General Submissions for the Print Journal
Now accepting submissions via Submittable! Submissions close April 1.
General submissions for the print journal will be accepted in 2024 from January 1 to April 1 and August 1 to November 1. Average turnaround time is six months, but we may take longer and ask that you do not query us until a year has passed.
Prose submissions: Manuscripts should be double-spaced, right margins not justified; 1,500–7,000 words. All nonfiction submissions will be automatically considered for publication in MQR Online. All stories accepted for publication will be passed on to a judge as finalists for the $2000 Lawrence Prize. There is no additional fee for the prize beyond submission.
Poetry submissions: Please submit up to 6 poems in one document, not to exceed a total of 12 pages. Poems published in MQR by early career writers (those who have not yet published a full-length collection) will be considered as finalists for our Page Davidson Clayton Prize.
Translations: Please submit translations in the appropriate genre and include biographical information for both the author and translator.
Special Calls
Translation Special Issue
Now accepting submissions via Submittable! Submissions close April 1.
Ten years ago, MQR released an issue devoted to translation, and MQR is at it again, seeking translations. In his introduction to that issue, Jonathan Freedman writes that translation, for the general public, exists as “a secondary act, an art whose product is noticeable only when it is flawed or deficient.” Jonathan contends that this prejudice is contrary to the significant role translation plays in connecting us and increasing our knowledge of the world. Translation, he adds, “is an inevitable concomitant of human communication, indeed, in the broadest sense, of human experience itself.” Indeed, in an increasingly fractured world, we at MQR have decided to assemble a special issue devoted to translation, to celebrate and contemplate this most essential and most generous of all literary practices.
This issue aims to: provide new translators a platform to showcase their work; seek and entice translations from languages and regions that are rarely heard from and whose experiences and viewpoints are muffled or ignored by the literary market and larger culture; and encourage the production of new translations of new talents from across the globe, as well re-translations of known literary works that require reiteration and recontextualization.
We are also aware that translation is more than an interlingual activity; it is also an intercultural and intersubjective one. We know that it is not a field limited to literary translation, or even to human translators. In addition to fiction, poetry, and memoir, we are also seeking scholarly articles, essays, reviews, and interviews about all facets of translation, from its history to its politics and uneven power relations, as well as the varied places and spheres where it takes place, from literary publications to machine translations, spyware, and even torture chambers.
While we are asking that all works submitted to the issue be in English, we are keenly interested in learning about the history and current tensions, dialogues, and practices among non-European languages. Translation indeed pervades all facets of human existence, and much of that occurs beyond the limited scope of English and Western media and scholarship. Such perspectives will enrich our sense of how the world communicates beyond our insular spheres and outside the realms of privilege in which we operate.
This issue will be published in October of 2024. Please limit prose pieces to 5,000 words and poetry submissions to six (6) poems. All work should be formatted such that it can be printed on 6” x 9” pages. All material submitted will be considered simultaneously for publication in MQR Online. If Submittable is not accessible to you, please email mqr@umich.edu or contact (734) 764-9265 with your concern.
MQR Mixtape—Rage
Now accepting submissions via Submittable! Submissions close April 22.
“We are dismissed as emotional. It is enough to make you emotional.”
—Sara Ahmed
Many scholars and artists have remarked on the importance of anger in art and everyday life. In her 1981 keynote presentation to the National Women’s Studies Conference, Audre Lorde delivered the indicting line “anger is loaded with information and energy,” reminding us that such anger should not be considered a source of shame, but evidence of the injustices that “brought that anger into being.”
This issue seeks to hold space for the “ugly feelings” we are often told to tame, to clean up, and to quiet: our rage, our annoyance, our frustration. We aim to honor the wisdom of unruly emotions. We understand that feelings cannot be boxed and separated from one another, and we acknowledge the muddling of it all. Rage with a side of grief? Anger with a dash of paranoia? Vexed yet anxious? We get it. Rage comes in different forms, tempos, and decibels and we want to amplify it!
For this issue, we are looking for pieces that seek to express the complexities of such a charged emotion. We welcome expressions, critiques, and meditations on rage in a variety of forms: poems, visual art, essays, comics, short films, and short fiction. We encourage perspectives that contextualize the social, cultural, and political realities of anger. Who is allowed to express their anger? How, and when, is rage a symptom of our social conditions and dispositions? What forces attempt to stifle such a resistance? We are looking for work that seeks to reorient our understanding of emotions and their function in “polite” society.
