Overview: Driftwood Press is excited to announce an updated version of our Editors & Writers Seminar! Instead of being offered on specific dates with large groups of students, you are now able to begin the seminar on any Monday you'd like! Read below to see what this new seminar offers.

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This five-week seminar will be most useful to three types of writers: (1) writers who are submitting to magazines and want  tips and tricks to fight through the slush pile to round two; (2) writers who want to be editors of short fiction or run a literary magazine; (3) writers who want to become better editors of their own and others’ work.

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Each week, the student will receive a pre-recorded video lesson from the instructor (Driftwood Press’ Managing Fiction Editor James McNulty) and a few reading assignments. Throughout the course, the student will also receive four total writing or revision assignments and detailed feedback on each of these four assignments. Those who take the class will also receive a copy of the brilliant craft essay collection On Writing Fiction (David Jauss), shipped directly to them near the beginning of the course.

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Application: Once you've paid the fee and told us which Monday you'd like to begin the course on, we'll confirm your date or discuss alternates if we have a conflict. To apply, please provide the following:

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• Statement of Interest: A 200-word statement of interest detailing how this online course would benefit you or why you are interested.
• Brief Biography: A short, 100-word biographical statement outlining any work history, editorial experience, publications, or upcoming projects you are involved in.

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Cost: Cost for the entire five-week course is $250.00 USD. The course-cost includes:

• Five video lectures available exclusively to students.
• Four assignments, two of which will be revision assignments.
• Detailed instructor feedback on <500 words of prose assignments each week for all four assignments.
• Digital reading assignments
• A copy of On Writing Fiction by renowned craft writer David Jauss delivered directly to you near the beginning of the course.
• Open communication with Managing Fiction Editor James McNulty. While taking the course, feel free to shoot over craft and career questions and concerns, and James will be happy to help as he can.

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Lectures: Most lectures are approximately one-hour, but some are much longer. These lectures were recorded when the seminar was offered as a multi-person class, so I may very briefly address a body of students at one or two points. The lecture topics are as follows:

1. Common Missteps (1hr.): Here, we’ll be looking through a hodgepodge of different mistakes that flag submitters as amateurish. This first lecture will be a head-spinning crash course on the most frequently botched craft issues at play in submissions. We’ll cover everything from the four modes of fiction (description, action, dialogue, and interiority) to stories that lack specificity to repetitive sentence structures.
2. On Beginnings (1hr.): Next up, we’ll work through roughly a dozen opening paragraphs and pages, looking for why an unforgiving editor could kick a story from consideration early on. We’ll also talk through some submissions that caught our eye on the first page and what made those stories stand out.
3. From the Editor (1hr.): An exploration of what it looks like on the editor’s side. This includes an explanation of how Driftwood is run as well as a walkthrough of the submissions manager from the editor’s perspective. We’ll talk about what exactly it takes for a submission to be rejected or accepted, and we’ll cap the lecture with a brief discussion of the financials of a literary magazine.
4. Editorial Philosophies I (1hr.) & II (2hrs.): What are the philosophies of an editor? Here’s a quick rundown on our philosophical editorial policies at Driftwood, including a talk on prescriptivism/descriptivism, the five types of drafts, mandatory changes, overstepping, and other related topics that will be useful to writers, too. We’ll wrap up the lecture by showing—in detail—a writer’s path to acceptance with us. In the bonus two-hour lecture, I'll go even more in-depth to show how our revisions process works with our published authors.
5. Personalized Lecture (1.5hrs.): Based on questions and counterpoints brought to my attention by two old classes, this lecture is a hodgepodge of miscellaneous but relevant mini-lectures and questions answered.

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Timeline: The class timeline is as follows:

• Mondays: I will send you a lecture, the week's prompt, and the week's reading assignment (often alongside optional, additional readings).
• Sundays: You will turn in your <500 word prompt response, which I will return with comments before the following prompt is due.

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About the Instructor: James McNulty holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He’s been the Managing Fiction Editor of Driftwood Press for nearly a decade. For more about James and Driftwood, you can read this recent interview.

Timeline

• Submissions will be open from March 1st 2023 to July 15th 2023.
• Stories are considered by Driftwood editing staff (no outside readers); guest judge reads finalists.
• Throughout the process, readers will be notified if their story is passed on or reaches the finalist pool. This often results in a quicker response than other contests, where writers often have to wait until everything has been decided.
• The winner will be announced in November 2023.
• The winning short story will be published in the 2024 or 2025 anthology.

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Guidelines

• Fiction only.
• 1,000-6,000 word limit.
• A standard, 12-point font is preferred. 
• The work must not have been previously published.
• Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but
  please withdraw the work if the story has been
  accepted elsewhere.
• Submit works written in English only, no translations.
• Please submit your manuscript in a .doc, .docx, or PDF format.
• We read submissions blind, so please do not include your name, email, or any identifying characteristics on the manuscript itself.
• Base submission cost is $11. Additionally, we are offering a $36 dollar submission option that will include a print copy of the anthology in which the winning story is published.

Awards

• The winner will receive $500 dollars and 10 copies of the anthology in which the story appears. The winner will also have the opportunity to be interviewed about their work; the interview will be published alongside the story.
• If a runner-up is chosen, their work will be offered publication, an accompanying interview, $200, and five copies of the issue in which their work appears.

