Goldilocks Zone: $500 for Authors/Artists Sunspot Lit seeks a story, essay, excerpt from longer prose pieces, artwork, graphic novel, or poem that combines excellence in craft with reader or audience appeal. Feedback for fiction and nonfiction submissions available for additional fee. Prize: $500 cash and publication for the winner; publication for runners-up and finalists. Closes September 30, 2023. Enter through Submittable or Duotrope.

Sunspot Lit accepts all types of prose including essays, memoir, travel, teleplays, film and stage scripts. Submissions under the Flash category can be one or two pieces of flash fiction or nonfiction, with the length of the entire submission not to exceed 1,000 words.

Up to three poems are also accepted under this call, with the total submission not to exceed three pages.

Flash graphic novels of 1 to 4 pages are welcome.

Artwork can be one or two images

Note that mix submission formats(for example, provide one poem and one flash piece as a single entry) are not accepted for this open call. 

Send in your work before the quarterly deadline using Submittable or Duotrope.

Sunspot Lit’s poetry editor, Morrow Dowdle, offers feedback for poets.

Dowdle is the author of the chapbook Nature v. Nurture (Artagem Graphic Library). Her poetry has been featured in River and South Review, Poetry South, Dandelion Review, NonBinary Review, Pink Panther Magazine, Panoply, APIARY, The Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Edison Literary Review, River Poets Quarterly, The Griffin, Philadelphia Stories, and Prism, among other publications. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  She is an active member of the Living Poetry collective in the North Carolina Triangle area.

Sunspot is happy to offer three different options for feedback based on the length of the poem. Please note that poets can submit only one poem every three months.

Find out more by reviewing the guidelines on Sunspot’s Submittable page.  

Sunspot Lit seeks all types of fiction and nonfiction including essays, memoir, travel, teleplays, film and stage scripts. Single works of fiction or nonfiction should run between 1,001 and 3,500 words.

Graphic novels should run 5 to 10 pages.

Please note that collections are not accepted in this category.

Send in your work before the quarterly deadline using Submittable or Duotrope.

Sunspot Lit seeks fiction and nonfiction, including scripts and screenplays, between 3,501 and 7,500 words. 

Graphic novels should run 11 to 25 pages. 

A single poemof 4 to 10 pages is also accepted.

Please note that collections are not accepted in this category.

This call is open for only a limited time. Send in your work before the deadline using Submittable or Duotrope.