For this issue, please submit:
- Prose: up to 4,000 words
- Poetry: up to four poems
- Visual art/photography: up to five works (if 3D, please provide multiple angles/references)
- Short films: no longer than 20 minutes
Hybrid forms such as multi-media works, comics, collaborations, erasure/black-out/found poems, collages, and much more are welcome.
Only previously unpublished work will be considered. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted by another publication. Please send only one submission per window; subsequent submissions will be rejected automatically.
Sahara Sidi is a Mauritanian-American writer and educator. Her writing has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, Wesleyan University, the Hopwood Awards @ the University of Michigan and the Adroit Journal. Poems and essays published or forthcoming in The Offing, Salt Hill Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Narratio.org, and Chestnut Review. Currently, she is a Rackham Merit Fellow at the Helen Zell Writers Program as an MFA candidate in poetry. She loves poetry, film, her brothers, and green tea.
Prizes
MQR awards several literary prizes annually. See below for information on prizes with specific submission windows. Click here for more information on the full range of prizes MQR offers.
Laurence Goldstein Prize in Poetry
Currently closed. Submissions open November 1.
The Goldstein Prize is awarded annually to a poem of exemplary quality submitted for consideration. One poem submitted for this prize will be awarded $1,000 and publication in MQR. All submissions for the prize will be considered for publication.
Submission Guidelines. Please submit up to five (5) previously unpublished poems with a total page count of no more than ten (10) pages. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable but please leave us a note to withdraw individual poems if they are accepted elsewhere. We ask entrants not to include their names or contact information within the document they upload to Submittable, its title, or its file name. Affiliation with the judge, MQR, or the Helen Zell Writers Program may disqualify a submission; please consult the prize details on Submittable for more information about exclusions.
The 2024 judge is Lawrence Joseph.
Born in Detroit, the grandson of Lebanese and Syrian Catholics, Lawrence Joseph is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). He is also the author of two books of prose, Lawyerland, a non-fiction novel published by FSG, and The Game Changed: Essays and Other Prose, in the University of Michigan Press’s Poets on Poetry Series. Among his awards are two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. He is Professor of Law Emeritus at St. John’s University School of Law and lives in New York City.
Jesmyn Ward Prize in Fiction
Currently closed. Submissions open November 1.
The Michigan Quarterly Review has established this prize for fiction in honor of Helen Zell Writers’ Program alumna Jesmyn Ward and her significant contributions to the literary arts. One short story submitted for this prize will be awarded $2,000 and publication in MQR. All submissions for the prize will be considered for publication.
Submission Guidelines. Please submit one unpublished short story of 1,500–7,000 words. Simultaneous submissions are welcome but please withdraw your submission as soon as it is accepted elsewhere. We ask entrants not to include their names or contact information within the document they upload to Submittable, its title, or its file name. Affiliation with the judge, MQR, or the Helen Zell Writers Program may disqualify a submission; please consult the prize details on Submittable for more information about exclusions.
The 2024 judge is David Lynn.
David H. Lynn was the editor of The Kenyon Review from 1994 to 2020 and Professor of English at Kenyon College from 1988-2023. His latest collection is Children of God: New & Selected Stories (Braddock Avenue Books, 2019). Rebuilding the Goat Walk: An Eco-Memoir will be published by Braddock Avenue Books in 2024. David Lynn is also the author of the novel Wrestling with Gabriel, an earlier collection of stories, Fortune Telling, and a critical study, The Hero’s Tale: Narrators in the Early Modern Novel. Awards include an O. Henry Prize, the Glimmer Train Short Story Prize 2015, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award Finalist, and the Ohioana Library Association Award for Editorial Excellence.
James A. Winn Prize in Nonfiction
Currently closed. Opens April 2024.
The Winn Prize is awarded annually to a work of nonfiction of exemplary quality submitted for consideration. One essay submitted for this prize will be awarded $1,500 and publication in MQR. All submissions will be considered for publication. Elizabeth Goodenough will serve as the 2024 judge.
Pitch to MQR Online
Our online-only companion to the print journal, MQR Online publishes book reviews, essays, arts and culture features, and author interviews. We are currently accepting pitches for MQR Online features in these genres. Please submit your brief pitch in the body of an email to mqronlinepitches@gmail.com. Our Online Editor will invite selected pitches to submit a full piece (up to 3,000 words) for consideration. Please note that we are unable to respond to all pitches and that we are not currently accepting fiction or poetry submissions for MQR Online; please submit work in these genres for consideration in the print journal via Submittable.