Contest submissions are currently OPEN. Contest submissions open Nov. 15th and close Dec. 31st. See our Contests pages for more details about this year’s contest.
Drama submissions are OPEN until Dec. 15th.
General submissions for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry are currently CLOSED.
Our annual reading periods are Oct. 15th-Nov. 15th (general submissions) and Nov. 15th-Dec. 31st (contest).
For all submissions, please remember to include the title of the work, your name, and contact info on the first page of your manuscript.
All submissions should be sent via Submittable, through the portals of their respective genres. All attachments sent to our email address will be deleted, and any submissions sent via postal mail or social media will not be read.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but not multiple submissions; please submit no more than one manuscript at a time. We do not accept previously published works. Current WMU students and alumni who have graduated in the past 4 years are not eligible to submit.
You can view the status (Received, In Progress, Declined, or Accepted) of your submission to Third Coast and to any other journal that uses Submittable by logging into your Submittable account. We might be taking longer than we’d like to review your work, but we haven’t lost, or lost track of, your submission. If your Submittable status reads “In Progress,” then it’s as simple as that—consideration of your manuscript is in progress. Please do not query until it has been at least a year.
Authors receive a contributor copy in gratitude of their work. We do not pay for publications at this time.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
FICTION
Submit manuscripts of up to 7,500 words (or up to 25 pages). Authors wishing to submit longer manuscripts should query the editors at editors@thirdcoastmagazine.com.
We accept up to three pieces of flash fiction, or “short shorts,” at a time. (Please submit short shorts in one electronic document—see withdraw instructions under POETRY below.)
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NONFICTION
Submit manuscripts of up to 7,000 words.
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POETRY
Submit manuscripts of no more than five poems at a time (with a maximum of fifteen pages).
Poetry should be typed and single-spaced. Submit all poems as one electronic document. (If you need to withdraw a single poem from a submission, leaving others for consideration, please leave a message on the submission to that effect rather than use Submittable’s “Withdraw” function.)
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DRAMA
Third Coast encourages the submission of 10-minute plays and one-act plays of no more than 20 pages (not including title page).
Plays that have had a staged reading or production are acceptable; plays that have received publication are not. Please submit in standard play format.
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BOOK REVIEWS
Third Coast welcomes submissions of reviews of 500-2,000 words on new or forthcoming books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and essays, as well as reviews of full-length plays.
For submissions of book reviews, Third Coast strongly prefers reviews of first or second books, or books from smaller presses (we’ll probably pass on that review of Alice Munro’s newest).
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INTERVIEWS
Third Coast welcomes submissions of both interviews (a conversation between two or more people) and Q&As (an “interview” where a writer responds to a series of prewritten questions). Interviews should run between 2,000 and 6,000 words; Q&A submissions can run shorter.
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