WINTER 2025 - ISSUE #22 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! 

Theme: Safety

Submissions open for the Winter 2025 Issue (#22) on August 1. 

Final deadline is  11:59 p.m. on September 30 2024.

We support the Stonecoast community's goal to promote inclusivity, equity, and social justice through writing. 

Please carefully note which guidelines and submission links to follow by reading the following. Note that our submission policy differs for current Stonecoast MFA students.

Genres Accepted: We solicit fiction, pop (genre) fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, dramatic works, experimental literature, and visual art. We can’t wait to see your best pieces! Stonecoast Review offers feedback on selected submissions. 

Issue Format: Beginning with Issue 21, released in June 2024, Stonecoast Review assumed the form of a print/online hybrid journal. The print form now consists of a 48-page chapbook, with four-color art throughout, as well as a QR code that directs readers to more new content on StonecoastReview.org. As such, all pieces selected for publication will be featured online but, due to page limitations, only a select number of pieces will be able to be featured in the print Issue. Please see below for new guidelines regarding word count limitations for each type of publication.

Rights: Stonecoast Review acquires First Serial Rights and First Electronic Rights for all work published in the journal. Rights revert to the author upon publication. Contributors selected for print publication will receive a complimentary copy of the Issue in which their work appears.

Our staff: We are a volunteer group of Stonecoast MFA Program alumni and current students. Most of us have experience working on numerous Stonecoast Review issues or other literary journals. Any Stonecoast alumni and current students working on Issue #22 of Stonecoast Review are ineligible to submit.

Consider supporting us! We rely upon donations to cover advertising, website, and printing costs. To support Stonecoast Review, click on the "Donate" at found on our website.

Buy an issue: Visit "Where to Buy Stonecoast Review" here.

More about our Theme 

What do you think of when you hear the word "safety"? What does it mean to feel safe? What does it mean to be safe? 

The word connotes different definitions and bears different weights for each of us. It manifests itself in unexpected ways and settings, and remains absent or silenced in so many others. For all its idiosyncrasies, a universal acknowledgement exists within this concept. Or does it? 

We want to read literature and take in media that explore, provoke, challenge, reconsider, evoke, or explode that concept for you.

Submission Guidelines 

• Send submissions via Submittable only.
• Please include a short cover letter and bio (50- and 100-word max., respectively).
• We accept one prose submission, one poetry submission (of up to three poems), or five pieces of visual art per author, per submission cycle. Submissions that do not abide by these rules will not be considered for publication. 
• Your work must be previously unpublished. (Stonecoast alumni may submit already published work for consideration as reprints.)
• We encourage simultaneous submissions. However, please withdraw your submission immediately if it's accepted elsewhere. If you submit multiple poems and one is accepted at another publication, please attach a note on Submittable identifying which poem is no longer available. 
• Please adhere to standard manuscript format: Double spaced, 12 pt., Times New Roman font. Poetry may be single spaced. (If you tell us that diverging from these rules is integral to your piece, we will consider it.)
• While we love to represent stories with raw, emotional truth, we ask that you refrain from submitting pieces featuring excessive sex, violence, assaults, or suicide. 
• We will reject pieces determined to be written by the use of AI software.