About the Guest Judge

​Daniel Wallace is author of six novels, including Big Fish (1998) and most recently Extraordinary Adventures (2017). In 2003, Big Fish was adapted and released as a movie, and then in 2013 the book and the movie were mish-mashed together and became a Broadway musical. His novels have been translated into over three-dozen languages. His short stories have appeared in over fifty magazines and periodicals, including Tin House, One Story, Glimmer Train, and The Georgia Review. His stories have been recognized in Best American Short Stories, Best Stories from the South, and read by Levar Burton on his podcast, Levar Burton Reads.

Timeline

• Submissions are open from March 1st 2023 until July 15th 2022.
• Finalists and winner will be announced by Driftwood editors in November 2023.
• The winning chapbook(s) will be published in 2024.

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Guidelines

• Poetry only. Prose poetry, experimental poetry, and poetry with a visual component (color images accepted) are all welcome.
• 15-40 pages of poetry (this does not include title, section break, or acknowledgement pages). We won't turn you away if you are a few pages over or under, but please stay close to that limit.
• A standard, 12-point font is preferred.
• Poems may have been published individually, but not as a collection.
• Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please let us know immediately if the collection has been accepted elsewhere.
• Submit works written in English only, no translations.
• Please submit your manuscript in a .doc, .docx, or PDF format.
• We read submissions blindly, so please do not include your name, email, or any identifying characteristics on the manuscript itself.
• Base submission cost is $13. 

Awards

• The winner will receive $750 dollars and 20 copies of their chapbook.
• A print run of the winning chapbook will be sold on our website, through affiliate bookstores, and will be nationally and internationally distributed by IngramSpark.
• The winner will also have the opportunity to be interviewed about their work; the interview will be published in the chapbook following the poems.
• The managing poetry editor may offer a runner-up full publication. If a runner-up is chosen, they will be awarded $350, 20 contributor copies, and the same level of marketing and distribution.

About the Judge

Carolyn Hembree's debut poetry collection, Skinny, came out from Kore Press in 2012. In 2016, Trio House Books published her second collection, Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague, selected by Neil Shepard for the 2015 Trio Award and by Stephanie Strickland for the 2015 Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award. Her third collection, For Today, will be published by LSU Press as part of their Barataria Series in 2024. She received a 2016-2017 ATLAS grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents and has also received grants and fellowships from PEN, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Southern Arts Federation. A professor in the MFA program at the University of New Orleans, she was awarded the 2017 International Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award. Carolyn serves as poetry editor of Bayou Magazine.

This is the Premium Poetry submission category, where you can receive an extremely quick, roughly one-week response if you purchase our upcoming or back issues. At Driftwood Press, we understand that an artist's time is precious, and we are happy to provide this service for our submitters. You can submit up to five poems. Please, and we can't stress this enough, make for sure you include all poems in a single submission. In addition, the fee does not guarantee that your piece will be accepted! We judge each poem fairly and with the same reverence we would want our own work to be judged with. Finally, we thank you for choosing this option of submission. We are truly excited to find the greatest poetry in the most effective, timely way possible. 

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Whether you are seasoned or a beginner brimming with poetic inspiration, we call upon your abilities. At Driftwood, we are devoted to finding poetry of the highest caliber; we seek poetry of literary importance. Some of our favorite poets are T.S. Eliot, Carolyn Hembree, Adrienne Rich, and Allen Ginsberg. Overly romanticized, antiquated, or colloquial poetry is not our focus. Experimental forms and content that reveals your unique style are welcomed.

Poets can submit up to five poems, each being no longer than 60 lines. When submitting, please send all poems in a single document. 

Over the past five years, we’ve had the pleasure of bringing you a quarterly magazine featuring some of the best poetry, fiction, and visual arts on the web. As we transitioned to the new, biannual release schedule, we branched out in the form of contests, an editing service, and chapbook publications; now, we’re proud to announce open submissions for graphic novel manuscripts, which will burgeon our ever-growing catalog.

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Some of our favorite graphic artists are Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez, Joe Sacco, Brecht Evens, Taiyo Matsumoto, Anders Nilsen, Jillian Tamaki, Olivier Schrauwen, Eleanor Davis, Gipi, Simon Hanselmann, Michael DeForge, David Lapham, and Inio Asano. Please do not send us superhero narratives or scripts without an artist attached.

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What to Submit

Samples: We do not commit to publication from samples alone; however, if we are interested in the sample, we will contact you to learn more about the project. Please note: we do not match up artists with storytellers or vice-versa.

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Full & Partial Manuscripts: You may submit either a full or partial manuscript. We prefer to see the full manuscript.

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You’ll generally hear back from us within a month. If a month has passed, feel free to reach out to check on the status of your submission.

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Payment

Dependent on page count. Paid out upon contract signing.

Royalties

• 15% royalties for the first 1,000 copies
• 20% royalties for all sales above 1,000 copies

 Individual graphic works may range from a single image to twenty-two pages of comic art. Please submit no more than five photographs unless they are in a series, in which case you may send up to twenty. Please send us the highest resolution possible for any visual art submission; a work may be denied simply on the grounds that the resolution is not high enough for publication. Upon acceptance, we may ask for a specific file type to publish with. If your work does not have a title, please label it 'Untitled'.

​We can serialize longer graphic works, but the first chapter of the work and a series outline must be presented before serialization is promised. If we accept your series, we will publish individual chapters of no more than twenty-two pages in each issue. Some of our favorite graphic artists are Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez, Brecht Evens, Anders Nilsen, Christophe Chaboute, Simon Hanselmann, Michael DeForge, David Lapham, David Mazzucchelli, Dash Shaw, and Scott McCloud.