Richmond has always been a literary city. We follow the bootprints of beatnik ghosts around Shockoe Bottom, laying our claims to Poe. We have a history with Tom Robbins, and gave birth to Tom Wolfe and Margaret Gibson. A legacy of letters flows through this town as surely as the river on its path from Piedmont to Tidewater. In this spirit, we are announcing a Call for Submissions for this new project. Send us your short stories, essays and your longing poems. Send us your best. We want to print your words on the history of Virginia writing.
Submissions are open to writers living in – or with significant ties to – Virginia. The window will run until Monday August 19th, 2024. Previously published work is accepted, so long as the author retains the rights to the piece. We’re cool with simultaneous submissions (mostly because it’s kind of unfair and pretentious not to be), but only under the condition that you notify us IMMEDIATELY if it is accepted elsewhere and no longer available. We’ll be sad but congratulate you anyway.
There is no specific theme, but writing about or set in Virginia (and especially Richmond) is always welcome.
Prose writers may submit up to 2 pieces of fiction, non fiction, genre fiction, or writing of any other conceivable category. Try to keep it somewhere in the vicinity of 4,000 words per piece. If you work in flash, you can submit up to 4 pieces of no more than 2,000 words in a single document. Excerpts from books are fine, so long as they stand alone as a piece.
Poets may submit 4 poems of up to 10 pages, but keep in mind that space is limited, so a long poem is going to have a harder time finding a place than a shorter one. Formal or free verse, haibun or ghazal, prose poem or experimental hybrid erasure, just send it. Rhyme can be a bit of a hard sell, but hey, it’s worth a shot. Submit all poems in ONE file.
One submission per author per category (you can submit to both poetry and prose in separate submissions, but not twice to poetry or prose). If your writing dees genre and form, just pick whichever feels closest to accurate.
- Submissions can be sent to preston@rvamag.com as a Word or PDF attachment.
- In the subject eld, title your email: “[YOUR NAME] – POETRY, ESSAY (or) PROSE Submission”
- In the body of the email you can include a cover letter if you’d like.
- Definitely provide a brief third-person bio of 80 words or less, a statement on your connection to Virginia (if you live here, you can just say that), and any social media handles you’d like us to have.
We are also accepting proposals for short author profile articles and interviews. Title your email “PROPOSAL – [YOUR NAME]” No, you cannot interview yourself.
Please follow the guidelines. Please.
This should go without saying, but anyone who submits work promoting bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, islamophobic, or otherwise belligerently underdeveloped concepts of humanity will be disqualied immediately. Just don’t send it. We don’t want to read it.
S. Preston Duncan is a poet, death doula, BBQist, and leatherworker in Richmond’s East End. He is the sole proprietor of Dreamwell Studio, a small leathercraft business specializing in hand-carved and pyrographed journals and grow journals. Author of the short poetry collection, The Sound in This Time of Being (BIG WRK, 2020), his writing has appeared in [PANK], Wrongdoing, Witches Magazine, and other fine publications. He has been contributing to RVA Magazine with remarkable inconsistency since 2009.
