Open Calls for The Heartland Review

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 closed and will open in June 2024.

General Submission Information and Rules

By submitting, the entrant agrees to abide by all contest rules published below.

When & What to submit:

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: 
  • This open call will starts on June 1 and 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 3 pieces; if one is short or flash, we might pick 4.
  • Submit 1 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:
  • 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 3 pieces; if one is short or flash, we might pick 4.
  • Submit 1 or 2 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
  • We have a short open call in June which has a cap of 40 submissions.
  • Each poet can make one submission (1 Word file) with up to 3 poems.
  • 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 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.
  • In July, we have a fee based contest that opens 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 during the fall.
• 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.

When:

We post our Open Calls each year in the summer for publications in the spring. Our publication comes out in April or May.

Where to submit:

Below is a link that says Submit; click it. 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.

Changes / Revisions:

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.

Copyright:

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.

If two pieces of work are submitted under one entry (this applies to poems but can apply to other genres) and one is published, you must withdraw the entire entry but you can resubmit what is still available to publish during the Open Call. 

Cost:

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. You can make a donation by clicking here: https://alumni.kctcs.edu/g/give-to-ectc  

Prize/Payment:

Because we do not charge for submission, there is not a monetary payment for this contest.

THRP pays 1 contributor copy mailed 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. We hope to change this in the future. 

All writers can purchase copies through Amazon on our Shop page. 

Publication:

We can not print writers under the age of 18.

The Heartland Review comes out in late Spring. If you are published with us and you have a United States Postal Service address, we will mail you one. 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 ECTC 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.

Formatting Guidelines: All Genres

1. Submissions must be in a Word compatible file (.docx, .doc, and .rtf). PDFs will not be read.
2. For fiction and nonfiction, the Word file must be double spaced uniformly in MLA format.
   
   1. Single spaced entries will not be read. 
   2. Do not put in extra spaces or have double with single spacing.
   3. Do ​not insert your own "enters" at the end of each line. Ensure Word wraps the text automatically.
   4. Use left align, not justification.
3. 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.
4. The file name should include the date (year and month) and the author’s name. For example, 2018_6_John Smith. This helps us keep the files organized. Do not label the files with our name.

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.

Step 1: Submission

After you click the "click here to submit link" and create a Submittable account, you can upload your file(s). 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.

Step 2: Reading

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.

Step 3: Notification of Accept / Decline = Halloween

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 Halloween each year.

For those accepted for publication, we also send an email before we mail your contributor copies to verify addresses. 

Follow up and Clean Up

We sent out email through Submittable that copies have been mail.

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.

Withdrawing

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 2 flash creative nonfiction pieces but one was published elsewhere you must withdraw both.

Questions

If you have questions at any time you can email us at the address on the bottom of the website or send us a message through Submittable.

 

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