Creative Nonfiction Fast Lane Submissions

Submission Guidelines
Crab Creek Review is hosting a Creative Nonfiction-only Fast Lane reading period from November 18–November 22. Payment is one contributor copy of the issue in which the work appears. 

What we're looking for:
  • Essays in narrative, lyric, and hybrid forms, including experimental works.
  • Essays that go beyond the retelling of a memory or past event.
  • Essays that explore, examine, and question what it means to be human.
  • Essays that interweave inquiry and research with engaging creative analysis to serve a larger purpose.
  • Essays that open at the close; rather than conclude, their endings are both surprising yet inevitable.
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Manuscript guidelines:
  • One essay of up to 1,500 words.
  • Send your work as a SINGLE attachment (.doc; .docx; .PDF); docx preferred. 12pt standard font.
  • Please submit no more than once; if you've already submitted your writing during the Fall open period, do not send additional work. If you are a previous contributor, we’d love to hear from you if it’s been two years since the date of your last publication with us.
  • Title your document with title and name (i.e: ESSAYTITLE_Adrienne Rich).
  • Include a cover letter in the provided space in the Submittable form (not in the document). Include your email address, a 50-word bio, and the title of the piece you are submitting.
  • Simultaneous submissions are allowed (please indicate in your cover letter), however if the piece is accepted elsewhere, notify us immediately by withdrawing your submission.
  • Only original, previously unpublished work will be considered. This includes personal websites and social media. 

CLOSED SUBMISSION WINDOWS

General Submissions 

The reading period is open from September 15 through November 15, or when our 300 Submittable Cap is hit.  The editors seek original, unpublished poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction via Submittable. Submissions are free, and payment is in contributor copies. We look forward to reading your work, and encourage early submissions.

General Submission Guidelines:
  • Only original, previously unpublished work will be considered. This includes personal websites and social media.
  • For poetry, send up to four poems. For fiction, send stories of up to 3,000 words. For creative nonfiction, send essays of up to 1,500 words.
  • Title your document with your name and the genre. (i.e.: GwendolynBrooks_Poetry; Adrienne Rich_Nonfiction.)
  • Include a cover letter in the provided space in the Submittable form (not in the document). Include your mailing address, email and phone number, a 50-word bio, social handles, and the titles of the pieces you are submitting.
  • Should you submit something that is under simultaneous consideration, please indicate this in your cover letter and notify us immediately by adding a note to your Submittable account if the piece is accepted elsewhere.
  • Send your work as a SINGLE attachment (.doc; .docx; .rtf; PDF); docx preferred.
  • Please submit no more than one batch of poems or one prose piece per reading period.
  • We aim for a response time of 8 weeks, but please do not query your submission status unless 4 months have passed.
  • If you need to update us on the status of your simultaneous submission, please do so by adding a note to your submission, in Submittable.​

Poetry:
Send up to four poems, no more than eight pages total. We welcome your best work, and have no restrictions on form or content, except that we will not consider work that is defamatory, discriminatory, or that promotes hatred. 12pt standard font. One batch of submissions per reading period. Revisions may be made upon acceptance; please do not withdraw and resubmit your work due to revisions concerns.

Creative Nonfiction
Send one piece up to 1,500 words per submission period. We’re looking for well-crafted essays that exhibit depth and nuance, a clear voice, personal reflection, and vivid scenes. Experimental, lyric, and non-traditional forms are encouraged. We do not publish literary criticism, scholarly articles, or reportage. Revisions may be made upon acceptance; do not withdraw and resubmit your work due to revision concerns.
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Themed Fiction—Embodied Lives
“Literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null, and negligible and non-existent.” (Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill”)


“All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.” (Miranda July, It Chooses You)


As both Woolf and July suggest, literature has long dismissed the body as little more than the vehicle for thought—a landscape the creative and critical self must cross (or maybe endure) in order to do the real work and to live the most meaningful life: a life of the mind. This relationship is a false binary, though, and progressively we understand (socially, politically, scientifically, and even artistically) that mind and body are intricately in connection. 


For this fiction call, we’re looking for stories of up to 3,000 words that explore embodiment in all its complexity. How does the body—in its desire and strengths, its fragilities and limits, its autonomy and its subjugation to the larger systems of power that dominate our lives—shape who we are, how we see ourselves and others, and how we exist in relationship? How are mind and body in opposition to one another, and how are they one? And what does it mean to be embodied when our bodies are—by choice or by force—rendered separate from our minds and wills and wants, not fully our own? 


We look forward to reading your authentic, narratively engaging, and well-crafted fiction on embodied life. 

Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize

The Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize opens February 15th! Judged by Kelli Russell Agodon, the contest will accept entries until May 15, 2024.  A $500 prize will be awarded for the winning poem.  All entries considered for publication. Winner and finalists will appear in Crab Creek Review.

The entry fee is $16 per submission. Multiple submissions are allowed, but each batch must be submitted separately, with its own entry fee. This submission fee funds the print production of each issue. All submissions are accepted through Submittable.

