Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, seeks high quality submissions from both emerging and established writers. We publish craft essays and interviews as well as fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—and we want to see your best work, regardless of form, style, or subject matter.

Past issues have included such writers as Dan Albergotti, Dorothy Allison, Ellen Bass, Richard Bausch, Katherine Boo, Maud Casey, May-lee Chai, Peter Ho Davies, Timothy Donnelly, Denise Duhamel, Tom Franklin, Elizabeth Gilbert, Joy Harjo, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Hicok, T.R. Hummer, Adam Johnson, Fady Joudah, Dorianne Laux, Dorothea Lasky, Dana Levin, Julia B. Levine, Lisa Lewis, Thomas Lynch, Khaled Mattawa, Joseph Millar, Ander Monson, Danielle Pafunda, Ron Rash, Hilda Raz, Maggie Smith, Maura Stanton, Michael Steinberg, Virgil Suárez, Julie Marie Wade, William Wenthe, and many others.

In 2025, we will read between August 1 and October 31. Please note that we do not accept snail mail submissions. Please do not mix genres in the same submission. For each genre, please wait until we have responded to your current submission before submitting another. We do not consider previously published work. We discourage the submission of multiple drafts of the same work during a submission period unless a revision was requested by an editor.  We do not consider work from those currently or recently affiliated with the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Simultaneous submissions are acceptable as long as we are immediately notified if the piece has been accepted elsewhere. While we can’t always personally respond to each withdrawal or partial withdrawal notice, rest assured that the information has been entered into the system. We’re sorry, but Grist does not accept authors in back-to-back issues.

Grist is committed to diversity, inclusivity, cultural interchange, and respect for all individuals. In the case of all submitted and/or accepted work, if an author behaves or speaks publicly—or is revealed or accused to have behaved or spoken, even in private—in ways that contradict these expressed values of the journal, then we reserve the right to disqualify an author’s submission, release the author from any contract, and/or remove their work from our archives.

Our submission fee (waived for subscribers) is $3 for three to five poems, for one work of fiction up to 7,000 words, or for one work of non-fiction up to 7,000 words (in all of our prose categories, we are also open to considering flash pieces as long as they are submitted in one document and do not total over 7000 words). The bulk of our reading fee goes to paying our writers; the rest covers our Submittable fees and a portion of our publishing costs, which helps us to make a high-quality home for a wide variety of the best national and international creative and literary work available to us. We hope that you will regard this fee as an investment in you, the writers who keep us going, while also serving as a sign of your support for the literary art we all value so much.

Average response time is six months. If you have not received a response after six months, send a query email to your genre’s editor.

Submissions will be considered for publication in either the print issue or here online. Payment is $10 per poem or 1 cent per word for prose (up to $50), as well as a contributor copy. Additional copies are also available at a reduced price for contributors.

To submit your work to the journal, please read our guidelines below and then submit via our online submissions manager, Submittable. To pitch ideas or submit reviews or craft essays please read our submission guidelines on this page. To submit to our annual ProForma contest, please see our Contest page.