A journal of contemporary writing and art hosted at the William Paterson University of New Jersey MFA in Creative & Professional Writing.

Map Lit­er­ary pub­lishes poems, prose poems, short sto­ries, self-contained novel excerpts, essays of nonfiction or creative nonfiction, hyper­text, digital and new media works, author inter­views, book/cultural reviews, and art/photography. Sub­mis­sions are con­sid­ered year-round, but do not send more work if we are still con­sid­er­ing your pre­vi­ous sub­mis­sion. 

We do not con­sider work that has appeared else­where, either in print or on the web, except by special agreement. We do accept simul­ta­ne­ous sub­mis­sions but ask that you give us three weeks exclu­sive con­sid­er­a­tion if pos­si­ble; also, please notify us as soon as you can if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Map Literary

Map Literary is pleased to announce that the 2026 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award is now open for submissions. 

Named after our late colleague, this award honors beautiful, original writing through publication as a high-quality chapbook. This year the award will focus on PROSE. We seek new, original work, though individual pieces that have been previously published elsewhere may be included. The manuscript should be about 30 pages long (15,000-20,000 words). The deadline for entries is February 14th, 2026. There is no entry fee through Dec 25th; after that there will be an entry fee of $10. The winner will receive a $1000 honorarium and 25 copies of the winning print chapbook, which will be sold on Amazon.com, where chapbooks of the previous winners can be found.

2026 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award

Creative nonfiction or scholarly essays; book & cultural reviews; author interviews. We are looking for writers who are engaged by  contemporary cultural issues and who have explored forms such as the segmented essay, poetic prose, the braided essay, and the position  piece. Also welcome are personal essays, travel essays, and memoir by writers who demonstrate both a strong sense of place and a range of content that extends beyond the confessional.

General Nonfiction

Christopher Salerno: "I'm drawn to poetry that knows what year it is. Regardless of school or allegiance, my favorite lyric or meditative poems exist as a record of a process. They allow themselves to be in uncertainties. They beg to be reread, even if they’re simple. They may be simple. They may contain variants, diversions, or hiccups. Tonally, they may contain multitudes. A medley of historical references might include such hits as Keats' "Negative Capability," Lorca's "Duende," Frank O'Hara's "Personism," and the careful attentiveness of Charles Olson's "Projective Verse." Some of my favorite Small Press Poetry Publishers right now include: Wave Books, Birds LLC, Black Ocean, Ahsahta Press, Flood Editions, Wesleyan, Cleveland State University Poetry Center, Octopus Books, and others.

General Poetry

John Parras: "I am particularly drawn to fiction with a poetic texture--fiction that employs intense figurative language and sophisticated prose rhythms. I like magic realism, experimental fiction, and sudden fiction (750-1000 words). I have recently been enjoying stories by David Means, Ben Marcus, Victor Pelevin, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian,' Paul Harding's 'tinkers,' and the beautiful sentences of Rivka Galchen."


Martha Witt: "I admire fiction that simultaneously surprises and convinces. When I read narratives with outrageous premises or unexpected twists that, in the end, seem absolutely inevitable, I am in awe. The emotional component is crucial, of course. Even great technique cannot save a story that offers its readers no emotional connection. Alice Munro, Deborah Eisenberg, John Barth, and Andrew Sean Greer write the kind of short stories I turn to again and again."

Map Literary

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General Nonfiction