Contest Guidelines
Submissions to the 2026 Third Coast Fiction and Poetry Contests will open January 1, 2026 and close February 15, 2026. This year’s judges will be Dustin M. Hoffman (Fiction) and Karyna McGlynn (Poetry).
Third Coast accepts contest submissions exclusively via our Submittable account.
Winners receive $1,000 and publication in Third Coast. All contest entries will be considered for publication in Third Coast.
Submit one previously unpublished story of up to 9,000 words or up to three previously unpublished poems at a time, in one file. All manuscripts should be typed and fiction manuscripts should be double-spaced. Please include entry title and page numbers on all manuscript pages. Because judging is blind, the author’s name and identifying information (address, email, phone number, and bio) should appear only in the “cover letter” section of the Submittable form; identifying information must not appear anywhere on the manuscript itself. Manuscripts including identifying information will be disqualified.
Simultaneous submissions are permitted, though if work is accepted elsewhere, we ask that it be withdrawn from the contest immediately. If a piece is chosen as a finalist, we ask that it be withdrawn from other publications’ consideration until our judge selects a winner. Multiple entries are permitted, but each entry must be submitted separately.
The entry fee is $10 (payable online) and includes one issue of Third Coast. No money will be refunded.
Writers associated with the judges, WMU, or Third Coast are not eligible to submit.
more about the judges
Fiction: Dustin M. Hoffman
Dustin M. Hoffman writes fiction about working people. He’s the author of three short story
collections: One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist (University of Nebraska Press, winner of the 2015 Prairie
Schooner Book Prize), No Good for Digging (Word West Press), and, most recently, Such a Good
Man (University of Wisconsin Press). He has published more than one hundred stories in
journals including Black Warrior Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Witness, Wigleaf, The Threepenny Review, Gulf Coast, and One Story. Before getting his MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University and his PhD in creative writing from Western Michigan University, he spent ten years painting houses in Michigan. He currently teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Find his author website here: https://dustinmhoffman.com/
Poetry: Karyna McGlynn
Karyna McGlynn is a queer writer, visual artist, and educator, and the author of three poetry collections from Sarabande Books, including 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse (Lambda Literary Finalist), Hothouse (New York Times Editor’s Choice), and I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Kathryn A. Morton Prize). Their work appears in Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. McGlynn is Director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts and was recently Visiting Distinguished Professor of Poetry in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Find their author website here: https://www.karyna.io/