Fence is currently open for submissions through November 27, 2023.
You can submit your writing here:
https://fence.submittable.com/submit
Note: There is, due to simply being able to budget to print and ship the magazine, a five-dollar fee.
Sign up for the newsletter to make sure you receive notifications of future open windows. Please read on for submission guidelines, which have been slightly modified since Fence’s last open submission period. All work should be submitted at fence.submittable.com.
Poetry: Please submit up to three poems and no more than ten pages of poetry per submission. You may submit as many times as you would like.
See PEOPLE for the list of Poetry Editors.
Fiction: Please limit your submission to one story of no more than 8000 words or three flash fictions of up to 1000 words each. Submissions containing more than one story or three flash fictions will not be read. Individuals are limited to one submission per submission period.
See PEOPLE for the list of Fiction Editors.
Other: This category allows submitters to self-define by choosing not to define their genre. Is appropriate for work that is hybrid or otherwise not interested in saying what it is. Submit up to twenty pages of Other.
See PEOPLE for the list of Other Editors.
Translations: Cole Swenson has joined us as Translations Editor for Fence #42.
The 2025 Ottoline Prize will open for entries in fall 2023.
The Ottoline Prize awards publication and $5,000 to a book-length work of poetry by anyone who identifies as a woman. The winner of the prize also receives a two-week residency at Eliot House, in Gloucester, MA. The submission fee is $31, and all entrants receive a complimentary subscription or renewal to Fence.
The winner of the previous Ottoline Prize is Kim Rosenfield. Her book of poems, Phantom Captain, will be published in fall 2023.
The 2024 Ottoline Series selection will be announced in late summer 2023.
The FMPP is on hiatus until 2022 while Fence editor Rebecca Wolff is serving in public office as an alderperson on the Common Council of Hudson, NY.
In 2019 Fence Books selected a work by the late poet-activist Mark Baumer to win the Fence Modern Prize in Prose for Travel Writing. An edition of his writings will be edited by Shane Jones and Blake Butler and published in 2021. The cash award will be donated to the Mark Baumer Sustainability Fund.
Mark Baumer was killed by an SUV in 2017 while he was walking barefoot across America to raise awareness about climate change. Recently Ottessa Moshfegh wrote about him: "We lost this brave genius last year, and the books he gifted us while he lived are so wonderfully strange and honest and beautiful, I can’t believe he even existed. He was more than a poet or performance artist — Baumer’s life itself was a work of art. He was truly radical, and the most openhearted, unjaded human I’ve ever met."
The Fence Modern Poets Series awards book publication and a $1,000 cash prize to a poet of any gender or gender identity writing in English at any stage of their publishing career. The winner of the prize also receives a two-week residency at Eliot House, in Gloucester, MA.
This prize series is on hiatus until 2022 while Fence editor Rebecca Wolff is serving in public office as an alderperson on the Common Council of Hudson, NY.