Call for Submissions | Spring 2025
The Lit is the literary and art magazine of LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York. The magazine is produced by the students of English 288, an internship class open to all students. The Lit publishes an issue once a year, at the end of the spring semester. Contact Professor Chris Schmidt (cschmidt [at] lagcc.cuny.edu) with any questions about registering for the course.
The Lit is looking for writing and art from current LaGuardia Community College students—as well as alumni—to feature in our next issue, in Spring 2025. If you have a piece or writing that you produced in a Spring 2024 or Fall 2024 class, submit it now so you don’t forget it.
The final deadline to submit is Friday, March 21, 2025, and we will make decisions about what to publish in the weeks following the deadline.
If accepted, your piece of writing or art will appear online, on this site, and may be included in a print journal as well.
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, as well as 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. Academic essays written for most classes will not be considered. 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 La 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 run the contest again. You can submit to the contest even if you have already submitted to the general categories.
More info…
We only consider previously unpublished materials.
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.
