Submissions to the 2025 contest issue has now closed! Thank you to all who submitted!

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.