Open Calls for The Heartland Review: A Literary Journal
History
Founded in 2000, The Heartland Review (ISSN: 2473-9545) is published in the spring as an imprint of The Heartland Review
Press. The Heartland Review publishes fiction, creative nonfiction/fiction, and poetry of any all subcategories,
styles, and voices. Our writers have ranged in age from 15 to 80+ from around the
world. We consider established writers as well as emerging writers. In the past we
have reserved space for student writers and emerging artists. We nominate for the
Pushcart Prize. Our submissions remain FREE. We hope you will consider submitting.
Open calls are open now.
General Submission Information and Rules
By submitting, the entrant agrees to abide by all contest rules published below.
Submission Information
During our open calls, we consider fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. Those who are selected for publication will be published the following year in late Spring.
Authors must be over the age of 18.
All entries must be original works by the entrant, in English.
Plagiarism, which includes the use of third-party poetry, song lyrics, characters, or another person’s universe, without written permission, will result in disqualification. Works generated or created by computer software and/or artificial intelligence will be disqualified. Excessive violence or sex and the use of profane, vulgar, racist or offensive words, determined by the judges, will result in the story being rejected.
We ask for First North American Serial Rights but rights revert back to you upon our publication.
- Fiction begins June 1.
- This open call will starts on June 1 ends when we had 60 submission OR at the end July, whichever is first. We often hit our fiction cap within 2-3 weeks. We’ll pick three pieces; if one is short or flash, we might pick four.
- Submit one manuscript that does not exceed 5000 words.
- This manuscript should be able to stand on its own.
- It can be flash, sci-fi, etc; the topic is up to you. It can even be a chapter of your book if the chapter has not been published in the U.S.
- Manuscripts must follow the formatting guidelines listed below.
- Creative Nonfiction begins June 1.
- This call opens on June 1 and ends when we have 50 submissions OR at the end of August, whichever is first. We’ll pick three to four pieces; if one is short or flash, we might pick four or five.
- Submit one or two manuscripts that do not exceed 5000 words total.
- This manuscript should be able to stand on its own.
- It can be on any topic or be in any subcategory, such as flash. It also can be a chapter of your book if the chapter has not been published in the U.S.
- Follow the formatting guidelines listed below.
- Poetry begins May 12.
- We have a short open call from May 12 to June 13.
- Each poet can make one submission (one Word file) with up to three poems.
- We will read the first 80 submission (ie poets).
- We can not publish concrete or shape poems. This includes calligrams, poems like “Easter Wings” and poems with justified margins.
- If lines go halfway across the page (beyond 3 inches) when in Times New Roman 12 point font, there is a good possibility that it will likely be 2 lines in our issue. When lines wrap, they will not be indented.
- In July, we have a fee based contest with prizes and it’s called the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize. We publish our Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize winners in the spring issue, which is a contest with a gift card as prize. Poets should submit through the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize starting in July.
- Authors may submit only one entry every open call period. This means please don't submit a fiction story and a nonfiction piece in the same reading periods. Please don't submit two times in the open call period. Multiple genre and multiple entries will be declined.
- Manuscripts must be formatted based on the specific below guidelines.
- We reserve the right to make punctuation/spelling/grammar/format revisions before publication.
We post our Open Calls each year in the summer (May and June) for publications in the spring. Our publication comes out in March.
Below is the link to Submit. You will be prompted to create an account using Submittable if you do not have one. Only electronic submissions through Submittable are accepted. We do not and can not accept any late entries or email entries. We read the a specific number of submissions during the Open Call. Before you submit, please read the formatting guidelines below.
We can not make changes once you have submitted. If you would like to make changes, please withdraw your first submission and submit a new one but be advised that we may have reached our cap for that month or the Open Call may have ended. All resubmissions must follow the same guidelines. THRP reserves the right to make punctuation/spelling/grammar/format revisions before publication.