About the Judge
Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Kelli's newest book Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press) was named a Finalist in the Washington State Book Awards and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize in Poetry. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and book cover designer. Her other books include Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (Winner of the Foreword Indies Book of the Year in Poetry, Washington State Book Finalist, and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Prize), The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice (coauthored with Martha Silano), and the newly released Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems which she coedited with Susan Rich. Kelli lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional lands of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also currently part of a project between local land trusts and artists to help raise awareness for the preservation of land, ecosystems, and biodiversity called Writing the Land. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com 

Submission Guidelines:
  • Please do not include your name in your submission. All submissions should be kept anonymous.
  • Only original, previously unpublished work will be considered.​
  • Include a cover letter in the provided space in the Submittable form (not in the document). Include your mailing address, social media handle, email and phone number, a 50-word bio, and the titles of the pieces you are submitting.
  • Should you submit something that is under simultaneous consideration, please indicate this in your cover letter and notify us immediately by adding a note to your Submittable account if the piece is accepted elsewhere.
  • Send your work as a SINGLE attachment (.doc; .docx; .rtf; PDF); docx preferred.
  • Please submit no more than up to four (4) poems in a submission.
  • We aim for a response time of 8 weeks, but please do not query your submission status unless 3 months have passed.
  • If you need to update us on the status of your simultaneous submission, please do so by adding a note to your submission, in Submittable.​
  • The entry fee is $16 per submission. Multiple submissions are allowed, but each batch must be submitted separately, with its own entry fee.​

CLOSED--FAST LANE!
2023 Autumn Month Classic!

​We are back with a  Fast Lane to open our fall submission period! Opening September 15 and closing September 25, we are reading your poems and flash creative nonfiction, and sending feedback in ten days or less! 

For Fast Lane submissions, we are looking for originality, risk-taking, and consummate craftsmanship. The $4.00 submission fee includes a 10-day response time. Pieces will be included in our spring issue.  

General Manuscript Guidelines:
Title your document with your name and the genre. (i.e: GwendolynBrooks_Poetry; Adrienne Rich_Nonfiction).

​Include a cover letter in the provided space (not in the document). Please include a 50-word bio and the title/s of the poems you are submitting, and whether this is a simultaneous submission. Only original, previously unpublished work will be considered. We welcome your best work, and have no restrictions on form or content except that we will not consider work that promotes or condones intolerance, hatred, or is defamatory or discriminatory.

You may submit as many times as you like, but each submission requires payment of the FAST LANE fee of $4.00. Revisions may be made upon acceptance.
Fast Lane Submission Guidelines:
  • Only original, previously unpublished work will be considered.
  • For creative nonfiction, please only submit pieces up to 1,000 words.
  • Include a cover letter in the provided space in the Submittable form (not in the document). Include your mailing address, email and phone number, a 50-word bio, and the titles of the pieces you are submitting.
  • Should you submit something that is under simultaneous consideration, please indicate this in your cover letter and notify us immediately by adding a note to your Submittable account if the piece is accepted elsewhere.
  • Send your work as a SINGLE attachment (.doc; .docx; .rtf; PDF); docx preferred.
  • Please submit no more than one batch of poems or one prose piece per reading period.
  • We aim for a response time of 8 weeks, but please do not query your submission status unless 3 months have passed.
  • If you need to update us on the status of your simultaneous submission, please do so by adding a note to your submission, in Submittable.​


​Our current payment is in the form of one copy of the issue for which your work has been accepted. We buy first rights as well as the rights to use your name and the accepted work (in whole or part) on our website and blog. Beyond this use, and following publication, rights revert to the author. We ask that Crab Creek Review be acknowledged in any subsequent publication of the work.

CLOSED--The Spring Crab Submissions

What We Are Seeking:
We’re looking for writing that explores ritual in myriad forms:
  • Writing about a variety of rituals: sacred, profane, mental, physical, psychological, culinary, and beyond
  • Writing about physical rituals that rejuvenate, mourn, and celebrate
  • Writing about psychological rituals that we turn to for solace and support
  • Writing about rituals outside of religious or spiritual traditions
  • Writing about rituals related to nature and environment
  • Writing about ritual’s many purposes: to commemorate, to invoke, to unite, to mark passage, to protect, to sanctify, to begin, to end, to gather, etc.
  • Writing that investigates the absence of ritual: what happens when rituals fall away? What does life without rituals look like?

This list is meant to get your ideas flowing. We hope that you will surprise us with additional ideas that explore the concept of ritual in imaginative ways.

We hope to receive a variety of writing with interpretations of this theme from writers of all backgrounds and publication histories. We especially welcome work from writers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color, writers of all sexual orientations and gender identities, writers of varying socio-economic status, and writers with physical or mental differences.

The Specifics: 
  • Creative nonfiction may be up to 1,000 words; poetry may include 3 poems per submission.
  • For CNF, we encourage both narrative and hybrid forms.
  • All work must be previously unpublished.
  • All works must be submitted through Submittable.
  • Simultaneous submissions accepted, however please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
  • Work not originally in English must be translated into English. For work in translation, translators are responsible for obtaining permission to reprint any material under copyright that exceeds the guidelines of fair use or does not have a Creative Commons license.
  • We only accept work that is the creative effort of humans. Crab Creek Review is dedicated to publishing work by diverse writers whose voices need to be heard. The lived experience of being human is critical to our mission, therefore we are not open to work that has been fully or mostly written or generated by AI (artificial intelligence). We are open to prose and poetry that has experimented with and incorporated technology in creative ways as long as the role of AI is clearly explained. All submitters will be asked to confirm and disclose the role that AI and other non-standard technologies have played in the creation of their submitted work.

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