New Letters

New Letters No other university writing program has this three-part, national publishing and broadcasting power. New Letters has won a National Magazine Award.

New Letters, a magazine of writing and art, and its companions, New Letters on the Air and BkMk Press, continue to publish the best new short stories, essays, memoirs, poetry and article, and to broadcast interviews with writers. BkMk Press has won a PEN/Faulkner. New Letters on the Air has won the Clarion. Those are just a few honors. For over 80 years, New Letters have published writers such as

Edgar Lee Masters, J.D. Salinger, e.e. cummings, May Swenson, Robert Bly, Joyce Carol Oates, William Gass, Charles Simic, John Updike, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Walker Percy, Janet Burroway, Sherman Alexie, Marilyn Hacker, Maxine Kumin alongside many writers waiting to be discovered. In 2008, New Letters won the National Magazine Award for editorial excellence in the essay category, surpassing such competitors as The New Yorker, Elle and The Georgia Review. Three works published in New Letters magazine have been chosen to appear in “The Pushcart Prize # # , Best of the Small Presses (2010).”

Michael Carson’s “Wertach” moves through Germany, memory, war, literature, and loss with haunting precision. Following t...
05/29/2026

Michael Carson’s “Wertach” moves through Germany, memory, war, literature, and loss with haunting precision. Following the footsteps of W.G. Sebald through a Bavarian town, the essay becomes something larger: a meditation on history, displacement, photography, grief, and the strange ways the past keeps resurfacing.

Rich, reflective, and beautifully unsettling, this is an essay that stays with you long after the final line.

Read “Wertach” now on the New Letters website. bit.ly/4dyVogk

Steve Gehrke’s “Host” is fierce, heartbreaking, and impossible to look away from. Through memories of childhood illness,...
05/27/2026

Steve Gehrke’s “Host” is fierce, heartbreaking, and impossible to look away from. Through memories of childhood illness, transplant surgery, shame, anger, and survival, the poem examines what it means to live inside a body that feels both fragile and foreign.

Raw, lyrical, and deeply human, “Host” is a poem that demands to be read all the way through.

Read it now on the New Letters website. bit.ly/4dGqv8w

What does a telephone hold? Memory. Grief. Love. Distance. The sound of a life changing forever.In her stunning essay “T...
05/22/2026

What does a telephone hold? Memory. Grief. Love. Distance. The sound of a life changing forever.

In her stunning essay “Telephones,” Faith Shearin traces the evolution of phones alongside the evolution of a life—boarding school calls, rotary dials, late-night confessions, unanswered ringing, and the strange loneliness of modern technology.

Read this unforgettable essay now on the New Letters website. bit.ly/4tG7A3y

Last call, writers.The deadline for the New Letters Literary Awards is TONIGHT at 11:59 PM CST. Fiction. Poetry. Nonfict...
05/18/2026

Last call, writers.

The deadline for the New Letters Literary Awards is TONIGHT at 11:59 PM CST. Fiction. Poetry. Nonfiction.

Winners receive $2,000 and publication in New Letters.

Send the story. Send the essay. Send the poem that’s been sitting in your drafts whispering “maybe.”

After 11:59 tonight, the window closes.

Submit here: https://bit.ly/4uUa1AA

Writers: this is your annual reminder that “I’ll submit tomorrow” is a dangerous game. The deadline for the New Letters ...
05/15/2026

Writers: this is your annual reminder that “I’ll submit tomorrow” is a dangerous game.

The deadline for the New Letters Literary Awards is May 18 at MIDNIGHT CST, which means your procrastination window is rapidly shrinking.

Send us your fiction, poetry, and nonfiction before your draft becomes one of those mysterious files named “final_final_REALfinal2.”

The winners receive $2,000 and publication. