Submissions to the 2025 contest issue are now open! At this time, we are also open for submissions of visual art to be published in the online contest issue 54.2. It is free to submit visual art.
2025 Contest Judges:
Poetry: Corey Van Landingham
Fiction: Halle Hill
Nonfiction: Aaron Burch
Every spring, phoebe hosts contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, each with a $500 prize. The winners of these contests, as well as honorable mentions, will be published in our spring online issue, 54.2. Honorable mentions, as well as visual art selected to appear in the issue, will be paid our standard rate of $30 per accepted piece.
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Submissions for the contest issue are open annually between January 15 and March 15. We also accept submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art for publication in our print issue between August 15 and October 15.
phoebe purchases First North American serial rights and pays $30 per accepted poem, essay, story, and piece of visual art. All contributors to the print issue also receive one copy of the journal upon publication. The fee for submission is $3 in all genres, including visual art.
The payment of monetary prizes and contributor honorariums are subject to U.S. laws and regulations, including those that prohibit payments to persons from or who reside in countries subject to U.S. sanctions. Questions about these regulations and payment methods can be directed to phoebeliterature@gmail.com.
Phoebe makes every effort to be open to all and closed to no one. We welcome submissions from BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and international writers and artists. For writers and artists for whom the submission fee presents a hardship, fee waivers can be requested by emailing us at phoebeliterature@gmail.com
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phoebe prides itself on supporting up-and-coming writers, whose style, form, voice, and subject matter demonstrate a vigorous appeal to the senses, intellect, and emotions of our readers. We choose our writers because we believe their work succeeds at its goals, whether its goals are to uphold or challenge literary tradition.
We insist on openness, which means we welcome both experimental and conventional prose and poetry, and we insist on being entertained, which means the work must capture and hold our attention, whether it be the potent language of a poem or the narrative mechanics of a short story. Above all, we seek to publish quality writing. Please review website publications, especially our latest online issue, for an idea of the caliber of writing we publish.
Our general guidelines are available here. Please note: At this time, phoebe does not accept work that uses AI generated text or artwork.
We are now accepting submissions for our annual fiction contest. The winner will be published online this May in phoebe 54.2. We encourage you to take a look at our previous contest winners. Only contest winners will win prize money, but we hope to publish some outstanding honorable mentions alongside our prize winner in phoebe 54.2. We look forward to reading your work. Submit online, and send us the best you’ve got!
The Basics:
- All entries should include a cover letter with the submission’s title and author’s contact information (name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address).
- Your name and contact information must not appear anywhere else on the manuscript.
- You may submit multiple entries, but must pay an entry fee for each new submission.
- Please submit your work in a Word Document.
- We will not accept mailed submissions. Please use our online submission manager.
A Note About Content Warnings:
If your piece discusses or includes mentions of difficult topics, please provide a content warning when sending us your piece on Submittable. This information allows us to send pieces to our readers a bit more quickly—it does not impact our selection of pieces for publication. (Sample content warnings include: sexual assault/harassment, self-harm, abuse, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. If there are other content warnings you believe apply to your piece, please mention those as well.) If the submission does not require a content warning, write "N/A."
DEADLINE: March 15 at 11:59 p.m.
PRIZE: $500 and publication in phoebe 54.2 (digital issue). Honorable mentions selected for publication will receive our standard contributor rate of $30 per accepted piece.
SUBMISSION SIZE: 1 piece per submission, up to 5,000 words OR up to three pieces of flash prose of less than 1,000 words each. phoebe welcomes and hopes to see literary and visual art from writers and artists of all races, ethnicities, national origins, religions, sexes, sexual orientations, genders, gender expressions, ages, abilities, military statuses, and other distinguishing identity traits. phoebe also welcomes and hopes to see literary and visual art from writers and artists of all genres, styles, and aesthetics. phoebe makes every effort to be open to all and closed to no one.
We are now accepting submissions for our annual creative nonfiction contest. The winner will be published online this May in phoebe 54.2. We encourage you to take a look at our previous contest winners. Only contest winners will win prize money, but we hope to publish some outstanding honorable mentions alongside our prize winner in phoebe 54.2. We look forward to reading your work. Submit online, and send us the best you’ve got!
The Basics:
- All entries should include a cover letter with the submission’s title and author’s contact information (name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address).
- Your name and contact information must not appear anywhere else on the manuscript.
- You may submit multiple entries, but must pay an entry fee for each new submission.
- Please submit your work in a Word Document or another similar processing system, if possible.
- We will not accept mailed submissions. Please use our online submission manager.
A Note About Content Warnings:
If your piece discusses or includes mentions of difficult topics, please provide a content warning when sending us your piece on Submittable. This information allows us to send pieces to our readers a bit more quickly—it does not impact our selection of pieces for publication. (Sample content warnings include: sexual assault/harassment, self-harm, abuse, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. If there are other content warnings you believe apply to your piece, please mention those as well.) If the submission does not require a content warning, write "N/A."
DEADLINE: March 15 at 11:59 p.m.
PRIZE: $500 and publication in phoebe 54.2 (digital issue). Honorable mentions selected for publication will receive our standard contributor rate of $30 per accepted piece.
SUBMISSION SIZE: 1 piece per submission, up to 5,000 words OR up to three pieces of flash prose of less than 1,000 words each.
phoebe welcomes and hopes to see literary and visual art from writers and artists of all races, ethnicities, national origins, religions, sexes, sexual orientations, genders, gender expressions, ages, abilities, military statuses, and other distinguishing identity traits. phoebe also welcomes and hopes to see literary and visual art from writers and artists of all genres, styles, and aesthetics. phoebe makes every effort to be open to all and closed to no one.
We are now accepting submissions for our annual poetry contest. The winner will be published online this May in phoebe 54.2. We encourage you to take a look at our previous contest winners. Only contest winners will win prize money, but we hope to publish some outstanding honorable mentions alongside our prize winner in phoebe 54.2. We look forward to reading your work. Submit online, and send us the best you’ve got!
The Basics:
- All entries should include a cover letter with the submission’s title and author’s contact information (name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address).
- Your name and contact information must not appear anywhere else on the manuscript.
- You may submit multiple entries, but must pay an entry fee for each new submission.
- Please submit your work in a Word Document or another similar processing system, if possible.
- We will not accept mailed submissions. Please use our online submission manager.
A Note About Content Warnings:
If your piece discusses or includes mentions of difficult topics, please provide a content warning when sending us your piece on Submittable. This information allows us to send pieces to our readers a bit more quickly—it does not impact our selection of pieces for publication. (Sample content warnings include: sexual assault/harassment, self-harm, abuse, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. If there are other content warnings you believe apply to your piece, please mention those as well.) If the submission does not require a content warning, write "N/A."
DEADLINE: March 15 at 11:59 p.m.
PRIZE: $500 and publication in phoebe 54.2 (digital issue). Honorable mentions selected for publication will receive our standard contributor rate of $30 per accepted piece.
SUBMISSION SIZE: Up to five (5) poems per submission. phoebe welcomes and hopes to see literary and visual art from writers and artists of all races, ethnicities, national origins, religions, sexes, sexual orientations, genders, gender expressions, ages, abilities, military statuses, and other distinguishing identity traits. phoebe also welcomes and hopes to see literary and visual art from writers and artists of all genres, styles, and aesthetics. phoebe makes every effort to be open to all and closed to no one.
Above all, we seek to publish quality art from artists at various stages of their careers, with an eye towards artwork that illustrates a narrative or conveys an emotion, as we believe in the importance of both visual and textual storytelling. See here for images we've featured in our journal. Since we want to incorporate more artwork into our digital and print editions, it's free to submit visual art. Artists are paid our standard rate for their work of $30 per accepted piece.
To submit, please upload between one and five high-resolution images. Files should be uploaded as a .png, .tif, or a high-quality .jpeg with at least 300 dpi and a size of at least 1 MB. PDFs also are acceptable. All submitted artwork will be considered for phoebe's online issue, 54.2, for both the cover image, as well as for pieces featured with writing from the issue.
phoebe welcomes and hopes to see literary and visual art from writers and artists of all races, ethnicities, national origins, religions, sexes, sexual orientations, genders, gender expressions, ages, abilities, military statuses, and other distinguishing identity traits. phoebe also welcomes and hopes to see literary and visual art from writers and artists of all genres, styles, and aesthetics. phoebe makes every effort to be open to all and closed to no one.