Experimenting since 1966. Here, there, at the foreground of avant-letters.

Cover Art: Stella Nall, DQ 56.1.

Denver Quarterly is the literary journal housed in the Department of English & Literary Arts at the University of Denver, currently in its 56th year of consecutive print publication. Founded by novelist John Williams in 1966, the journal has had work honored in the Pushcart Anthology, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Essays, The Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Poetry.

Story-focused publications with works chosen for Pushcart Prize anthologies. Less than 5% of nominated fiction typically makes the anthology.

Fiction Magazines Featured in Pushcart Prize Anthologies

A targeted resource for short story placements with potential for Pushcart recognition.

Fiction Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize

Specialized publications that recognize exceptional brief fiction through Pushcart nominations.

Publications with pieces chosen for Pushcart Prize anthologies. Recognition of exceptional quality across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Lit Mags Featured in Pushcart Prize Anthologies

Looking for balance between prestige and accessibility? These magazines are competitive but attainable for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writers.

Literary Magazines in the Sweet Spot

A comprehensive guide to journals that regularly nominate work for the Pushcart Prize.

Literary Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize

All-time most competitive literary magazines. Getting published in these is a significant achievement for any writer.

Most Competitive Literary Magazines of All Time

Explore the most popular literary magazines of all time. These long-established publications are a staple in the literary world for writers of all genres.

Most Popular Literary Magazines of All Time

Essay-focused publications with works selected for Pushcart Prize anthologies. These journals have repeatedly identified nonfiction that resonates with Pushcart editors and readers.

Nonfiction Magazines Featured in Pushcart Prize Anthologies

Highlights publications that regularly put forward essays, memoirs, and other creative nonfiction for Pushcart consideration.

Nonfiction Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize

Verse-centered publications with poems chosen for Pushcart Prize anthologies. These journals have consistently identified poems that stand out in this intensely competitive field.

Poetry Magazines Featured in Pushcart Prize Anthologies

Focuses specifically on poetry journals with established histories of Pushcart nominations.

Poetry Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize

Denver Quarterly

Denver Quarterly seeks to offer a platform for rich dialogue between two or more entities. This may include authors, practitioners from other artistic disciplines, or compelling figures in any discipline, practice, or trade, and may be orchestrated around a specific topic. Conversations should stimulate discussion around issues relevant to contemporary artistic life and production, offer insightful or challenging reflections (or both), or otherwise engage generative substance for our readership. Feel free to email us at denverquarterly@gmail.com to pitch conversation ideas or ask any questions.
DQ's 2024-25 Editorial Assistants in Conversations are Gabriel Campos and Lydia McCann.
Policies:

  Conversations should be edited to between 3,000-4,000 words in length.
  If you are submitting with particular formatting, we recommend saving your file as a PDF.
  Please submit only one piece to one category for our consideration, and please wait until you have heard back from us before submitting again.
  Simultaneous submissions are permitted, and please notify us promptly if your work has been accepted elsewhere by adding a note withdrawing your piece in Submittable. We do not read previously published work

Conversations

Denver Quarterly is interested in terrain-shifting work relating to theory and praxis. Critique submissions should provoke questions about our assumptions and inherited positions of literary works and beyond, with a close examination of artistic and theoretical paradigms and the ways in which we consider and approach our usual way of engaging the arts and the world. Critiques may be a traditional essay form, or can work in a visionary manner of your choice.
DQ's 2022-23 Editorial Assistants in Critiques are Ruby Pucillo and Monroe Lawrence.
Policies:

  Critiques should generally consist of no more than 3,500 words. 
  Please use MLA style for your references.
  If you are including quotations of more than two lines of poetry, including an image, or a paragraph of prose, please seek permissions for each quotation before submitting your essay.
  If you are submitting with particular formatting, we recommend saving your file as a PDF.
  Please submit only one piece to one category for our consideration, and please wait until you have heard back from us before submitting again.
  Simultaneous submissions are permitted, and please notify us promptly if your work has been accepted elsewhere by adding a note withdrawing your piece in Submittable. We do not review previously published work.

