Guidelines for the American Literary Review Awards

(Updated Spring 2025)

Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in the Spring online issue of the American Literary Review will be given for a poem, a short story, an essay or memoir. Finalists may also be selected for publication.

Please submit your work using our online Submission Manager. We do not accept contest submissions via post or email.

Contest timeline: The contest is open for submissions between June 1 and September 1. The ALR editorial team will read entries, select the finalists and send those finalists to the judges by late October. We expect that contest winners will be chosen and notified in late November. Winners and select finalists will be published in ALR’s Spring Issue the following April.

Submissions:

There is a $15.00 reading fee to submit. Contest entries will be read anonymously. Please do not put any identifying information in the file itself; include the author’s name, title(s), address, e-mail address, phone number, and cover letter in the boxes provided by Submittable.

Short Fiction: One work of fiction per entry ($15), limit 8,000 words per work

Creative Nonfiction: One work per entry fee ($15), limit 8,000 words per work.

Poetry: One to three poems per entry fee ($15)

While multiple entries are acceptable, each entry must be accompanied by a separate reading fee. Please do not submit the same piece more than once or in more than one genre. Please submit any hybrid work in whichever category you feel best describes your piece. We cannot accommodate revisions after a piece has been submitted. We do not consider previously published work.

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately through Submittable if any part of your contest entry is selected for publication elsewhere. If your piece is selected as a finalist, we request that you withdraw it from consideration elsewhere until a winner has been selected. We are not able to offer refunds or replacement submissions for withdrawn contest submissions.

We are committed to an ethical consideration of submissions and ask that if you are family, friend, colleague, or student to a judge (or have any other potential conflicts of interest) that you refrain from submitting to the ALR Awards in their category. Students and others currently affiliated with the University of North Texas and those who have graduated within the past three years are not eligible to submit to ALR or the ALR Awards.

Fee-free Submissions: If you are a writer from a marginalized community for whom the entry fee is a significant barrier to submitting, we offer a limited number of fee waivers in each genre. Update: We have reached the limit of waivers we can offer for all Contest entries. 

Please email us at americanliteraryreview@gmail.com with any questions about the American Literary Review Awards contest or submitting.