The Southeast Review, established in 1979 as Sundog, is a national literary magazine housed in the English department at Florida State University, edited and managed by graduate students. Our mission is to present emerging writers on the same stage as well-established ones. We publish literary fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, book reviews, interviews, and art across our biannual print issues and online. With nearly sixty members on our editorial staff who come from throughout the country and around the world, we publish work that is representative of our diverse interests and aesthetics, and we celebrate the eclectic mix this produces.


Work from SER is anthologized or noted in Best American Essays, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. Previous contributors include Ai Ogawa, Carl Phillips, Danez Smith, D.A. Powell, Denise Duhamel, Brandon Taylor, Erica Berry, Hai-Dang Phan, Justin Phillip Reed, Megan Giddings, Natalie Shapero.

Young Adult Fiction

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Digital publications chosen for Best of the Net. These journals demonstrate consistent excellence in identifying digital fiction that deserves wider recognition and readership.

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

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Publications with narratives under 1,000 words selected for this anthology series. These journals consistently identify short-short fiction, exemplifying the artistry possible in compact narratives.

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Lit Mags Featured in Pushcart Prize Anthologies

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Southeast Review

Please submit one double-spaced creative nonfiction piece of up to 5000  words. 
We’re open to a variety of forms, including memoir, travel writing, lyric essay, and hybrid work. We don’t, however, publish academic writing.

Creative Nonfiction

Please submit one double-spaced short story of up to 7500 words. 
 
We rarely publish short-shorts outside of our World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. If you do plan to submit short-shorts, however, please send no more than five per submission. We don’t publish novellas and will only consider novel excerpts if they work as stand-alone stories.

Fiction

Please submit no more than 5 single-spaced poems at a time, with a maximum of 15  pages per total submission. Place all poems in one document. 

Only withdraw your entire submission if none of your submitted poems remain available. To withdraw a single poem, please send a message via Submittable with the title you would like to remove from consideration. (Please notify us via Submittable only, not email.)

While you're here, check out our upcoming virtual workshops and classes!

Poetry

You don’t have to be young to read or write YA. It is a category of fiction that currently attracts readers from every demographic. The Southeast Review is interested in YA as well, so we will now be accepting Young Adult fiction submissions. 
 
YA is about more than just having a teenage protagonist. The work needs to take on the perspective of a young adult, not a grown person looking back on their teen experiences. If you think your story fits this category, we can’t wait to read it.
 
Please submit one double-spaced short story of up to 4000 words. 
We rarely publish short-shorts outside of our World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. If you do plan to submit short-shorts, however, please send no more than five per submission. We don’t publish novellas and will only consider novel excerpts if they work as stand-alone stories.
 
P.S. For the category, we are open to any genre, so long as it fits under the YA umbrella.


While you're here, check out our upcoming virtual workshops and classes!

We are offering free general submissions for writers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

You don’t have to be young to read or write YA. It is a category of fiction that currently attracts readers from every demographic. The Southeast Review is interested in YA as well, so we will now be accepting Young Adult fiction submissions. These submissions will be capped at 100.

YA is about more than just having a teenage protagonist. The work needs to take on the perspective of a young adult, not a grown person looking back on their teen experiences. If you think your story fits this category, we can’t wait to read it.

Please submit one double-spaced short story of up to 4000 words. 

We rarely publish short-shorts outside of our World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. If you do plan to submit short-shorts, however, please send no more than five per submission. We don’t publish novellas and will only consider novel excerpts if they work as stand-alone stories.

P.S. For the category, we are open to any genre, so long as it fits under the YA umbrella.

Free BIPOC Submissions: YA

We are offering free general submissions for writers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Please note that these submissions do have a cap, in the event that we receive more free submissions than Submittable allows us to offer. 


 Please submit no more than 5 single-spaced poems at a time, with a maximum of 15  pages per total submission. Place all poems in one document. 


Only withdraw your entire submission if none of your submitted poems remain available. To withdraw a single poem, please add a note to your submission with the title you would like to remove from consideration. (Please notify us via Submittable only, not email.)

Free BIPOC Submissions: Poetry

Please submit one double-spaced short story of up to 7500 words.

We rarely publish short-shorts outside of our World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. If you do plan to submit short-shorts, however, please send no more than five per submission. We don’t publish novellas and will only consider novel excerpts if they work as stand-alone stories.

Free BIPOC Submissions: Fiction

We are offering free general submissions for writers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Please note that these submissions do have a cap, in the event that we receive more free submissions than Submittable allows us to offer.

Please submit one double-spaced creative nonfiction piece of up to 5000  words. 

We’re open to a variety of forms, including memoir, travel writing, and personal essay. We don’t, however, publish academic writing.

