West Trade Review

Manuscripts are read between April 1 and August 1 & August 15 to December 15. 

NOTE: Submissions which do not meet the following guidelines will not be considered.

• All submissions must be previously unpublished and are limited to one entry per submission period.
• Submit one nonfiction piece of up to 5,000 words

- work must be submitted as a Microsoft Word file. - include a clear title of the work

- include a cover letter and a short biography no more than 150 words.  Work submitted without a biography will not be considered.

-In your cover letter, please mention your social media handles (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).

Submit only once per reading period. There is no reading fee.

Please send us your best, unpublished extracts from novel-length works.

We  seek excellent writing, first and foremost. In addition to compelling  stories with something important to say, and which are peopled by  dynamic, complex characters, we look for fearless writing that is  unafraid to innovate and experiment in form, style, and technique; that  takes risks at the sentence level in language and perspective; and that  challenges conventional ways of seeing the world. A work should not be so experimental, however, that it sacrifices clarity.  It also needs to risk something and not hold back its scariest truths. It should  illuminate a facet of the human condition.

Submissions in no way need to stand alone; we are not looking for long short  stories. We simply want the best excerpts of the best novels currently in progress.

If  an excerpt is not the beginning of the work, we recommend, but do not require, a brief (approximately 100-200 words) synopsis, something to  give the reader a sense of the fictive world already established,  introduce essential plot elements or character interactions, and to  ground us in the novelistic state of affairs. We have no firm word count  limitations; while 8,000-12,000 words is our typical range, we will  accept strong pieces outside those parameters.

-Include a clear title of the work.

-Please  adhere to conventional style and formatting rules. Times New Roman or  similar, 12 point font, double or 1.5 line spacing, paginated. If you  are including a synopsis please place it alone on page one, with the  body of the excerpt then beginning on page two.

-A  cover letter is required and should include a third person bio and may  include a brief note as to the history, genesis, and literary ancestry  of the excerpted novel, as we like to know a bit about the pieces we  consider. Please note, however, that cover letters are only read after  the submission themselves and their existence or content will in no way  affect the decision to accept or deny.

--If your work is a simultaneous submission, please let us know immediately if it is published elsewhere.

-Writers may not submit more than once per reading period.

Manuscripts are read between April 1 and August 1 & August 15 to December 15.

NOTE: Submissions which do not meet the following guidelines will not be considered.

• All submissions must be previously unpublished and are limited to five poems per reading period and must be accompanied by a cover letter and a biography of no more than 150 words. Work submitted without a biography will not be considered.
• In your cover letter, please mention your social media handles (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).
• Include a clear title for each poem.
• Submit poems as one reading packet and place what you consider your stronger work at the front of the group.
• Enter the title of each poem as your packet's submission title.
• work must be submitted as a Microsoft Word file. - include a clear title of the work

Submit only once per reading period.  There is no reading fee.