Submit to The Lit 2025
General submissions for the 2024 edition of The Lit are open through Friday, March 14, 2025.
There may be an LGBTQIA Art and Writing Contest again in Spring 2025, and if you are eligible, you can resubmit your work to the contest link if you have already submitted it to general submissions.
Call for Submissions — Spring 2025 Issue.
We can’t wait to see your work. We’re looking for writing & art from current LaGuardia Community College students and alums.
The deadline to submit is Friday, March 14, 2025.
What we’re looking for
You can submit to only one writing genre (fiction, poetry, nonfiction) and one visual art genre (painting, photography, etc.)–
Short Fiction* -1 piece, 1,000 words max.
Short Personal Essay or Creative Nonfiction** – 1 piece, 1,000 words max.
Both fiction & essay/creative nonfiction pieces should be complete stories/narratives that can stand on their own — no excerpts from longer stories, novels, nonfiction narratives, or memoirs, please, unless you’ve somehow re-shaped them to work as shorter solo pieces.
Poetry – up to 3 poems max, 5 pages total max. We’re also open to hybrid forms that incorporate art and/or digital media, and experimental work.
Visual or Digital Art – photo, design, painting, drawing, graphic narratives – 3 works max.
Other Media – stand-alone playlets or stand-alone scenes from a screenplay (5 pages max); comics or graphic narratives (10 pages max); visual or video poetries (3 pages max). Please contact us at submissions.thelit@gmail.com about video or other media submissions.
**”Creative nonfiction” includes many genres but especially memoir, autobiography, and personal essays. Experimental approaches to nonfiction writing are also accepted but not standard academic essays for most classes. These nonfiction pieces should be 1,000 words or less.
What we’re not into
We don’t dig racism, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, graphic violence, or xenophobia.
LGBTQIA Writing + Art Contest
The previous two years, The Lit has partnered with Casa de las Américas to award the best LGBTQIA writing and art from students and alums. We will post information here in the lead up to Spring 2025 if we are able to offer the contest again. You can submit to the contest even if you have already submitted to the general categories.
More info…
The Lit publishes an issue once a year, during the spring semester.
We only consider previously unpublished materials (this includes blogs, personal websites, other publications, social media — you get the drift).
The Lit asks for first-time electronic publication rights, and we ask that you acknowledge a piece was published here first if your work is re-printed/published elsewhere; by submitting to us you are agreeing to these terms.
Contact us at submissions.thelit@gmail.com with any questions.