Submission Guidelines
AWP presents the best contemporary writing in its flagship magazine The Writer’s Chronicle. Please do read these guidelines before submitting your work. The editors read submissions for The Writer’s Chronicle from February 1 through September 30 of each year.
About The Writer’s Chronicle
A forum for the best writing on the craft and art of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, The Writer’s Chronicle serves a wide, diverse community of writers, students, teachers, and professionals. We strive to provide readers with insight and diverse perspectives on literature, creative writing, and teaching, as well as a respite from a difficult and lonely art. We also strive to support the good works of AWP, its programs, and its individual members by promoting community and engagement. The Writer’s Chronicle is also a resource for information on publishing opportunities, grants, awards, and writing conferences and retreats.
The editors look for articles that demonstrate an excellent working knowledge of literary issues and a generosity of spirit. Essays must embody erudition, curiosity, and discernment rather than self-involvement. Writers may refer to their own travails and successes if they do so modestly, and in small proportion to the other examples. Again, we look for a generosity of spirit—a general love and command of literature as well as an expert, writerly viewpoint—in the essays we publish.
What We Publish
Submissions to The Writer’s Chronicle may fall into one of the following categories:
Essays on the Craft of Writing: 2,500 to 5,000 words
All craft essays must analyze an element of creative writing. They should contain examples to illustrate the writerly advice they offer. Using more than one author to illustrate your analysis is recommended.
Interviews: 3,000 to 5,000 words
We feature interviews with well-known and up-and-coming authors in the genres of fiction, short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. In the past, we have published interviews with such authors as Nikki Finney, Yusef Komunyakaa, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Vijay Seshadri, Gregory Pardlo, and many others. We especially appreciate interviews that include discussions of writing craft, the evolution of the author’s own work, and literary influences and inspirations. We prefer interviews that have been revised heavily in the interest of accuracy, concision, and style. We are interested in an interview that represents a writer as well as possible in a somewhat personable manner. We only publish interviews that have been approved in proofs by their subjects.
Profiles and Appreciations: 2,000 to 5,000 words
The Writer’s Chronicle will now also feature profiles and appreciations of contemporary writers that include a close reading of an author’s work and a description of the author’s contributions to our culture. You may include some personal anecdotes to portray the author more vividly, but mostly self-referential work will not be acceptable.
Please note that, alongside interviews and profiles, we publish excerpts from recently published or forthcoming work. We will ask that authors provide audio recordings of the excerpted work to accompany the interview or profile online.
What We Pay
We buy first serial rights and electronic rights for all manuscripts accepted for publication. We pay $18 per 100 words for accepted manuscripts. Authors are paid upon publication. We reserve the right to publish articles online as well as on The Writer’s Chronicle App.
To propose an essay or interview for consideration for The Writer’s Chronicle, please email Editor Supriya Bhatnagar at chronicle@awpwriter.org.In the Classroom
Do you use The Writer’s Chronicle in the classroom? If so, consider writing a teaching guide for In the Classroom, a section devoted to creative writing pedagogy by and for teachers.
In the Classroom’s teaching guides are devoted to a single essay or interview from a past issue of the Chronicle and are intended to be a resource for teachers of any and all genres, backgrounds, and experience levels, at colleges and community centers, looking to make their classroom a more enriching, rewarding, and inclusive environment for all. Guides should be 500 to 700 words in length and should follow this downloadable template.
All teaching guides should be uploaded to Submittable for consideration. If you have any questions about this opportunity, please send us an email at chronicle@awpwriter.org.
General Guidelines
We currently accept submissions via Submittable only. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but must be noted as such on your cover letter. We will try to respond within three months, though sometimes the ebb and flow of manuscripts extends our response time. Please follow the Chicago Manual of Style to acknowledge your sources by using endnotes. Do not follow the MLA style. Previously published works are unacceptable. We will, however, publish an accepted work before or the same month it also appears in a book.
Permissions
If you quote a poem, song, or short-short story in its entirety, it is your responsibility to secure and pay for that permission. We recommend that you limit quotes to fair use and avoid quoting whole works, as many trade publishers charge high fees for permissions.
How to Submit Online
To submit online, visit our Submittable portal. Choose the appropriate category and enter your contact information. Please upload your submission as a single file in .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .pdf formats. Include cover letter and bio information in the space provided on the submission form.
