© 2016 West Trade Review
© 2016 West Trade Review
Are you a writer that wants to be published and recognized? West Trade Review wants to hear from you!
We are looking for original and unpublished works of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry by both new and established writers. While we publish work of various styles and content, we enjoy writing that is socially engaged and seeks to elevate underrepresented literary voices (BIPOC and LGBTQ+).
Almost all the work we publish each year is from our slush pile. The only exception to this is the two featured writers in our spring print edition. We publish approximately 125 writers annually, so solicited work is roughly 1.6% of our annual content.
Work from WTR has been selected for inclusion in Best American Essays, Best Debut Short Stories, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions, and we regularly nominate writers for all major prizes including Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best American Series, and others.
Our journal is published quarterly (one substantial print edition each spring and an online quarterly each summer, fall, and winter). Please read all submission guidelines carefully. Those that do not meet the requirements below will not be considered.
Please take a moment to review some of our previously published work at our Online Exclusives link or by purchasing a copy of our print edition.
All submissions must be previously unpublished and must be accompanied by a cover letter. We often feature the work of our published writers on social media, so please include the user names of any accounts you would like us to tag (Instagram, Twitter, of Facebook). If you have a personal website dedicated to your writing, you may list that as well.
We have two regular reading periods: April 1st - August 1st & August 15th - December 15th. During our regular reading periods we accept short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and novel excerpts.
We also have two contests: January 15th - March 15th
There is a general submission fee of $3 to help us cover administrative costs associated with our online submissions system).
We offer free submissions during the first week of each month for our general submissions categories (does not include contests).
We offer expedited response for $10 (for communicating a quick decision about your submission; response time = approx. 2 weeks)
We offer expedited response and personalized feedback for $25 (for quick decision and detailed personalized response from editors; response time=approx. 2 weeks)
Short Fiction Submissions Guidelines
We look for fiction with a literary focus and prioritize characterization and psychological depth. No genre pieces considered.
We want stories that make the reader think and feel, work that humbles us with its joy, humor, embarrassment, anger, hope, grief, or all of the above, and gravitate toward writing that has something important to teach us--something that readers really need to know, but might not have understood this was a need until the last word of the work.
D.W. White, Fiction Editor: “I look for fearless writing first and foremost, by which I mean work that shows both an understanding of the technical-mechanical approaches being used and a willingness to take risks at the sentence level. How does the technical, style, and applied theory behind a work interact with and propel its central theme, message, and raison d’etre? I especially appreciate writing that can combine arresting prose with a compelling story, employing one to better render the other. While a piece should not prioritize style over substance or inaccessibly for its own sake, I think the best fiction is that which has some measure of originality in both content and form."
Jessica Denzer, Associate Fiction Editor: "I love reading stories with a language-heart. I want to read stories that take risks with language not simply for the sake of risk but because the story can be told no other way. I love big stories, I love narrative, I love characters, but what I'm looking for is work that builds story and character through the poetics of the sentence, through the meditation and crafting of words and rhythm."
Diane Josefowicz, Associate Fiction Editor: "Many of the stories I read are wish-fulfillments: how things should have gone. More interesting to me are characters honestly grieving losses or grappling with the consequences of failing to do so. Beyond that, I’m looking for fresh and confident prose that shows strong control of diction, tone, and register. I love a balanced sentence."
Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez, Associate Fiction Editor: "I’m seeking beauty and intimacy. For me, risk-taking is not about shock value. It’s about the courage to write honestly and authentically. It’s about characters that haunt me. It’s about stories that must be told and voices that need to be heard. I love unexpected language and tightly crafted prose. I want to read stories that invite me to partake in the chaos, in the messy spaces where humanness resides."
Melissa Goodnight, Associate Fiction Editor: "I’m looking for character-driven narratives with authenticity and grit. I want dynamic characters navigating the tough parts of life. I also love stories with a strong sense of place. I’m always looking for stories that take calculated risks in form and language but not at the expense of emotional resonance. The stories I like the most highlight personal experience, while speaking to broader social issues."
Nicole Gantz, Associate Fiction Editor: "I seek artistic voices that can exploit the texture of consciousness in the development of character and setting. I want to read intimate stories that elevate the everyday by subverting connections between forms of content and expression, well-crafted stories that disrupt literary conventions to thwart traditional forms of meaning-making. I like balanced writing that experiments with format, style, vocabulary, syntax, rhythm, or sound in a way that advances cultural discourse in multiplicitous directions."
Please submit one prose piece of up to 5000 words
- Include a clear title of the work.
- Please double space your story.
- Include a short 3rd person biography of no more than 150 words. Work submitted without a biography will not be considered.
- If your work is a simultaneous submission, please let us know immediately if it is published elsewhere.
- Writers may not submit more than once per reading period.
Entries should be submitted to the appropriate genre category at the following link:
Poetry Submissions Guidelines
We are looking for poems that perform Olympic feats with language that leave a reader in wonder while still referring back to the basic things that make us human. We want powerful imagery and enjoy the juxtaposition of images in interesting and unexpected ways.
We want poems that make the reader think and feel, work that humbles us with its joy, humor, embarrassment, anger, hope, grief, or all of the above, and gravitate toward writing that has something important to teach us--something that readers really need to know, but might not have understood this was a need until the last word of the work.
- Submit up to 5 poems Please submit multiple poems as one submission in a single Microsoft Word file (and list the title of each poem for the title of your group submission).
- Include a clear title of the work.
- Please single space poems.
- Include a short 3rd person biography of no more than 150 words. Work submitted without a biography will not be considered.
- If your work is a simultaneous submission, please let us know immediately if it is published elsewhere.
- Writers may not submit more than once per reading period.
Entries should be submitted to the appropriate genre category at the following link:
Creative Nonfiction Submissions Guidelines
We are interested in personal essays, memoir, literary journalism, and lyric essays of up to 6000 words that blend style with substance and reach beyond the personal to tell us something new about the world.
We want nonfiction pieces that make the reader think and feel, work that humbles us with its joy, humor, embarrassment, anger, hope, grief, or all of the above, and gravitate toward writing that has something important to teach us--something that readers really need to know, but might not have understood this was a need until the last word of the work.
- Submit one nonfiction piece of up to 6000 words. Please double space your document.
- Include a clear title of the work.
- Include a short 3rd person biography of no more than 150 words. Work submitted without a biography will not be considered.
- If your work is a simultaneous submission, please let us know immediately if it is published elsewhere.
- Writers may not submit more than once per reading period.
Entries should be submitted to the appropriate genre category at the following link:
We try to respond to most submissions as quickly as possible, and final decisions typically do not take more than 3 months at most although we tend to read and respond to most submissions within one month or less.
Summer, fall, and winter quarterly editions are published solely online. All works published in online editions are promoted via our social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).
All entries are judged by the editorial team. West Trade Review reserves all publication rights for each issue's design and content, as well as for first North American publishing rights. The journal also retains rights to use works for promotional and publicity pieces in printed or computerized formats. Authors and artists retain their rights for future publication/use.
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