Free BIPOC Submissions: Creative Nonfiction

General submissions to the Southeast Review are free year-round to persons who are currently or formerly incarcerated; contest fees are also waived. 
If you are submitting on behalf of someone else, please provide your contact information in the fields below, as well as any additional information we might need to contact the person whose work you're submitting. 
Specific guidelines for submissions in any genre can be found on our main page. 
**If you are formerly incarcerated, please include a brief statement in your cover letter regarding how your experience being incarcerated has impacted you.

Note: Should a person who is currently incarcerated wish to submit directly, rather than through a liaison, we accept submissions by mail. Please provide them with the following mailing address: 
Southeast Review 
English Department. Williams Bldg. 
Florida State University 
Tallahassee, FL 32306

While you're here, check out our upcoming virtual workshops and classes!

Nonfiction Submissions for Currently & Formerly Incarcerated Persons

We’re interested in interviews that balance an intimate portrayal of the writer with their work. Explore the personal, ask about the nonliterary, evoke a mood. Create context for the work under discussion, then give us a sense of how the writer identifies with a particular tradition or is trying to break from it. We encourage making connections with political and historical events so that your conversation opens to broader audiences.
Please send us a complete interview for consideration. We particularly welcome interviewers and writers from historically marginalized groups.

While you're here, check out our upcoming virtual workshops and classes!

Interviews

In 1986, Jerome Stern, the then-director of Florida State University’s creative writing program, founded this contest to celebrate micro fiction. Submissions had to be under 250 words, and the winner received a crate of oranges as well as a check. Stern passed away from cancer in 1996, and though the guidelines and prize have changed since, we continue holding the contest in Stern’s memory, with a modern master of the short-short story judging the entries annually. 
 
Please send up to three short-short stories per submission. Each short-short should be no more than 500 words. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions. 
We're thrilled to have Kristen Arnett serving as this year's judge. Kristen Arnett is the queer Floridian author of the novel STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE (Riverhead Books, 2025), which was longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize; With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction; and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019), which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony, and the Studios of Key West, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She runs the substack “Dad Lessons.” Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, Vogue, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her upcoming short fiction collection, Party at the End of the World, will be published by Riverhead Books. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida. 

The winner will receive $750, and winners and finalists will be notified in Spring 2026 and published in our biannual issue in Fall 2026.
Only withdraw your entire submission if none of your submitted short-shorts remain available. To withdraw a single short-short, please add a note to your submission with the title you would like to remove from consideration. (Please notify us via Submittable only.)

World's Best Short-Short Story Contest

Our nonfiction contest was established in honor of Dr. Ned Stuckey-French, whose legacy will last as one of service to the literary community, his students, hospital workers’ unions, and beyond. His spirit of selfless service is a model we aspire to, and his unflinching dedication to truth and its telling inspires the nonfiction we publish and produce.
We seek submissions in this vein: nonfiction that prods and pressures expectations; that speaks to the personal against the powerful; and that prioritizes soul, heart, and service. Please send essays up to 10 pages. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
We're thrilled to have Porochista Khakpour as our judge.  Porochista Khakpour is the award-winning Iranian-American author of the novels Sons and Other Flammable Objects, The Last Illusion, and Tehrangeles, as well as the memoir Sick and essay collection Brown Album. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Bookforum, Elle, Slate, and many others. Among her many fellowships is a National Endowment for the Arts award. She has taught at Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Bard, Wesleyan, Fordham, and more for the past 20 years. Her most recent book Tehrangeles (Pantheon, 2024) was an Indie Next Pick, an NPR Book of the Day, one of TIME's 25 Most Anticipated Books of 2024, as well as one of the "Best Books of 2024” by Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and W; it has also been longlisted for the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. She was born in Tehran, raised in LA's San Gabriel Valley, and currently lives in NYC's Harlem. For more info see porochistakhakpour.com.
The winner will receive $750, and winners and finalists will be notified in Spring 2026 and published in our biannual issue in Fall 2026.

Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest

Fiction Submissions for Currently & Formerly Incarcerated Persons

Poetry Submissions for Currently & Formerly Incarcerated Persons

Our poetry contest began in 1996 to honor Michael Wm. Gearhart, a Ph.D. student in creative writing at Florida State University who died suddenly at the age of 39 as he was completing the final steps of his degree. The contest continues today in his memory.
Please send up to three poems, no more than 10 pages total. Include no more than one poem per page. Do not include personal identification information within your submissions.
We're thrilled to have Li-Young Lee serving as this year's judge. Li-Young Lee is the author of several books of poetry, most recently, The Invention of the Darling. With poet Yun Wang he has also co-translated the Chinese spiritual classic The Dao De Jing.
The winner will receive $750, and winners and finalists will be notified in Spring 2027 and published in our biannual issue in Fall 2027.
Only withdraw your entire submission if none of your submitted poems remain available. To withdraw a single poem, please add a note to your submission with the title you would like to remove from consideration. (Please notify us via Submittable only.)

Southeast Review

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Gearhart Poetry Contest

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