West Trade Review

"p a l l i a t i v e" by C. "Meaks" Meaker

"[SILENCE]" by Jessie Carver

"Eulogy Never Given" by Jennifer Pons

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Poetry

Fiction

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Volume 16 Spring 2025 Print Edition

We’re excited to present the Spring 2025 print edition. It features poetry by Jennifer Pons, T.R. Poulson, Andrew Payton, Leila Farjami, and Han VanderHart, among others; fiction by Jessie Carver, Alyson Mosquera Dutemple, and others; CNF by Lilly Dancyger, C. "Meaks" Meaker, and others.

Cover image by Sophia Heymans.

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Creative Nonfiction

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WTR/Iron Oak Editions are a great way to connect with a community of writers, to sharpen writing skills, and to get feedback. Check out spring's prose and poetry offerings (both single-session and 6-week). Details here.

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Manuscript Queries Open

Iron Oak Editions seeks full-length poetry, as well as fiction, and creative nonfiction manuscript queries

See submission guidelines here.

Need Feedback on a Manuscript?

Meet our Editorial Critique Team and request feedback.

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The 704 Prize for Flash Fiction

Submissions Open June 1st

Area code 704 is our home (the Charlotte Metro area), but our contest is open to anyone.

Send us a flash piece of up to 704 words that will engages the reader intellectually but also packs an emotional punch and has something important to teach us about a deep human truth.

For a model story, see Jessica Denzer's The Silence from our Spring 2022 print edition. It was selected for Best Small Fictions 2023 (Alternating Current Press).

Details here.

Themed Call: Borders & Border Crossings

Submissions Open for Fiction, Poetry, CNF, & Hybrid Work

West Trade Review invites submissions of your best poetry, fiction, essays, and hybrid work that delves into the concept of borders in all their incarnations: the often invisible boundaries between countries and cultures, the geographically clear line of the forest’s edge or sheer rock wall in a canyon, the internal lines we draw around our personality traits and behaviors.

Details here.

Interview with Michael McGriff

"It happens that my experiences of self are place- and character- and class-based, but image-making is the source of all poetry. Robert Bly's essay collection Leaping Poetry is the closest thing that describes my relationship to the image. He thinks of the image as a shared, human experience soaked in mystery, intuition, and a kind of collective subconscious. Sounds odd, but it describes my relationship to literature perfectly well.

See full interview here.

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