Submissions
Quarterly West will open for regular submissions of poetry and prose starting March 15th. To ensure that every submission receives the time and attention it deserves, prose submissions will remain open until we hit a cap of 500 submissions; poetry submissions will remain open until we hit a cap of 600 submissions.
Because we will be capping submissions, please do not submit more than one entry per genre at a time—additional submissions will be declined unread.
Our contests in poetry and prose open on October 1st. Our prose contest will remain open until we hit a cap of 500 submissions; our poetry contest will remain open for submission through November 1st. We are open to submissions of new media, translations, and book reviews year round.
We open regularly for Special Features. Keep us in mind for upcoming features on Extreme Environments and Time Machines.
We will open to chapbook submissions in summer and poetry and prose contest submissions in the fall.
QW is looking for writing that is: Exciting. Challenging. Risky. Unpredictable. And Different.
We could say what different means, but then we might receive a slew of submissions that are all different in the same way. Different will be victim to form—to the “fragment sentence,” “non-linear plot,” and “hybrid genre.” Different will be beholden to space, time, story, and moment. This does not seem the way to open the door for Different.
We think Different doesn’t open a door, actually. Different doesn’t know doors or windows. Different stomps in. Maybe it seeps in. Sometimes, and in our favorite works, different is always already there and it strikes flint and blazes. This is what we look for.
Send us your work. Seep in. Stomp in. Strike us. Set the familiar voice on fire.
Submission Guidelines
We are happy to accept simultaneous submissions. If your work is accepted elsewhere, we request that you withdraw your manuscripts promptly through Submittable. To withdraw individual poems, please use the message system through Submittable.
As with many endeavors in the literary arts, Quarterly West hopes to move toward a more economically sustainable model. We have implemented a modest fee for our chapbook and genre contests to help cover the costs of operation, but all other submissions (including book reviews, new media, translations, and prose and poetry general submissions) are currently fee-free.
Unfortunately, we are unable to return any print manuscripts sent for online publication. Any manuscripts that are sent to us, even with a SASE, will be recycled.
Please do not submit more than one entry per genre at a time—additional submissions will be declined unread. No previously published work will be considered.
Quarterly West acquires First North American Serial Rights for the work we publish. All rights revert back to the author upon publication. If your work is later republished, we request you note its initial publication in Quarterly West.
We ask that former contributors wait at least one year after publication before submitting new work.
Poetry and Prose Contests
This fall, Quarterly West will open for its poetry and prose contests on October 1st. The winners will each receive $500 and publication in a forthcoming issue of Quarterly West. Runners-up in poetry and prose will each receive $200, and all entries will be considered for publication.
To enter, please submit up to three poems or a prose piece (i.e., fiction, non-fiction, or any hybridization therein) through our Submittable. The first weekend of the contest (October 1st and 2nd), there will be no fee to submit. After that point, submissions for BIPOC writers will remain free, and there will be a $5 submission fee for all other writers.
Poetry Contest submissions will remain open October 1st - November 1st.
Prose Contest submissions will open October 1st until we reach a cap of 500.
Please submit no more than one entry per genre. Multiple entries will go unread.
This year, the poetry judge is Sally Wen Mao and the prose judge is Amina Cain.
Transparency Statement
We believe in transparency, and feel strongly that submitters should know how our contests work. Because of this, we have outlined our contest process below:
First, your submission is read and voted upon—without identifying submitter information—by at least two of our trusted readers.
After our initial reading process, senior and associate genre editors (who will have access to identifying submitter information) review every submission, paying closest attention to submissions that have received at least one preliminary upvote.
From there, our genre editors select finalists from the submission pool; all finalists receive an offer of publication. Submissions selected by editors as finalists then get passed along to the respective genre's contest judge: Amina Cain (Prose) or Sally Wen Mao (Poetry). Then, each judge will decide—without identifying submitter information—the winner and runner-up of each respective contest.
2022 Poetry Judge
Sally Wen Mao is the author of three collections of poetry, The Kingdom of Surfaces (Graywolf Press, 2023), Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she was recently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library and a Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2021 and 2013, The Paris Review, Poetry, Harpers Bazaar, A Public Space, Granta, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, Guernica, and A Public Space, among others.
2022 Prose Judge
Amina Memory Cain is the author of the novel Indelicacy, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and two collections of short fiction, Creature and I Go To Some Hollow. Her new book, A Horse at Night: On Writing, is out in October of 2022 with Dorothy, a publishing project in the US and Daunt Books in the UK. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review Daily, n+1, BOMB, LA Times, and other places.
Chapbook Contest
Every summer, Quarterly West runs an open-genre chapbook contest. Send us poetry, short-fiction, non-fiction, or any combination or hybridization therein, in an 18 - 52 pp. manuscript.
The winning writer receives $1000, publication, and 20 copies. In addition, Quarterly West usually publishes the runner-up and at least one editors’ pick. All published authors receive 20 copies of their chapbook. All published chapbook authors will receive a featured reading spot at our AWP 2023 event if they are able to attend the conference in Seattle.
The 2022 chapbook contest judge is Luther Hughes. Submissions are open from July 1 to August 15 (Deadline Extended!), and the winner will be announced in November.
Deadline extended: the deadline for submitting to our 2022 Chapbook Contest has been extended to Monday, August 15th.
We look forward to reading your manuscripts.
2022 Chapbook Judge
Luther Hughes is the author of the debut poetry collection, A Shiver in the Leaves, forthcoming from BOA Editions in September 2022, and the chapbook Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018), recommended by the American Library Association. He is the founder of Shade Literary Arts, a literary organization for queer writers of color, and co-hosts The Poet Salon podcast. Recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, his writing has been published in American Poetry Review, Paris Review, The Seattle Times, Orion, and more. He was born and raised in Seattle, where he currently lives.
Photo by Nicholas Nichols