SUBMISSIONS

Send us your work.

Issue Eight — Reading Period: April 1 – June 16, 2026‍ ‍

Submission Guidelines

We welcome work that is inventive, resonant, and crafted with care. Read the specs for your genre before you send.

POETRY

  1. FORMAT

  • Single-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman or Garamond

    FILE TYPE. ‍ ‍

    doc or .docx only

  • ANONYMITY‍ ‍

    No name or identifying info in the manuscript

  • FILE NAME ‍ ‍

    Should reflect the title of the submission

  • LIMIT

    No more than three poems

PROSE

  • LENGTH

    Maximum 2,500 words

  • FILE TYPE. ‍ ‍

    doc or .docx only

  • ANONYMITY‍ ‍

    Manuscripts must be anonymized

  • PRIOR PUBLICATION ‍ ‍

    Previously published work not considered

  • SIMULTANEOUS SUBS ‍ ‍

  • Permitted — withdraw if accepted elsewhere

General Rules

A few things to know before you hit send.

  1. Cover email: Include your full name, email address, nationality, and a brief bio (maximum 50 words) in the body of your email.

  2. Simultaneous submissions are permitted for poetry and prose. Please notify us promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere.

  3. No AI-generated work. We do not accept submissions wholly or partially generated by artificial intelligence. All work must be the

    original creation of the author, and any submission found to contain AI-generated content may be disqualified.

  4. Publication schedule: We publish three issues annually — March, August, and November. General submissions are accepted between production cycles.

  5. Who we welcome: We warmly invite submissions from Africans, people of color, diasporic writers, descendants, and affiliated communities, with no thematic, stylistic, or formal restrictions.

  6. Rights & compensation: Contributors retain full copyright and publication rights at all times. We are not currently able to offer honoraria, but are actively working toward compensating contributors as part of our long-term development.

Fellowship & Prize

In addition to our regular issues, we administer two ongoing programs.

FELLOWSHIP

The Liberia Creative Writing Fellowship

A dedicated program for Liberian writers, supporting craft development and connection to a wider literary community.

PRIZE

The Kofi Awoonor Poetry Prize

Honoring excellence in poetry that embodies lived experience, insight, and artistic rigor.

Ready to submit?

Send your poetry or prose to our submissions inbox, following the guidelines above. We read closely and reply to every writer.

SUBMIT YOUR WORK