Critiques

Denver Quarterly seeks to showcase exceptional work that has been translated into English. We look for translated work that complements the journal’s aesthetic and is in sync with our experimental legacy.  For example, in poetry and prose we look for experiments, derivations, plunges, incisions, compressions, investigations, dilations, and texts true and false, found, and invented. We look for writing that pushes on our expectations of narrative and fulfills its own ambitious charge.
DQ's 2024-25 Editorial Assistants in Translations are Daniel Ruiz, Ian Cappelli and Siyun Fang.
Policies:

  Translations should adhere to the guidelines of their respective form: Poetry (3-5 poems), Prose generally no more than 4,000 words of a single work or 3-5 flash / micro / short form pieces compiled into a single document, and Performance generally no more than 4,000 words.
  Translators are responsible for the negotiation and handling of any copyright permissions in relation to the work they submit.
  Though not required, translators are invited to submit a Translator’s Note of 350 words or less.
  If you are submitting with particular formatting, we recommend saving your file as a PDF.
  Please submit only one piece to one category for our consideration, and please wait until you have heard back from us before submitting again.
  Simultaneous submissions are permitted, and please notify us promptly if your work has been accepted elsewhere by adding a note withdrawing your piece in Submittable. We will not consider previously published translations.

Translations

Denver Quarterly is interested in texts intended to be performed in some capacity-- including one-act plays, flash mobs, performance art, monologues, scripted choreography-- or work that is meant to be performed solely on the page but bears in mind certain conventions of the theater/stage. Poems and short stories are not accepted under this category. 
DQ's 2022-23 Editorial Assistant in Performance is Kylan Fermin.
Policies:

  Performance submissions should generally consist of no more than 4,000 words, but may be much shorter as the project requires.
  Excerpts from longer works are permissible.
  If you are submitting performance texts with particular formatting, we recommend saving your file as a PDF.
  Please submit only one piece to one category for our consideration, and please wait until you have heard back from us before submitting again.
  Simultaneous submissions are permitted, and please notify us promptly if your work has been accepted elsewhere by adding a note withdrawing your piece in Submittable. We do not read previously published work.

Performance

Denver Quarterly is interested in reviews of recently published works, under-acknowledged and/or emerging authors, works from smaller and/or independent presses, or fresh and innovative perspectives that update or expand our understanding of historical figures. Submit your written review with a brief entry in your cover letter indicating the text you have selected and how it is situated within these suggestions. 
DQ's 2022-23 Editorial Assistants in Reviews are Monroe Lawrence and Ruby Pucillo.
Policies:

  Single-work reviews should generally run between 1,000 and 2,000 words total. Review essays discussing multiple works should be no more than 3,000 words total.
  Please include, after the title and before your review, the book’s information. Example: Title. First Name Last Name. City: Publisher, Year. Pages. Price.
  Please submit to each category only once per submissions cycle. If you're a recent contributor, please wait at least three issue years after the issue in which your work appeared to submit again.
  Simultaneous submissions are permitted, and please notify us promptly if your work has been accepted elsewhere by adding a note withdrawing your piece in Submittable. We do not read previously published work.

Note: Denver Quarterly values the rigor of the review process. In the interest of an ethical position towards works under review, the journal requires that any close connection with the author of a book under review be disclosed in the submission.  Reviews are not limited to prose and poetry; reviewers are encouraged to consider performance texts, visual art texts, critical theory, or other topics relevant to our readership.

Reviews

Denver Quarterly is interested in all forms of poetry and encourages experiments, derivations, plunges, incisions, compressions, dilations, metrical specificities, historical analyses, lyric challenges, or rushes—in other words, work that rides the crest of language’s wave, wherever it may be verging. We do not put the highest premium on straightforward narrative (but are not at all opposed to it), and are looking to read updates and challenges within that mode.
Policies:
Submissions should be comprised of three to five poems (no longer than 10 pages total), submitted all together in one file.
If you are submitting poems with particular formatting, we recommend saving your file as a PDF.
Please submit only one piece to one category for our consideration, and wait until you have heard back from us before submitting again.
If you're a recent contributor, please wait at least two issue years after the issue in which your work appeared to submit again.
Simultaneous submissions are permitted. Notify us promptly if your work has been accepted elsewhere by adding a note to withdraw your poem in Submittable. We do not read previously published work.

Poetry

Denver Quarterly is interested in all forms of prose and welcomes experiments, derivations, plunges, incisions, compressions, investigations, dilations, texts true and false, found, and invented. We look for writing that pushes on our expectations of narrative and fulfills its own ambitious charge.
Policies:
Submissions of fiction, creative nonfiction, and all prose works in-between should generally consist of no more than 4,000 words of a single work or 3-5 flash / micro / short form pieces compiled into a single document.
Excerpts from longer works are permissible.
If you are submitting prose with particular formatting, we recommend saving your file as a PDF.
Please submit only one piece to one category for our consideration, and wait until you have heard back from us before submitting again.
If you're a recent contributor, please wait at least three issue years after the issue in which your work appeared to submit again.
Simultaneous submissions are permitted, and please notify us promptly if your work has been accepted elsewhere. If you have submitted more than one piece and need to withdraw a selection please leave us a note. We do not read previously published work.

Denver Quarterly

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