General submissions are closed! Our annual contest for Wichita State affiliates, students, faculty, and alumni is open! Please read our guidelines and apply below.
Fiction: We are interested in stories that excite us with innovation in form, structure, and language; above all, we’re looking for stories that connect us, touch us, and revolutionize our worlds. Experimental or not, please send us a manuscript of under 6,000 words. If you’re submitting flash fiction, include up to three stories in a single document.
Poetry: We are interested in poems that blur contemporary styles with traditional modes, poems that light up with raw energy but point in a specific direction, and poems that push through leaps of image and gesture but resound with a strong emotional core. Above all, we enjoy poems that are willing to take risks while maintaining clarity of expression. Send up to 3 poems or 5 pages maximum, all in one document. If you have a single long poem that exceeds 5 pages, we welcome you to submit it as an exception to the page-limit rule and as the totality of your submission. If your singular poem exceeds 10 pages, we will not accept it, however.
Nonfiction: We enjoy creative nonfiction pieces that embrace the tactics of fiction but don’t shy away from the innovative and the experimental—in fact, we’re rather interested in what you can show us—but keep in mind we’re looking for engaging nonfiction stories, not journalism or academic essays. Submissions should not exceed 6,000 words.
Art: We want to see art that is driven and art that drives. Show us fear, love, loss, redemption, and passion in brush brushstrokes and contours. Give us a fleeing moment captured or truth in a landscape. We are accepting paintings, drawings, photography, and all mediums which can be rendered visually. Unfortunately, we can’t support audio or video for our print journal, but we welcome all visual art. Send up to 5 pieces for us to review.
Guest Judges (Annual Fiction and Poetry Contest)
Fiction: We are ecstatic to introduce Scott Phillips as our esteemed Guest Fiction Judge!
Scott Phillips was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas and attended Wichita State University, where he majored in French Literature and also studied creative writing with author James Lee Burke. He is the author of nine novels and a collection of short stories, the first of which, the Ice Harvest, was made into a film adapted by Robert Benton and Richard Russo and directed by Harold Ramis, starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton and Connie Nielsen. He lived for many years in France and California and now makes his home in St. Louis.
Poetry: We are delighted to introduce Melanie Merle as our amazing Guest Poetry Judge!
An enrolled member of the Chickasaw Tribe of Oklahoma, Melanie calls many places home: Tulsa, Denver, the no-stoplight town of Coalgate, and the highways in between. A winner of the James Welch Prize in 2022, her work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Hairstreak Butterfly Review, and New South, as well as the anthology, Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions (University of Alabama Press).
Melanie enjoyed the privilege of working as a screenwriter for the Chickasaw Nation, and has a few short films to her credit, including two produced and directed by her son for the 24 Hour Film Festival. She was an Indigenous Nations Poetry Fellow for 2023 and 2024, and is passionate about their Language Back initiative, striving to learn her own native tongue, Chickashanompa. She serves as a member of the editorial staff for the art and literary journal Inverted Syntax and was recently awarded a fellowship with Storyknife, a women writers retreat in Homer, Alaska.
The Fine Print
mojo submissions should be made through our submissions manager. We do not accept submissions by e-mail or post at this time. Please read the guidelines in each particular genre before submitting.
We welcome simultaneous submissions, but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere by withdrawing immediately.
All submissions will be considered for publication in our online issue. Selected works have the possibility of being published in the annual print edition of Mikrokosmos Literary Journal.
If you have any questions or comments, please email the editors at mojoeditors@gmail.com.
All payment is subject to any budget alterations that occur throughout the year. We prefer to issue payment through mailed checks, but we can arrange other options if a check does not work for you. You will need to submit a completed W-9 or W-8BEN in order to receive payment.
