Submit & Contest
Submit poetry, fiction, essay, or visual art to be included in the biannual magazine (guidelines below).
Submissions are now open for our next themed issue: Fragments, coming out March 2027.
General Submissions & Contest
Submissions open now – midnight, December 31, 2026.
A fragment can be a shard, a remnant, a piece broken off from something larger. It is what survives, what we gather up, or what we choose to leave unfinished. For this issue of Open Doors, we are looking for work that lives in the partial and the incomplete: stories, memories, and voices that arrive in pieces, across languages, places, and years. Pieces that sit in the space between whole and broken, remembered and lost. What remains when something falls apart? What do we make from what is left?
Submissions accepted in English or Italian.
Work that is accepted will be published in the following formats:
- Print Edition
- PDF edition
To submit, scroll to the bottom of this page but first please consult the guidelines below.
Siamo aperti per le proposte per il prossimo numero a tema: Frammenti.
Aperto da ora a 31 dicembre 2026 a mezzanotte.
Un frammento può essere una scheggia, un resto, un pezzo staccato da qualcosa di più grande. È ciò che sopravvive, ciò che raccogliamo, o ciò che scegliamo di lasciare incompiuto. Per questo numero di Open Doors cerchiamo opere che abitano il parziale e l’incompleto: storie, ricordi e voci che arrivano a pezzi, attraverso lingue, luoghi e anni. Testi che si collocano nello spazio tra intero e spezzato, ricordato e perduto. Che cosa resta quando qualcosa si sfalda? Che cosa costruiamo con ciò che rimane?
Accettiamo testi in italiano o in inglese.
Il materiale selezionato verrà pubblicato nei seguenti formati:
- Edizione Stampata
Per inviare le proposte, scorrere in fondo alla pagina consultando precedentemente le linee guida di seguito riportate.
Enter the Contest for a chance to win! (English only submissions)
Submissions open now – midnight, December 31, 2026
Entry fee: $12.00
Enter the Open Doors Review Contest. Submit your prose (fiction or nonfiction) or poetry for a chance to be published and translated in our bilingual magazine. Every entry includes a one-year subscription to Open Doors Review for upcoming issues 10 & 11.
Prizes:
- First place receives publication, translation of the winning piece into Italian, a featured author Q&A on our website, and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize. First place winners will also receive $100.
- Second place receives publication, translation, one page of editorial feedback on their piece from OD staff and $50.
- Third place receives publication and translation and $25.
- All contest entries will also be considered for general publication in Open Doors Review alongside our regular submissions.
All winners will be published in the Open Doors Review Magazine Issue 10.
Winners are selected by our editors and guest judges based on the quality of the writing. Entry fee: €12. Authors retain copyright; we ask for first publication rights.
Enter the Open Doors Review Contest. Submit your prose (fiction or nonfiction) or poetry for a chance to be published and translated in our bilingual magazine. Every entry includes a one-year subscription to Open Doors Review for upcoming issues 10 & 11.
Meet our Guest Judges for Open Doors Issue 10
Kevin Craft – Poetry (English)
Kevin Craft lives in Seattle and directs the Written Arts Program at Everett Community College. A frequent visitor to Italy, he also served as a faculty director of the University of Washington’s Writers in Rome Program. His books include Traverse (Lynx House Press, 2024), Vagrants & Accidentals (UW Press, 2017), Solar Prominence (Cloudbank Books, 2005), as well as five volumes of the anthology Mare Nostrum, an annual collection of Italian translation and Mediterranean-inspired travel writing (Writ in Water Press, 2004 – 2009). Recognitions include fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, MacDowell Colony, the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), the Camargo Foundation (France), 4Culture, The Jack Straw Cultural Center, PLAYA, Artist Trust, and a Statewide Literary Achievement Award from Humanities Washington. He has also worked as a writer in residence at Olympic National Park. Former editor of the magazine Poetry Northwest, he now serves as publisher, and edits the book imprint Poetry NW Editions. His writing explores the intersections of memory, landscape, kinship, and travel, through the lenses of deep time (art history, archaeology, geology) and under contemporary pressures of profound ecological change.
Kathy Curto – Prose (English)
Kathy Curto teaches at Sarah Lawrence College/The Writing Institute and Montclair State University as well as several nonprofit organizations and writing centers in the metropolitan area. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on NPR, and in the anthologies And There Were Red Geraniums Everywhere (released in both Italian and English) and Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now. She has also published widely in a variety of literary journals and magazines. Kathy’s piece, “Still Cooking Side by Side” considered a “Modern Love in miniature” by The New York Times, was included in The Best of Tiny Love Stories in August 2021. She is co-founder of Key to the Castle Workshop and serves on the board of the Italian American Writers Association. Kathy lives with her family in the Hudson Valley.