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KINDER/CRUMP AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION

Pleiades is accepting submission for the Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction during the month of March. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in an upcoming issue of Pleiades: Literature in Context. Submissions will be open from March 1-March 31 at 11:59 CST. Anjanette Delgado will judge.

About our judge: Anjanette Delgado writes about heartbreak, displacement, and sexile. She is the author of two novels: The Heartbreak Pill (Atria, 2008) and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (Penguin Random House, 2014), and the editor of the award-winning anthology Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (UPF, 2021). Her work has appeared in the New York TimesKenyon ReviewPrairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, Pleiades, and the Boston Review, among others. She lives in Miami, Florida.

TO PAY for your submission: Please visit this link to pay the $20 entry fee.

TO SUBMIT: Writers may submit one story for a $20 entry fee between March 1-March 31, 2024. There is no word count maximum, and writers may submit multiple times. Please visit pleiadessubmissions.com to submit. ***Please select “Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction under “genre” or your submission will not be read. Please include your order number in the comments section of your submission. Please do not include any identifying information on the submission document or PDF.

The Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction is named in honor of Professor Emerita at UCM and Editor Emerita of Pleiades, R.M. Kinder, and Professor Emeritus at UCM and Pleiades fiction reader G.B. Crump.

We look forward to reading your work!

REGULAR SUBMISSIONS

Pleiades is open for regular submissions during the month of December. Due to staffing changes and an unprecedented volume of submissions, our response time is longer than usual. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding. Unsolicited poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and book reviews should be submitted via our online submissions managerUnfortunately, we cannot consider paper submissions and emailed submissions, and mailed manuscripts will be recycled. Submissions sent outside the submission period will not be considered. Please do not submit more than once in a given genre during each reading period. *Due to a large volume of submissions, Pleiades book review submissions are currently closed.

• Please remember to select the genre of your submission, as submissions sent with no genre marked will not be read.

• Though we attend to submissions as quickly as possible, please allow for up to six months before querying.

• We are especially interested in reading submissions from writers from historically marginalized communities as part of our commitment to a broad representation of dynamic work.

• Writers should review past issues of Pleiades to get a sense of our aesthetic and preferences. Order Pleiades here.


GENRE SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

POETRY

Please send a PDF of 3-5 poems. We are particularly interested in work that embraces risk and is lyrically inventive. We value work that gives voice to a range of lived experiences and employs a mastery of expression. Work of any length will be considered, and we look forward to reading your most polished poems. Please do not submit multiple packets during one submissions period. Direct questions regarding poetry to Jenny Molberg and Caitlin Cowan at [email protected].

FICTION

Pleiades is looking for exceptional fiction, with a focus on well-developed characters, memorable language, provocatively-wrought subject matter, and immersive settings. While there are no length requirements, our journal has limited space, and manuscripts over 12,000 words will especially need to impress. Some stories may be considered for our “online exclusives” category. Please direct questions regarding fiction to Jennifer Maritza McCauley at pleiadesfictioninquiries@gmail.com.

CREATIVE NONFICTION

While we enjoy essays and nonfiction in all forms, here at Pleiades we are particularly interested in creative nonfiction that gazes out at the world rather than into the self. This is to say nothing against memoir, only that our publishing aesthetic leans towards the exterior in order to balance what we often see as a focus on memoir and interiority in many literary journals. Essays that perform a weave of the personal with an outward gaze are very welcome. We do not only consider externally-focused creative nonfiction, but this is our taste preference. Limit creative nonfiction submissions to 6,000 words. Please direct questions regarding nonfiction to [email protected].

BOOK REVIEWS

The Pleiades Book Review is now published online. Please note that our Book Reviews submission process has changed. We welcome both finished reviews and pitches from reviewers via email at [email protected]. Only emailed reviews and queries will be accepted; any mailed submissions will be recycled. Please direct any reviews, questions, pitches, or queries to Kylie Gellatly, our Reviews Editor. Reviews should be submitted exclusively by the reviewers themselves (not by the authors of the work being reviewed). We encourage experimental reviews—reviews that borrow from creative nonfiction, adopt a unique form, engage in a retrospective look at an older text, and/or visual reviews. We are open for book review submissions via email year-round. 


• Pleiades DOES accept simultaneous submissions, but we ask that you notify us immediately if a piece is accepted elsewhere. *If you need to withdraw your work from consideration, please email the appropriate genre editor with the subject line “Withdrawal.” Please ONLY email through the links provided above.

• To have a book considered for review, send a review copy to: Pleiades Book Review • Dept of English, Martin 336 • University of Central Missouri • Warrensburg, MO 64093. Please note: not all books received will be reviewed, though we do review 40+ books in each year.