Submission Guidelines

We’re looking for work that acts like a fist through drywall. The ferocious, the silent, the shocking, the quotidian, the confused. Send us the pieces you've labored over, the ones that you come back to and think, I’ve been here. Show us what has fossilized within you.

A Note From the Editors

Welcome to the submissions for Trace Fossils Review!

To start, the type of material we crave here is difficult. Difficult to comprehend, difficult to put on paper, and difficult to submit. This review was created first and foremost as a refuge for the work that feels hard as stone, that leaves us possessed.

Because this is the genre we cherish most, our promise to you is that we will treat your thoughts as we treat an old house: tenderly, with open ears and the knowledge that it will never be truly ours. Thank you for honoring us with your pieces. For trusting us to foster something resonant inside these walls.

We look forward to experiencing your work.

Warmest thanks,

Jessie & Ellie

Guidelines

We are currently open for Tip Jar Submissions on our Submittable.

We host four submission periods for our quarterly publication:

  • Summer: March-April

  • Fall: June-July

  • Winter: September-October

  • Spring: December-January

This window lies in the Winter submission period. Submissions close on October 31st at 11:59pm EST.

  • Poetry: Up to 3 pieces per period. No longer than 132 lines in length (a total three pages in our print issues). Submit all poetry in Times New Roman, 12pt font, single spaced. We accept .docx and .word files. Please include all submissions in one file.

  • Fiction: One piece at a time, with a maximum of 4,000 words. For anything shorter than 300 words, we max out at three submissions per period.

  • Nonfiction: Personal essays, journalism, memoirs, lyric essays, critical essays and the like. One piece per reading period. Maximum of 4,000 words.

  • Art/Multimedia: Up to 3 pieces per submission period. Submit all photography and multimedia as TIFF and JPEG files. Submissions must have an image quality of at least 300 ppi. Please include all submissions in ONE FILE.

Please make sure that your name or other personal information does not appear anywhere within your document.

We encourage simultaneous submissions. You’re welcome to have your piece running in multiple tabs; just keep us updated if you are accepted elsewhere. Most decisions are made within sixteen weeks of submission.

We ask for First Serial Rights for all pieces. All rights revert back to the creator after six months. If your accepted piece is published anywhere at a later date, we ask that you credit the work as being originally published in Trace Fossils Review. We reserve the right to republish the piece or include it in any anthologies, as well as to display it in our archives. Pieces that won awards but were not published (including, for instance, recognition by YoungArts or the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards), are more than welcome.

We will only publish original work. By submitting to our magazine, you are verifying that your work is original, that AI was not used anywhere in the process of creating your piece, and no part of your work has been plagiarized or replicated without written permission from the original creator. 

We do not currently pay for pieces. We print a yearly anthology; all who are accepted into our print publication will receive one contributor copy.

If you believe your work may be sensitive to some readers, include a trigger warning. We don’t read cover letters until after, so put a small note at the top of your submission document.

 This review holds no tolerance for bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, and prejudice of the like. Any pieces that preach that gospel will be immediately turned away, and the artist will be barred from future submissions.