Check Out Our Anthology and Journal Opportunities

We can not thank you enough for all our submissions over the last few years. Anthologies put Quillkeepers Press on the map. They are a cornerstone of our organization. Our purpose has always been to uplift writers, help broaden their audiences, and help guide them toward their goals. Over the years, our anthologies have changed. They now include a small submission fee to help cover the cost of production. We also have around 3 opportunities a year versus our older style of 6. This creates room for other traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing projects. However, staying true to our mission and purpose, we will always reserve space for our beloved anthologies.

Foreshadowed

An Anthology of Intuition, Inevitability, and Hard-Won Knowing

Somewhere, before it all unfolded, you knew.

Maybe it was a flicker. A warning you ignored. A dream that lingered too long. Maybe it was a voice (quiet, insistent, inconvenient) that you tried to reason away. And still… it happened.

Forshadowed seeks poetry, prose poetry, essays, memoirs, flash fiction, and short stories that explore intuition, foresight, and the complicated aftermath of being right.

We are drawn to work that lives in:

Gut feelings and missed signals
Lessons learned too late (or just in time)
Cycles we couldn’t break—or finally did
The body as oracle, memory as prophecy
Moments of inevitability, dread, or quiet certainty
Mystical, spiritual, or unexplainable knowing

Show us the moment before, the moment of, and the reckoning after. Show us what it means to trust yourself, or to wish you had.

We welcome pieces that are grounded or otherworldly, subtle or sharp, deeply personal or imaginatively strange. Whether your knowing came from instinct, experience, ancestry, or something you can’t quite name, we want the story.

If you’ve ever whispered, "I knew this would happen" to you, to someone else, or to the silence, then we’re ready to read why.

Accepted genres: Poetry, prose (block) poetry, essays, memoirs, flash fiction, short stories

Theme: Intuition, inevitability, lessons learned, and the strange clarity of knowing

Trust the voice that brought you here.

We look forward to reading your work. Submissions are open through 08/30/2026.

Submit Here

A Little More Light

There are enough spaces online that romanticize suffering without ever asking what healing looks like.

This is not one of them.

We are seeking poetry, short stories, flash fiction, memoirs, and personal essays that engage honestly with mental health, survival, recovery, self-awareness, grief, resilience, treatment, accountability, growth, and the complicated process of becoming whole again. We are especially interested in work that understands healing is rarely linear, but still believes it matters.

A Little More Light is for the writers who chose to stay. The writers who did the difficult work of confronting themselves. The writers who learned that survival is not the end of the story.

We welcome work about anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, neurodivergence, loss, burnout, identity, relationships, recovery, and rebuilding—but we ask that submissions move with intention. We are not looking for work that glorifies cruelty, untreated harm, emotional manipulation, or the romanticization of self-destruction without reflection.

What we want:

Honesty without spectacle
Vulnerability with purpose
Work that reaches toward connection
Pieces that make readers feel less alone
Stories that acknowledge darkness while still searching for light

Whether your healing came through therapy, community, medication, faith, art, time, relapse and return, or simply learning to endure, we want the truths you carry.

Someone out there is looking for language that helps them survive another day. Maybe your work is what helps them find a little more light.

We are accepting:

Poetry/ Prose poetry
Flash fiction
Short stories
Memoir excerpts
Personal essays

We especially encourage emerging voices, marginalized writers, LGBTQ+ writers, disabled writers, and writers from communities historically underserved in conversations surrounding mental health to submit.

Because healing deserves literature, too.

We look forward to reading your work. Submissions are open through 09/30/2026.

Submit Here

Time is a Strange Animal

An Anthology of Nonlinear Lives & Sacred Aging

Time doesn’t move in straight lines. It loops. It fractures. It remembers.

We’re seeking essays, memoirs, flash fiction, short stories and poetry that explore time slips, layered identities, ancestral memory, prophetic dreams, and aging as initiation.

If your story bends chronology—

If the past walks beside you—

If time feels more like a spirit than a schedule—

We want to read it.

Submissions now open.

Submit Here

How We Learned to Leave

An Anthology of Departures, Goodbyes, and Becoming

Leaving is rarely simple. Sometimes it’s a door closing behind us. Sometimes it’s a slow backing away. Sometimes it’s staying far longer than we should, and finally choosing ourselves.