THRP retains first North American serial rights and may use the submitted material to promote the The Heartland Review and website in perpetuity. Upon publication, rights revert back to the writer.
While we accept simultaneous submissions, please withdraw your work if it is published elsewhere in the United States or if you use First North American Serial Rights.
Free submissions for all open calls.
We do anticipate needing to charge a small fee in the future, though.
We do gladly accept donations to our publication.
Because we do not charge for submission, there is not a monetary payment for this contest.
We pay you by sending you 1 contributor copy to the authors of published works who have a United States Postal Service Address. We can not mail to international addresses at this time, so writers who live outside the U.S. - whose mail requires additional processing and forms - often provide an address of friends, relatives, and or their U.S. Consulate.
All writers can purchase copies through Amazon on our Shop page.
We can not print writers under the age of 18.
The Heartland Review comes out in late Spring.
If you wish to buy additional copies, we do publish on Amazon and you can order from Amazon. Our shop page has our Amazon links.
THRP is not an independent press. We are subject to the governance of our college, Elizabethtown Community & Technical College, which in turn is part of a larger entity the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. As such, we are not able to enter into a legally binding agreement. We realize that sounds negative but we don't aim it to; we have to tell you this legally. We been publishing works for a very long. We want to publish your work as much as you want it published.
Formatting Guidelines: All Genres
- Submissions must be in a Word compatible file (.docx, .doc, and .rtf). PDFs will not be read.
- For fiction and nonfiction, the Word file must be double spaced uniformly in MLA format.
- Single spaced entries will not be read.
- Do not put in extra spaces or have double with single spacing.
- Do not insert your own "enters" at the end of each line. Ensure Word wraps the text automatically.
- Use left align, not justification.
- For poetry, it must be a Word file.
- Remember no shape poems or justified margins.
- If lines go halfway across the page (beyond 3 inches) when in Time New Roman 12, there is a good possibility that it will likely be 2 lines in our issue. When lines wrap, they will not be indented.
- Submittable will request authors to compose a short cover letter and biography. The bio should be 30-40 words and include contact information along with your original creative work. Personal information should NOT appear inside the files
- Please do not label the files with our name, because we know we are THRP. We would appreciate if you could name your files with the month, your last name, and the genre. For example, 2018_6_SmithPoetry. This helps us keep the files organized when we extract from Submittable.
We look forward to reading your work!
Questions & Answers
How does our process work? How many emails will I receive? How will I know if my work is selected?
We are working to improve our response times and each year we change our process as a step in that direction.
After you upload your file(s) to Submittable. You will receive an email from us upon submission. Your file in Submittable stays labeled as "new" until we pull it for reading at the end of the open call period, which varies by genre but is always done by late summer (August).
At the end of the open call or in August/early September, we pull the manuscripts and send the files to our editors. We will read a specific number of submissions in each genre. Once we pull the records, you will receive an email that says we are reading and your Submittable file will be labeled as "in process".
If your file is labeled "in progress" for a long time, it means it's in the "keeper" pile.
After we've read and made decisions, your Submittable file will be labeled as "accepted or decline"; at that time you will receive an email from us. This can be 3-6 months, but our goal is Labor Day each year.
For those accepted for publication, we also send an email before we mail your contributor copies to verify addresses; we usually do this in January or February right before we print our address labels.
We sent out an email through Submittable that copies have been mail and we try to keep you updated on our timeline.
After copies have been mailed, we clean up our database and labeled our contests/projects in Submittable as "complete". Sometimes we send an email with this and sometimes we don't. If it's close to our mailing times, then we might check to make sure that you received your contributor copy or let you know that we didn't receive return snail mail.
If you wish to withdraw your submission because your work has been accepted elsewhere, you can and should do so in Submittable. Partial withdraws are not possible. This means if you submitted two flash creative nonfiction pieces but one was published elsewhere you must withdraw both.
If you have questions at any time you can email us or send us a message through Submittable.
Thank you to our sponsor: The Fleck Firm. Check them out!
