Creative Nonfiction Submissions
Ends on
Submit one creative nonfiction piece (no more than 5,000 words). Shorter works of CNF are often a better fit for us.
No fee.
A few thoughts on what we're looking for:
For creative nonfiction, we look for the hallmarks described by Philip Gerard in Creative Nonfiction: particularly, an apparent and deeper subject, a well-told story, and the sense that the writer has spent considerable time exploring the subject and making connections outside personal experience—to subjects such as current events and social issues, history, science, politics, religion, the arts—and demonstrating fresh insight. CNF involves telling true stories about people and events using narrative techniques, with a careful attention to language. It rises above chronological description. The narrator is involved with the subject, and there is evidence of reflection in the work. Although the work usually involves the narrator's experience and opinions, the story should rise above the personal and speak to a larger truth. Readers want to learn; they also want to feel and care. This category should not be used to submit autobiography, life writing exercises, scholarly articles, research papers, book reviews, opinion pieces, rants, acts of revenge and other works that one of us might regret later, memoir that does not employ CNF techniques, and other work that doesn't fit this category. There are many markets for them, and no doubt we'll accept work from time to time that seems to defy our criteria, but this is where we stand right now.
Submit CNF for the contest at that link (during contest submission periods), not this one. Work should be double spaced, 12-point font, one-inch margins, with indented paragraphs. Pages should be numbered. We appreciate seeing the word count on the first page.
Please be sure to withdraw your work promptly if it is accepted by another publication.