WRITE Between
WRITE Between is accepting submissions for our Imagining the Future edition! Please read the submission guidelines below. Sample prompts are also included at the bottom of this section. You are not required to use them.
Be sure to read ALL info below and email publishing@writepittsburgh.com if you have any questions.
Due to the volume of submissions, we kindly ask you to avoid reaching out for a status update. Write Pittsburgh will reach out to everyone who submits, regardless of decision, no later than the date listed below.
Deadline to submit: April 30, 2026 Review period: May 1 - May 15 Notification: May 20, 2026 Publication date: June 6, 2026
ABOUT
WRITE Between is Write Pittsburgh’s online literary publication for adult writers (age 18 or older). It's a space for the stories that live in the in-between places. The title reflects the truth that most of our lives happen in the cracks: between what we’ve survived and what we’re becoming, between silence and saying it out loud, between who the world thinks we are and who WE KNOW we are.
This publication invites work that sits in those liminal places. Pieces that are tender, fierce, strange, joyful, aching, or beautifully undefinable. We welcome writing and art that brings complexity, contradiction, and transformation. This is a place for the pieces that may not fit neatly anywhere else.
THEME
The theme for this edition is Imagining the Future. What are your ideas, wishes, hopes, dreams, goals, fears, etc for the future of where you live? What can we do to make our communities better? How can we work toward liberation?
If you, or anyone you know is interested in submitting to our Padlet, please use the link below. You can submit to both Padlet AND WRITE Between but do not submit the same piece(s) to both places. https://www.writepittsburgh.com/imagining-the-future
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
WRITE Between welcomes poetry, short prose (fiction and nonfiction), spoken word audio, visual art, and photography. We are also interested in pitches and completed articles related to writing, pop and alt culture, and current events.
We welcome submissions from anyone 18 years of age or older — especially those whose voices are too often sidelined: women, Black artists, LGBTQIA+ artists, and disabled artists, etc (this is not an all-inclusive list).
We do NOT welcome racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, sexism, or hate. All submissions are reviewed, and publication decisions are made at the discretion of our editorial team.
Our current submission method is via Google Form.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere. Our goal is to respond within two weeks after the submission deadline; if you don’t hear back by then, feel free to email publishing@writepittsburgh.com.
WRITE Between claims first-time electronic publishing rights. All rights revert to the creator upon publication.
What does this mean? It means that when you share your work with WRITE Between, we only ask to be the first place to publish it online.
After your piece appears in our publication, all the rights go back to you. You still own your work completely, and you can publish it anywhere else you want afterward.
Any inquiries? Please email publishing@writepittsburgh.com and we will respond as soon as we can.
Poetry Guidelines
- Please send 1 to 3 poems via <Google Form>.
- Please submit all poems in a single Word document, with page breaks and titles for each work.
- Visual poems are welcome in JPG or PNG format. Please do not send more than 3 per submission period. - VISUAL POEMS ARE NOT BEING ACCEPTED AT THIS TIME
- Audio poems are welcome in WAV or MP3 format. Please do not send more than 3 per submission period. (Note: all poets are both welcomed and encouraged to send us an audio version of their work upon acceptance.) - AUDIO POEMS ARE NOT BEING ACCEPTED AT THIS TIME
Prose Guidelines
- Please send 1 to 3 pieces of fiction or nonfiction per submission period.
- Limit the word count of each piece to 2,000 or less. (If you’re slightly over, just let us know!)
- Submit all pieces in a single Word document, with page breaks and titles for each work.
- Excerpts from larger works are allowed but not preferred. If you submit an excerpt, it must be able to stand alone and be understandable to readers not familiar with the complete work.
Visual Art Guidelines
- Please send 1 to 3 pieces of art per submission period.
- We welcome art of all kinds, including but not limited to: digital art, paintings, collage/multimedia, photography, and experimental.
- Please submit the highest-quality images you possibly can. Almost any file (JPG, PNG, PDF, EPS) is fine; we will let you know if we have any issues opening your files.
