College students in the graduating class.
• Guidelines:
  • Submit one poem, or cycle of poems (maximum of 10 pages), in PDF or Doc/Docx format.
  • Entry is limited to one submission per student. (Student's can, however, submit to multiple prizes.)
  • Please follow any additional formatting guidelines listed on the submission page (link below).
• Submission Deadline: March 15, 2026 at 11:59PM
• Submission Link: https://forms.office.com/r/n4VMZCT512

2026 Student Literary Translation Prize 
The UChicago Literary Translation Prize, established in memory of translator Farouk Abdel Wahab Mustafa, recognizes outstanding undergraduate and graduate excellence in literary translation. This prize fosters awareness of the art of literary translation, offers support for emerging translators, and celebrates the work of our students.  

In 2026 our two distinguished judges, award-winning literary translator and scholar Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, and acclaimed translator of fiction, poetry, and critical theory Matthew Smith, will select a graduate student winner, an undergraduate student winner, and a finalist in both categories. The two winning submissions will be recognized with an award of $250 each and the two finalists will each receive an award of $100. Submissions are currently closed. You can learn more about submission criteria, and find the submission portal, here. 

Sliced Bread

Deadline: Rolling. Sliced Bread, a student-run literary and arts publication accepting work from UChicago undergraduates only, wants your art, photography, poetry, and short prose! They print one or two books per year, and accept art, prose, poetry, and nonfiction. They are currently accepting submissions for their Spring 2026 edition on a rolling basis through this link. Their editorial team meets at 8pm every Thursday in Bartlett Lounge, for those interested in the production side of a literary magazine. Follow their Instagram, @slicedbreadmag, for more information. 

Euphony

Deadline: Rolling. Euphony is a biannual, student-run literary magazine at UChicago; they publish fiction, poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, and book reviews submitted from new and established writers from around the country. Their submissions are running; print magazines are released in the winter and spring, and online publication is year-round. They meet Mondays from 7-8pm in the Reynolds Club South Lounge. Read more about their submission details here.   

The Chicago Shady Dealer  
Deadline: Rolling. Always open for submissions, The Shady Dealer is UChicago’s oldest and most well-known satirical newspaper. They publish 3 print issues a quarter, and continually online. They also hold open pitch and writing meetings in Harper Memorial 145 every Sunday at 7pm. Check out more submission details here.  

Blacklight Magazine

Deadline: Rolling. Blacklight Magazine is a student magazine dedicated to platforming marginalized voices in the literary and art space: "come exist with us." They welcome any medium of writing and art, including photography.  Blacklight strongly encourages interested people to follow their instagram at @blacklightmag. View their website here. Questions can be directed to blacklightuchicago@gmail.com.

The Seabird Writing Conference

Deadline: Rolling. The Seabird Writing Conference (SWC) is an intercollegiate organization (with chapters at Brown/RISD, Northwestern, Princeton, UChicago, Dickinson, Hamilton, ASU, and USF) dedicated to helping writers at all levels from across the US improve their writing. The parent organization hosts weekly writer's workshops, special themed events, and help each other find opportunities to publish their work. SWC members also have the opportunity to publish their workshopped pieces in The Bird Blog.

The UChicago Chapter aims to foster a community of student writers across campus, and bring awareness to writing events happening across Chicago. They meet a few times a quarter for write-ins, group writing exercises, and field trips to Chicago-area bookstores, cafés, and book talks. To join their Discord server, which facilitates workshops and communicates scheduling logistics, visit the SWC website here.

UChicago Writers' Workshop

Independently from the workshop courses offered through the Creative Writing department, Writers' Workshop is an RSO that seeks to develop the creative writing ability of its members-- student writers from all across campus-- through weekly fiction and poetry workshops. Their meetings primarily involve group discussions of pieces submitted by members, along with creative writing exercises. They welcome writers of any level. Fiction workshops meet Monday and Wednesday, and poetry meets on Tuesday; all meetings are 7-8:30pm in Harper Memorial Library. Find out more by joining their list-host via this address: uchicagowritersworkshop@lists.uchicago.edu

Memoryhouse Magazine

Deadline: rolling. Memoryhouse Magazine, run by UChicago students, curates a semiannual collection of works that present a personal narrative from across all genres of creative nonfiction and visual art. They give some preference to contributors with a significant connection to the Chicago area. They are looking for writing that uses innovative forms and techniques and writing that teaches the reader something new. To submit and view more guidelines, visit this link; you can visit their Instagram at @memoryhouseuchicago. 