How We Learned to Leave seeks essays, memoirs, flash fiction, poetry, prose poetry, and short stories that explore the many ways we exit: relationships, homes, identities, beliefs, versions of ourselves. We are interested in work that examines what it means to walk away, be left behind, return changed, or never look back.

We welcome pieces that are intimate, sharp, tender, dark, hopeful, or quietly devastating. Whether your leaving was deliberate or accidental, loud or unnoticed, we want the moment of rupture, and what followed.

If your work grapples with departure as transformation rather than failure, this anthology may be for you.

Accepted genres: Personal essays, memoir, flash fiction, short stories, poetry, prose poetry Theme: Leaving—physical, emotional, psychological, generational, or symbolic

Sometimes leaving is the bravest thing we do. We’re ready to read how you learned.

We look forward to reading your work. Submissions are open through 05/31/2026.

Closed

Still, From Somewhere

We are now accepting submissions for Still, From Somewhere, an anthology exploring heritage, culture, belonging, and the many ways we define and redefine home.

This collection celebrates individual journeys. We are seeking essays, flash fiction, memoirs, short stories, poetry, and prose that honor personal history, cultural inheritance, chosen family, migration, memory, and place, without diminishing or shaming the experiences of others. Our aim is not comparison or hierarchy, but shared humanity.

We invite work that asks:

Where is home, really?
What traditions do you carry with you—or leave behind?
How has your understanding of “home” changed over time?
What does it mean to belong, or to live between places?

We welcome writing rooted in ancestry, geography, language, ritual, displacement, adoption, diaspora, and self-made traditions. Home may be a house, a body, a language, a community, or something you are still learning how to name.

We are an inclusive press and encourage submissions from writers of all backgrounds. Pieces should be thoughtful, intentional, and grounded in personal truth, while remaining generous in spirit.

If your writing holds space for your own story while honoring the complexity of others’, this anthology is for you.

We look forward to reading your work. Submissions are open through 4/26/2026.

Closed

Metaphorically Speaking

We are seeking submissions for Metaphorically Speaking, an anthology devoted to the power of the single, sustained metaphor.

This collection celebrates flash fiction, short stories, prose, and poems that know precisely what they are doing and do it well. We are looking for **tightly written works centered on **a single strong metaphor, thoughtfully explored and carried through with intention from beginning to end. The metaphor should act as the work's spine, not a scatter of competing images.

We are not seeking writing overloaded with metaphors or figurative language that obscures meaning. Clarity, control, and cohesion matter. Let the metaphor deepen the poem's emotional resonance, not distract from it.

We welcome a wide range of styles, subjects, and voices, but each submission should demonstrate:

A clear, central metaphor
Purposeful language and restraint
Emotional or intellectual payoff grounded in the metaphor itself

If your work can hold its breath, trust its image, and let one metaphor speak volumes, this anthology is for you.

We look forward to reading your work.

Closed

Unfinished Conversations

We are seeking works for Unfinished Conversations, a collection dedicated to the words that haunt us, the stories we carry in silence, and the dialogues that continue to live and breathe in our memories. This anthology will be a space for writers to explore the powerful gravity of what has been left unsaid. We welcome deeply personal narratives that navigate the intricate landscape of fractured family histories, the unspoken truths that lie at the heart of cultural divides, the quiet and constant dialogue with our own selves, or the profound, echoing silence left in the wake of a loved one's absence. We are looking for pieces that are not afraid to be vulnerable and bold, that move beyond simple conclusions to embrace the rich tension of what remains unresolved. Think of this as a collection of finally spoken truths—an act of writing what you could not say, a bold exploration of the beautiful, unsettling complexity of our lives.

Submissions Closed

Rebellion of Quiet Things

We invite writers to submit work for Rebellion of Quiet Things, an anthology of essays, memoirs, poetry, and short stories celebrating the overlooked, the hushed, and the hidden. This collection will explore silence, stillness, and the small details that often go unnoticed—but carry the weight of entire worlds. We’re looking for poems that uncover the extraordinary in the ordinary, that give voice to subtle rebellions: the breath before a decision, the pause between words, the strength found in softness.

Submissions Closed

Men's Appreciation Anthology

We just celebrated the incredible women in our lives with a phenomenal anthology, and now it's only natural to turn our attention to the amazing men who shape our world. From the everyday heroes to the silent supporters, the inspiring mentors to the goofy dads – we want to hear their stories!

