Be Heard!

Capsule Stories is a print literary magazine published once every season. Our first issue was published on March 1, 2019, and we accept submissions year-round.

We are currently accepting essays for our blog about your reading life.

Tell us about your reading slumps or the book that you stayed up till 2 a.m. to finish reading. Write about how you read an author’s work before visiting their home city or country and how their work framed your travels. Write about how your understanding of a book changed or deepened after hearing the author talk about it. Write about how you started a virtual book club with your friends, how your reading habits have changed by listening to audiobooks, how you managed to read books during the pandemic without access to your library. We’re interested in essays that explore the intersection of your reading life and your writing life, or your travels.

We’re especially interested in essays that talk about reading the right book at the right time. Tell us about that book that came into your life at the exact right moment in time and how it spoke to you. Maybe it was a book you were supposed to read in college but didn’t until years later. Maybe it was a book a friend insisted you borrow. Maybe it was a book that caught your eye in the bookstore even though you knew nothing about it.

We are not able to pay our blog contributors currently, but we will share your work far and wide. We will also link to your website or social media to encourage more people to follow your work or book reviews. Because these essays are for our blog and are accepted on a rolling basis, we have more time to work with you to develop the essay and make it shine. If you’re a bookstagrammer interested in writing, this is the perfect opportunity to work with an editor to develop a piece of writing and build your writing portfolio. All writers are welcome, especially writers of color, LGBTQ writers, writers with disabilities, and all writers from marginalized backgrounds.

We’re looking for remarkably written essays under 3,000 words on the above topics for our blog. Please do not submit fiction or poetry to our blog category, and please do not send submissions that are not related to your reading or writing life.

The Center for Black Literature (CBL) at Medgar Evers College, in partnership with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, invites high school and college students of all ages to participate in a writing contest titled Celebrating Black Writers: Voices Calling for Activism and Social Justice. Submissions in the genres of fiction, prose, and essay are welcome.

The writing contest celebrates the Center for Black Literature’s 20th Anniversary Jubilee: Honoring Our Legacy and Celebrating the Black Literary Arts and the National Council of Teachers of English’s annual National Day on Writing®.

Our nation is facing many challenges: voter suppression, racism, social injustice and inequality, and a public health pandemic. Black writers in this country have a long history of overcoming obstacles and engaging in the struggle for the freedom to live as citizens whose civil and human rights are respected and honored. Through their liberation narratives, poetry, fiction, and essays, Black writers have documented their experiences and called for change. The texts of Black poets, novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, historians, activists, and civil rights leaders have always sustained us through challenging times.

All students currently enrolled in secondary/high school or college, including community college, are encouraged to participate by writing and submitting their own essays, prose, or fiction. Writings should represent various themes raised by Black writers—poets, novelists, literary activists, public intellectuals, civil rights leaders, and historians—who have advocated for social justice.

Award Details

All submissions will be reviewed by an invited panel of expert judges.

Submission Dates

• Open: Monday, February 28, 2022
• Close: Monday, May 23, 2022

Submission Guidelines

• Submissions of students’ original writings must be between 750 and 4,000 words long.
• Submissions must be entered into the webform text box, retaining spacing from the original document.
• In a separate field, include a one- or two-sentence bio about the student author.
• Submit to one category (fiction, prose, or essay), as only one submission per person is allowed.
• Submissions can include an excerpt from a student’s larger work but cannot exceed the total stated word limit for this contest.
• Previously published works are not acceptable.
• All entries must be submitted online by no later than 11:59 p.m. ET on May 23,2022.

Awards

• High school students (includes juniors and seniors): first place $3,000; second place $1,500
• College students (includes community, comprehensive, and senior colleges): first place $4,000; second place $2,000

Application Deadline Monday, May 23, 2022

Please contact NCTEAwards@ncte.org with any questions.

Coffee People Zine celebrates the creativity of the coffee community. We showcase the multi-dimensionality of folx who work in and around the coffee industry. Through our seasonal submission-based zine, we publish art and articles, poetry and photography, music and musings, doodles and drawings, and other creative works by baristas, roasters, and other coffee professionals around the world.

Rules for Submission:
1. If you work in the coffee industry, your submission can be anything.
2. If you do not work in the coffee industry, your submission must be about coffee in some way.

Open Submissions:
We are currently accepting submissions for Issue 18, our Autumn 2022 release. The theme is “COMPLEX” and you can take that however you want to. Whether it’s the complexity in a coffee’s flavor profile, or how life can be complicated and confusing, or a series of interconnected buildings (ie: kɒmpleks). Whatever you think of “COMPLEX,” we want to see it!
*BIPOC/LGBTQ+/people with disabilities/folx with marginalized identities are highly encouraged to submit work.*

Submissions Due: August 8, 2022 (early submissions will be given primary consideration)
Release Date: September 22, 2022
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Questions? Email kat@coffeepeople.org