The Chicago Phoenix
The Chicago Phoenix is a new magazine directed towards University of Chicago students. They aim to be a "common force that brings together the many fragments of our campus" by publishing stories about University of Chicago life and current events from a variety of perspectives, and curating their issues "not for consensus but for conversation." Their aesthetic favors high-quality, well-argued, and witty writing with a taste for acerbic observation. They have published three print issues so far, and publish regularly on their website and on social media, and are looking for writers, artists, and visual editors to join their team. If interested in writing for The Chicago Phoenix, please visit this form; if interested in working with the Phoenix as an artist, visual editor, or social media manager, please visit this form. There is no deadline for this opportunity; they encourage interested students to reach out to them at  thechicagophoenix@gmail.com or through the contact form on their site.

Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons is a weekly, online magazine of and about speculative fiction, publishing fiction, poetry, reviews, essays, interviews, roundtable discussions, and art. Work published in Strange Horizons has been shortlisted for, or won, Hugo, Nebula, Rhysling, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree Jr, and World Fantasy Awards. They are currently accepting art, nonfiction, and poetry on a rolling basis. All accepted submissions are paid based on category. The Strange Horizons fiction team also offers two potential resources for people interested in submitting work: advice designed to minimize the amount of anxiety-driven withdrawals of submissions, and “stories we’ve seen too often,” an archived list created by a previous editorial team, humorously snapshotting the tropes and cliches they observed in submissions at the time. 

Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine
Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine publishes microfiction with exactly six sentences, and no more than 400 words (excepting the title). They publish work from both emerging and established authors. They are always open for regular submissions, with no submission fee, and publish online on the second Thursday of every month. They do not pay for general submissions, though they do nominate for awards. Their annual writing competition, however, distributes a total of 1,100 in prizes to the winners and honorable mentions. This year, their competition closes on April 23 at 2:00 AM CST (~11:59 pm PST on April 22). The prompt is: "start the story with a bad day getting worse and by the last line, everything is better in an unexpected way. FYI: I dig strong imagery, character action, and irony." Gooseberry Pie enjoys stories that are like gooseberry pie itself: tart, messy, and satisfying, but that leave the readers wanting more. To apply to their general submission window or their annual competition, visit their submittable.

Jerboa Lit Flash Fiction Contest
Jerboa Lit, a growing organization for flash fiction, offers quarterly, timed contests for flash fiction writing. Over the course of 48 hours, competing writers craft a 250 or 500-word story incorporating all elements of a prompt (containing a specific genre, item, and short phrase). Registration is between $15 and $25, depending on the contest, and there's a cash prize of up to $1,000. In addition to being a fun exercise with the chance to win prize money, each short story will also receive editorial feedback, and authors retain all rights to their work (so they can submit their story elsewhere after the contest if they choose). Their next challenge is a 250-word challenge taking place from April 24-26, and registration will close 1 hour before the challenge is announced.

Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation Awards
The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation is a charitable organization dedicated to empowering writers, promoting literacy, and advancing the genre of adventure writing. Their 2026 New Voices prize supports unpublished writers in developing works in their very early stages. It provides mentorship and editorial guidance to the five winners, and is designed to help them develop a full first draft over a nine-month period. The proposed work must be narrative fiction designed for adult readership and set in our world, contemporary or historical. The deadline to apply is April 30 at 5:59pm CST. Their Author of Tomorrow award grants $1000 to ten short adventure stories submitted by writers between the ages of 16 and 21, and publishes those stories on Booksmart. The deadline to apply is April 19 at 5:59pm CST. To learn more about both prizes, and access their submission guidelines and portal, please visit this page.

Press Pause Magazine
Press Pause wants to create a "quiet literary think tank" away from the noise of social media, an experience like walking into a favorite small art museum on a haggard and rare weekday off when everyone else is working. They advertise through word of mouth rather than social media. They are looking for "honest" art, poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, and music-- two submissions at a time per person. They publish two print editions a year and one online edition; their current reading period is open until April 30 at 11:00 pm CST. To read about their "Basic Tenets," which explains more about their mission, visit this page. To learn more about their submission details, visit these pages.

Permafrost 
Permafrost is an online and print magazine at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid works. They are looking for work that exemplifies an understanding of each genre's conventions without shying from the vulnerable, the difficult, or the bizarre. Submission close April 30. To read more about submission guidelines or to view the submission portal click here. 

Pine Hills Review
Pine Hills Review is online literary journal that publishes irreverent, fun, and surprising work that does something new. They publish fiction, nonfiction, and poetry we all as visual art, interviews, and hybrid cross-genre work, allowing up to two submissions per reading period. The deadline for submissions is April 30. To read more about submission guidelines or to view the submission portal click here. 

