Contest Guidelines
Submissions to the Third Coast Fiction and Poetry Contests are now closed. This year’s judges are Kai Harris (fiction) and Tomás Q. Morín (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Submit one previously unpublished story of up to 9,000 words or up to three previously unpublished poems at a time, in one file.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Simultaneous submissions are permitted, though if work is accepted elsewhere, we ask that it be withdrawn from the contest immediately. If a piece is chosen as a finalist, we ask that it be withdrawn from other publications’ consideration until our judge selects a winner.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 $15 entry fee (payable online) entitles the submitter to a one-year subscription to 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: Kai Harris
Kai Harris is the author of What The Fireflies Knew, the first fiction title from Tiny Reparations Book. A writer and educator from Detroit, Michigan, Harris uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the Black experience. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Lit Hub, Kweli Journal, Longform, and the Killens Review, amongst others. In addition to fiction, Kai has published poetry, personal essays, and peer-reviewed academic articles on topics related to Black girlhood and womanhood, the slave narrative genre, motherhood, and Black identity. Kai currently lives in the Bay Area where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Santa Clara University.
Poetry: Tomás Q. Morín
Tomás Q. Morín is the author most recently of the poetry collection Machete and the memoir Let Me Count the Ways. He is coeditor of Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine and translator of The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Poetry, Slate, and Boston Review. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. He teaches at Rice University and Vermont College of Fine Arts.