Submit to Our Contests
Each year, So to Speak holds annual contests in the genres that we publish: visual art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
So to Speak accepts submissions using our Submittable submissions manager, which is linked below. Each contest charges an $9 reading fee per entry.
Current and former students of the judges are disqualified from entering corresponding contests. In addition, judges will be reading finalists as selected by the So to Speak editorial staff.
We look forward to reading your entries! Feel free to reach out with questions and concerns. You can purchase last year’s contest issue on our Submittable page. You can find out more about our submission guidelines on our website and/or on our Submittable page.
CATEGORY: ART
So to Speak is open to review any form of visual artwork. Past issues have included photography, drawing, painting, digital media, and images of various installations and sculpture. We welcome submissions including performance, digital and new media, photography and all 2D and 3D visual art forms.
The winner will be awarded $500, 2 complimentary issues, and publication in the journal. Up to three finalists may also be featured in the journal and will be eligible for publication in our annual print anthology.
JUDGE: SARAH IRVIN
Sarah Irvin is a visual artist living and working in Richmond, Virginia. She received a BFA from the University of Georgia (2008) and an MFA from George Mason University (2016). Her work has been featured in international exhibits and conferences on feminist theory and practice and in numerous solo exhibitions. She is included in the collections of the Try-Me Urban Restoration Project, Capital One, and the Federal Reserve Bank. Irvin is represented by Kathryn Markel Fine Arts (New York, NY), Massey Klein Gallery (New York, NY), and Page Bond Gallery (Richmond, VA). In 2016, she founded the Artist Parent Index, a searchable database of artists making work about their experiences with reproduction.
READING PERIOD
September 15-November 15
CATEGORY: POETRY
We’re looking for 3-5 of your best poems; the winner will be awarded $500, 2 complimentary issues, and publication in the journal. Up to three finalists may also be featured in the journal and will be eligible for publication in our annual print anthology. Multiple submissions are welcome in the same or other genres, multiple entry fees will have to be paid.
JUDGE: T'AI FREEDOM FORD
t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher and Cave Canem Fellow. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in The African American Review, Apogee, Bomb Magazine, Calyx, Drunken Boat,Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Kweli, Tin House, Obsidian, Poetry and others. Most recently she has won awards from the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) and is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship inaugural fellow. Winner of the 2015 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, her first poetry collection, how to get over, is available from Red Hen Press. Her second poetry collection, & more black, is with Augury Books. t’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn where she is an editor at No, Dear Magazine.
READING PERIOD
September 15-November 15
CATEGORY: FICTION
Send your single best work of fiction; the winner will be awarded $500, 2 complimentary copies of the issue, and publication in the journal. Up to three finalists may also be featured in the journal and will be eligible for publication in our annual print anthology.
JUDGE: ANITA FELICELLI
Anita Felicelli is the author of the short story collection, Love Songs for a Lost Continent, and the novel, Chimerica. Her criticism and essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Review of Books, Slate, Salon, the New York Times (Modern Love), and elsewhere.
READING PERIOD
September 15-November 15
CATEGORY: NONFICTION
JUDGE: ANGELA PELSTER
Angela Pelster won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer Award in Nonfiction for her essay collection, Limber, and was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, LitHub, Granta, The Kenyon Review, River Teeth, and The Gettysburg Review among others. She’s been a Bread Loaf fellow, a Minnesota State Arts Board grantee, and is the founder and director of the screening series Writers Go to the Movies. She teaches at Hamline University.
READING PERIOD
September 15-November 15