Adroit Journal
Adroit Journal is an acclaimed literary magazine whose publications have been featured in Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, Pushcart Prizes Anthology, and others. Staffed by a team of emerging writers, they have published many acclaimed authors but also seek to promote student work. They look for work that’s bizarre, authentic, subtle, outrageous, indefinable, raw, paradoxical, writing that lives just between the land and the sky. Their general submissions are currently closed; however, their Adroit Prizes for Poetry and Prose, which award $200 and publication in Adroit Journal to exceptional work from secondary and undergraduate students, including international students and those who have graduated a semester early. The deadline is May 1. Keep an eye out, additionally, for their inaugural Editor's Prizes in Poetry and Fiction, recognizing outstanding work in those categories by writers of any age and awarding $1000 and publication. The Editor's Prize submission window will be open July 1–31. To learn more about submission guidelines, visit their Submittable.

Halfway Down The Stairs
Halfway Down the Stairs is a quarterly literary journal established in 2005 with the aim to publish cutting-edge fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Their June 2026 issue, "Resilience," will be accepting submissions in all categories until May 1. They publish primarily literary and mainstream work, and accept work in most genres, but all submissions should adhere to the current theme. To learn more about their submission guidelines, visit this page.

Black Fox Literary Magazine
Black Fox is an international print and online literary magazine with eclectic taste. They publish contemporary short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art, and they curate a mix of new and established writers in each issue. Their aesthetic focuses on works that are "fresh, innovative, emotional, and thought-provoking," but most of all tries to connect people and inspire change. They also especially like work from "under-represented styles and genres." Currently, Black Fox has free general submission categories open for Poetry, General Fiction, YA fiction, Flash Fiction, and Nonfiction until May 31 at 11:00pm. To learn more about their submission guidelines, visit their Submittable page.

Holle Awards – Open Soon
The Holle Awards are an annual program that rewards excellence in undergraduate student work on oral communication, creative storytelling, and journalism aiming to inspire, inform, elevate, and entertain, They award a $10,000 cash prize and a "Hermes Rises" trophy (representing the Greek god most associated with the art of communication) to the winner in each category. The categories they offer this year are forensic competition, public speaking, book arts, filmmaking, screenwriting, media writing, and sports writing. The submission window is open between May 1 and May 31. Keep an eye out; each award category will close after a submission cap of 25 submissions. The portal and guidelines to submission will be found here. 

Baltimore Review 
Baltimore Review is a prestigious, nationally-distributed print and online literary journal publishing short fiction, short nonfiction, and poetry. They aim to showcase Baltimore as a literary hub of diverse writing and promote the work of emerging and established writers from the Baltimore area, across the US, and beyond. They take submissions in a variety of styles and enjoy being pleasantly surprised, though they encourage interested writers to review some sample stories from their website to get a sense of what they typically publish. To see their editor’s preferences click here. Deadline for submissions is May 31. To read more about submission guidelines and to view the submission portal, click here. 

Submissions for our annual New Voices and Ron Offen Poetry Prize contests are now closed.  

The New Voices Series, sponsored by the College, invites early-career writers to campus to read their work alongside student writers from the University of Chicago.  The Ron Offen Poetry Prize Series, established in memory of poet and editor Ron Offen, invites a Chicago poet to campus to read their work alongside a student writer from the University of Chicago.  

The visiting writers will each select a student from the pool of submissions to introduce and to read before them at their respective events. The selected student writers are invited to a celebratory dinner with the visiting writer and Creative Writing faculty members after their reading. In addition, each of the selected students will receive a prize of $100. 

In February 2026, our visiting writers include Imani Elizabeth Jackson (Ron Offen Poetry Prize Series, Feb. 3, 2026), Carina del Valle Schorske (New Voices in Nonfiction, Feb. 10, 2026), Alex Foster (New Voices in Fiction, Feb. 17, 2026), and Jake Rose (Phoenix Poets New Voices in Poetry, Feb. 24, 2026). 

This year’s New Voices and Ron Offen Poetry Prize Series submission opportunities are listed below. Please note you will need to sign into your UChicago Microsoft 365 account to access the submission forms. 