- Include your preferred name, title of artwork, medium, and year of completion in the submission form.
- If you are interested in having your art featured as the cover image, add a comment in the submission form.
- VIDEO SUBMISSIONS ARE NOT BEING ACCEPTED AT THIS TIME
Pitch & Article Guidelines
- Please send 1 pitch or article per submission period.
- We are interested in a wide range of pieces, including but not limited to: book/movie/show reviews, interviews with writers and artists, personal/editorial pieces relevant to writing, culture, and current events, and more.
- For pitches, send us 1-3 paragraphs summarizing your idea.
- For articles, please stick to a word count between 300 and 2,000. Submit the article in Word document.
Sample Prompts: Imagining the Future
- Write from a future where one thing you feared never came true. What replaced it?
- Imagine your city 20 years from now. What’s still broken — and why has it been allowed to stay that way?
- Write a letter from your future self to you today. Be honest. Be kind. Don’t lie.
- Imagine a future where your work is finally valued. What had to change for that to happen?
- Write about the future as an inheritance. What did you receive? What are you refusing to pass on?
- Imagine the future after the apology you never got. What does healing look like without it?
- Write a scene set on an ordinary day in a future that feels impossible right now.
New Dawn is a collection of stories, essays, and poetry by writers who have achieved sobriety after active addiction. The poetry and prose do not need to be about recovery. However, recovery centered work is welcome, it’s just not required.
The theme of this anthology is ‘gathering fire.’ We live in a world that asks those who struggle with addiction to cool down our passion, go quiet, to become small. In this New Dawn series, we challenge societal expectations and encourage you to gather fire in the dead of winter to light up your creative pursuits. Your submission does not have to be about literal fire. It just needs the elemental inspiration behind it. If you feel stuck on this, below, you can find a few creative writing prompts to spark up some ideas:
- If you are able, sit down with your back straight and your feet on the ground. If this is not accessible to you, just get into a comfortable position. Imagine a green campfire in front of you, sit with it. Listen to the crackle, the popping, the gentle wind that stokes the flames. Now, imagine putting your hand in the fire and grabbing a fireball from the flame. Place that flame onto a loose-leaf piece of paper. Now, free write for 20 minutes. When you are done, grab one to three lines of this piece, and write that on top of a piece of paper and use these lines as the beginning of your gathering fire submission.
- Build a fire in poem form: gather the materials, build the fire, stoke the fire, sit by the fire. Now, write what the fire has to say to you.
- In the dead of winter, we think of death, we await rebirth, we dream of spring. Awaiting warmth can feel a lot like a cycle in addiction. We try to wait for the right time to get right, for the big bad to happen that is the catalyst to our sobriety; but sometimes that warmth never comes and we wait again and again. Did you wait for the warmth, or did you build a fire? What did that transition look like? How did it feel in the body? Write to that fire, to that warmth, to a reader who is waiting for spring too.
Submission Guidelines
- We don’t accept simultaneous submissions or previously published work.
- All submissions must be a Word document using Times New Roman, 12pt, double spaced, numbered pages, with a title page that has the title, your name, word count, and contact information.
- For nonfiction and fiction entries, you may submit up to 3 pieces no longer than 1,200 words each.
- For poetry, you may submit up to 6 pages of poetry.
- All submissions should be in pdf, .doc, .docx format
- Direct any questions to Sarah Velázquez (Program Manager & Editor) at sarah@writepittsburgh.com
What are your ideas, wishes, hopes, dreams, goals, fears, etc for the future of where you live? What can we do to make our communities better? How can we work toward liberation? You can add a poem, a few sentences, a few words, a photo, song, video, etc. You do NOT have to be in or from Pittsburgh to participate, but please consider adding your location to your post. You also do NOT have to be a writer in order to participate! Simply click the + in the bottom right corner of the board below to get started.
Drop a pin on a spot anywhere in the world where you have experienced gratitude and/or delight, and write something about it. Don't want to write? Post a picture, a song, a video, or a link! Share what brings you joy!
After accepting the acknowledgement, you will be directed to the site where you can add your entry.