We're putting out the call for poetry, essays, short stories, and memoirs that appreciate, celebrate, and reflect on the men who have impacted you. Did your dad always have a "pun-ishing" sense of humor? Did your brother "lift" you up when you were down? Did a friend teach you the true meaning of "man's best friend" (even if he wasn't a dog)? Share those moments that make you smile, reflect, or just say, "Thanks, Dad!"

Don't be a "square" – get those submissions in! We're looking for heartfelt tributes, humorous anecdotes, and everything in between. Let's give the men in our lives the standing ovation they deserve.

Let's make this anthology truly "a-man-zing!"

Submissions Closed

Anthology Submission FAQ and Specifications:

General Guidelines

You must be 18+ years of age to submit
We accept previously published work for our anthology and journal opportunities. Given that the previous publishers allow it.
Please include all previously published credits at the bottom of the correlating title in the body of the submission, not in the bio, subject line, separate messages, or anywhere else.
We do not accept previously published work for our traditional and chapbook publishing opportunities.
Once accepted, you will be added to our email newsletter, and we will contact you about developments via the email you have listed on your submittable account. You are welcome to unsubscribe at any time.
Please send any follow-up inquiries through your Submittable submissions portal.
We are not yet a paying market for our anthology opportunities. Contributors will receive a PDF version of anthology collections unless otherwise indicated.
If you need to withdraw the submission, please notify us through submittable.
Contributor or Publisher may withdraw the offer of publication at any time before print.
By submitting your work, you are agreeing to give us non-exclusive rights to publish it/them, if selected, in the anthology described above. Traditional publishing of full collections or novels requires exclusive rights.
You may submit to more than one genre, but do so in separate submissions. Multiple files or subs will be automatically rejected.
Edit your work before submitting it. Make sure the line breaks, stanza breaks, spelling, and grammar are EXACTLY how you want them. QKP will publish it as it is (except for glaring mistakes). We want to stay true to your formatting as best we can, and will assume minor variations are for artistic flair. There will not be an opportunity to make changes. Should you need to change something, please request that we open the submission for editing through your submissions portal on Submittable. This also prevents you from having to withdraw the submission to edit and saves you a 2nd submission fee.
Quillkeepers Press has the right to make any revisions to the work in the interest of uniformity and style (this includes capitalization of titles). However, QKP will solicit the Contributor’s approval for any significant changes.
Watch your email for updates, release letters, etc. If QKP doesn't receive the release letter by the date listed on the document, it's assumed you no longer wish to be part of the anthology, and your work will not be included in the manuscript.
QKP offers fee waivers for financial hardships for our competitions. Please reach out to see if we still have some for the available year.

Submission Specifications:

1 story, essay, or memoir up to 4k words.
Up to 5 poems or prose poetry in a single document. Please ensure each selection starts on a new page. Anything over those numbers will not be read.
Please use a 12pt, serif family font, standard size print paper (8.5x11), and 1.5 or double-spaced.
Include a short 3rd person bio starting with your name in the application part of the submission. Include any information you would like the readers to know about you, including any previous publications (this will not hinder or increase your chances of acceptance. We enjoy celebrating your wins in our publication.)
Include an author picture (if you want it in the anthology)
Allow 4-8 weeks after the submission deadline date to receive a response.
Reader fees cover this ad space and other overhead costs associated with the project.

Critique Reviews

Our critique reviews are a paid service for the up-and-coming author whose work needs a little finesse, who's getting their manuscript print-ready, or who wants an honest opinion of their manuscript. With this review, we will provide honest feedback on your manuscript and identify your strengths and weaknesses. You will also receive detailed suggestions on how to strengthen your weak points to tighten up your manuscript and get it ready for the next step of your writing career. We are a traditional publisher as well as a self-publishing services group, and polishing manuscripts is our forte. We take great pride and care in all our projects, treating yours with the professionalism and attentiveness it deserves, providing you with quality service. With a plethora of resources at our disposal we are willing and able to help get your manuscript where you desire it to be.

This service is for up to the first three chapters (5k word limit) of a novel or up to 5k words of poetry.

If you would like us to review more than that, please get in touch with us via email to discuss your needs at quillkeeperspress@gmail.com

For Chapbook and Journal FAQ and Specifications:

Please visit our listing and submission form on Submittable (link here)
if you have additional questions please email us quillkeeperspress.com

We look forward to hearing from you!!!

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