Ron Offen Poetry Prize Series

• Visiting Poet: Imani Elizabeth Jackson
• Event Date: February 3, 2026
• Eligibility: Any current UChicago undergraduate student. Must be available on February 3 at 5pm for the reading.
• Guidelines:
  • Submit 3-5 pages of poetry in PDF or Doc/Docx format.
  • Title the document file as: [Last Name] - [Submission title] - Offen Prize
  • Do not include your name inside the document. (Submissions will be anonymous when the writer views them.)
  • Please only submit one submission per contest. (You can, however, submit to multiple contests.)
• Submission Deadline: December 5, 2025 at 11:59PM
• Submission Link: https://forms.office.com/r/pXL3N3gD5A

Imani Elizabeth Jackson is a poet from Chicago. Her writings appear in Apogee, BOMB, TriQuarterly, Annulet, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, Futurepoem’s 2020 Other Futures Award, the Arkansas International’s inaugural C.D. Wright Award (selected by Hanif Abdurraqib), and several awards from Brown University. Under the name mouthfeel, she co-authored the poetry-cookbook Consider the Tongue (2019) with S*an D. Henry-Smith; she also contributed to Francesca Capone’s Weaving Language: Lexicon (Essay Press, 2022). She is the author of the chapbooks saltsitting (reissued by g l o s s, 2020) and Context for arboreal exchanges (Belladonna*, 2023) and the book Flag (Futurepoem, 2024). Imani also collaborates with Madeleine Le Cesne and Isra Rene as donk, an experimental kitchen. 

New Voices in Nonfiction 

• Visiting Writer: Carina del Valle Schorske
• Event Date: February 10, 2026
• Eligibility: Any current UChicago undergraduate student. Must be available on February 10 at 5pm for the reading.
• Guidelines:
  • Submit 3-5 pages of nonfiction in PDF or Doc/Docx format.
  • Title the document file as: [Last Name] - [Submission title] - New Voices NF
  • Do not include your name inside the document. (Submissions will be anonymous when the writer views them.)
  • Please only submit one submission per contest. (You can, however, submit to multiple contests.)
• Submission Deadline: December 5, 2025 at 11:59PM
• Submission Link: https://forms.office.com/r/e3i0mbyRBh

Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer, translator, and wannabe backup dancer. Her debut essay collection, The Other Island, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books. It was recently awarded a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. She writes about Caribbean culture, literary politics, diasporic dramas, and the songs she can’t stop singing to herself, and essays have been published many places including The Believer, The Cut, The Point, and the New York Times Magazine, where she is now a contributing writer. Her profile of Bad Bunny was featured on CBS, and her story about grief and belonging on apocalyptic dance floors won a National Magazine Award. As a translator, del Valle Schorske focuses on Puerto Rican poetry, especially the work of Marigloria Palma. Her own poetry has been featured in a variety of small journals and anthologies and has been supported by fellowships from CantoMundo, MacDowell, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has a PhD in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University. 

New Voices in Fiction

• Visiting Writer: Alex Foster
• Event Date: February 17, 2026
• Eligibility: Any current UChicago undergraduate student. Must be available on February 17 at 5pm for the reading.
• Guidelines:
  • Submit 3-5 pages of fiction in PDF or Doc/Docx format
  • Title the document file as: [Last Name] - [Submission title] - New Voices Fiction
  • Do not include your name inside the document. (Submissions will be anonymous when the writer views them.)
  • Please only submit one submission per contest. (You can, however, submit to multiple contests.)
• Submission Deadline: December 5, 2025 at 11:59PM
• Submission Link: https://forms.office.com/r/rFuRqVrpPF

Alex Foster graduated from the University of Chicago in 2017, majoring in economics with a minor in creative writing, before getting his MFA in creative writing from New York University. His debut novel,  Circular Motion, was published in May 2025 by Grove Atlantic. It was  longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. In addition to writing, he  is a book editor at Macmillan with the Holt and Metropolitan imprints, where he has worked on the publication of  New York Times-bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning literary fiction and political nonfiction.

Phoenix Poets New Voices in Poetry

• Visiting Poet: Jake Rose
• Event Date: February 24, 2026
• Eligibility: Any current UChicago undergraduate or graduate student. Must be available on February 24 at 5pm for the reading.
• Guidelines:
  • Submit 3-5 pages of poetry in PDF or Doc/Docx format.
  • Title the document file as: [Last Name] - [Submission title] - Phoenix
  • Do not include your name inside the document. (Submissions will be anonymous when the writer views them.)
  • Please only submit one submission per contest. (You can, however, submit to multiple contests.)
• Submission Deadline: December 5, 2025 at 11:59PM
• Submission Link: https://forms.office.com/r/s3UbWPHgM6

Jake Rose is a poet, artist, and educator living in California’s Central Valley. Rose teaches at the University of California, Davis, and has published poems in West Branch,  The Seventh Wave, and  Adult Groceries, among other journals.  JOAN, winner of the Phoenix Emerging Poets Book Prize from the University of Chicago Press, is forthcoming in March 2026. Other projects include  The Art of the Death, a book-length erasure poem;  Spectropoetics, a land-based project in interspecies writing; and The Month Books, a series of handmade chapbooks exploring chronic illness and hybrid form.