Submission Guidelines

Please consider reading an issue of The Florida Review, before you submit, to get a feel for the work we publish. We look for innovative, luxuriant, insightful human stories. We love to be surprised. We like writing that takes risks and affects the reader deeply. We love lush language and spare styles, so long as the voice serves the work. All contributors to the print journal receive two copies of the issue in which their work appears.

• We accept general submissions online via the Submittable link below. We accept Editor’s Award and Chapbook Award submissions online through Submittable via the links below and via regular USPS mail (with a self-addressed stamped envelope and entry fee enclosed).
  
• All manuscripts should be submitted as Word or PDF documents (double-spaced for fiction and nonfiction).
• All general, non-contest submission manuscripts should include the author’s full name and contact information on the first page. Please number pages.
• We only accept postal mail manuscripts for general, non-contest submissions from those who do not have regular access to the Internet, such as incarcerated individuals or unhoused individuals. Please include an SASE for response.
• Manuscripts sent by mail must:
  • be printed on letter-sized paper;
  • include a cover letter with the author’s name, address, phone number, email address, and title of submission(s);
  • include a self-addressed stamped envelope for response; and
  • include a check for the entry fee, if a contest submission.
• International submissions are welcome, but these must be submitted via Submittable.
• We do not accept poetry, fiction, or nonfiction submissions from current University of Central Florida faculty, staff, or students. We do accept interviews and book reviews from these individuals. Alumni should wait five years after graduation before submitting poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.

We charge a small fee on Submittable that helps to cover the magazine’s production costs. We remain a nonprofit. All submission fees support the magazine and chapbook printing and distribution. Our small submission fee is roughly equivalent to what a mailed submission would cost in paper, ink, envelopes, postage, and SASE return postage. Thank you for contributing to the survival of our literary magazine.

We strive to give all of the submissions to our print and online publications the depth of attention that they deserve. For a faster response, please be careful to submit your work to the appropriate category. Also, please respect our length guidelines. The Florida Review continues to accept longer manuscripts (and even very long manuscripts for our chapbook contest). However, we cannot consider manuscripts outside of the lengths in our guidelines, and we cannot not consider more than 5 poems at a time.

After reviewing our submissions guidelines below, or on the appropriate contest page (Editors’ Awards or Leiby Chapbook Contest), head to Submit Your Work for the link to Submittable. And thank you for sharing your work with The Florida Review and Aquifer!

Fiction & Nonfiction

Our magazine is a home for the real and the weird alike. We love realism. We love fabulism. We love when the ordinary proves extraordinary. We love when the wild is tamed. You can’t freak us out. Or, we dare you to try. Bring us your minimalist work, your maximalist prose, your most psychologically grounded or searingly meta. Anything with sentences that sing. We love voice-driven pieces. We love narrative play. We love risk. We love momentum and noise, as well as quiet and calm. We revere subtlety.

In the realm of nonfiction, we consider memoir, braided essays, lyric essays, hermit crab essays, fragmented essays, flash nonfiction, and hybrid work. We welcome submissions of literary journalism or reportage, so long as the essay maintains a personal element. We do not publish scholarly essays at this time.

We accept prose pieces up to 30 manuscript pages (9,000 words). Please submit only one short story or essay at a time. However, we will read up to three short-shorts in one submission, as long as the total page count remains under 15 pages. We consider novel or memoir excerpts if they stand alone.

Poetry

We’re interested in poems with emotional and intellectual depth, poems that have texture and verve. Whether experimental or traditional, we want poems that move and surprise us in their use of imagery, voice, music, wordplay, and formal invention. We welcome all styles, including prose poetry and hybrids.

Please submit no more than five poems at a time. We will only read the first five poems that you send.

Graphic Narrative

We look for graphic narratives that demonstrate artistic and literary merit. Currently, we only consider black and white work for the print magazine. However, we can consider color for Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.

Unlike other categories, we have only one combined submission stream for graphic narratives in Submittable, covering both print and online venues. This allows us to choose which pieces might work best in print versus online. If you have strong a preference, please notify us in your cover letter.

Work should be submitted via Submittable as a jpeg or PDF file. (For publication, we will require a jpeg or other file form of 300 dpi or better quality.) If you have any technical issues, please query us at: flreview@ucf.edu.

Visual Art

Visual artists are encouraged to submit two-dimensional works in any medium for a color cover or black-and-white interior spread in the print journal. Submit online here.

Book Reviews and Interviews

All book reviews and interviews are published in Aquifer: The Online Florida Review in order to offer the widest possible readership for authors who have new books.

The Florida Review seeks reviews of recent full-length books, especially those published by small literary and university presses in the past 12 months. Length: 500-1,500 words. We do not review self-published books.

Please submit book reviews via Submittable. You may first query our book review editor through our flreview@ucf.edu email about the suitability of a particular book for review, if you would like.

We also consider review essays–extensive examinations of multiple works that go beyond straightforward reviews. Please query before submitting a longer review essay.

If you are interested in interviewing an author for us, please send a query or submit a completed interview here.

Withdrawals & Queries

Please use Submittable to withdraw prose submissions. For poetry submissions, please message us through Submittable with the title(s) of the poem(s) you’d like withdrawn from consideration. For general queries, email us at flreview@ucf.edu.