General Submissions for the Print Journal
Submissions open August 1, 2025 via Submittable!
General submissions for the print journal will be accepted in 2025 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.
Upon publication, MQR takes a nonexclusive license to publish work in print and online in perpetuity, and requests that MQR is formally acknowledged as the first publisher in any reprints.
MQR Mixtape: Haunting
Submissions open May 1 – June 1 via Submittable!
In Ar:range:ments, Esther Kondo Heller writes, “mama what should I call you now that you are gone? / froth: spirit : marrow : wind”. While elegy soundly fits in the realm of “haunting” literature, Kondo Heller’s coloned list enacts another kind of haunting. The speaker cycles through names without landing on an answer, returning to the void at the site of their question. Indeed, Oxford English Dictionary’s many definitions of “haunt” include “To resort to frequently or habitually; to frequent or be much about (a place).” Haunting has as much to do with ghosts and states of unease—consider authors like Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Wong for luminous examples—as it does with habit.
For this issue of MQR Mixtape, I am seeking poems, essays, short fiction, and visual art that engage with the spectrum (and spectralities) of “haunting.” Give me ghost stories and habits broadly understood or work that engages specific traditions of haunting such as the apparitional lesbian or the haunted anthropocene. Give me metapoetic work that dis/engages formal traditions. Haunt me. For this issue, I am as much interested in haunted genres or subjects as I am in work that resists or enacts haunting on a formal level.
Poetry: up to three poems
Prose: up to 3,000 words (short stories, flash fiction, non-fiction essays)
Visual art/photography: up to five works
Hybrid work: up to five pages (multimedia work, comics, collaborations (within and across disciplines), archival materials, love letters, etc. Surprise me!)
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.
Special Calls
Special issue submissions are currently closed.
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.
James A. Winn Prize in Nonfiction
Submissions open April 1 to May 31.
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.
The 2025 judge is Elizabeth Goodenough.
Elizabeth Goodenough has taught at Harvard, Claremont McKenna, and Sarah Lawrence Colleges as well as at University of Michigan’s Residential College, School of Education, and School of Information. She graduated from Smith College, received an MAT and PhD from Harvard University, and published Infant Tongues: The Voice of the Child in Literature (Wayne State Univ. Press, 1994), Secret Spaces of Childhood (U of Michigan Press, 2003) and Under Fire: Childhood in the Shadow of War (Wayne, 2008). Her co-produced, award-winning PBS documentary, Where Do the Children Play? included companion volumes: A Study Guide to the Film (WSUP, 2007) and A Place for Play (National Institute for Play, 2008). Summer 2024 she participates as a U-M Road Scholar. What the Presidents Read: Childhood and Family Favorites, co-edited with Marilynn Olson, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield in Fall 2024.
Laurence Goldstein Prize in Poetry
Open from October 1 to December 31, 2025
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 2026 judge is Hala Alyan.
Hala Alyan is the author of the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.
Photo credit: Mustafa Mirza
Jesmyn Ward Prize in Fiction
Open from October 1 to December 31, 2025
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 2026 judge is Kevin Wilson.
Kevin Wilson is the author of six books, including Nothing to See Here (Ecco, 2019) and Now is Not the Time to Panic (Ecco, 2022). His stories have appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Southern Review, and two editions of Best American Short Stories. He lives in Sewanee, TN, and teaches at the University of the South.
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.
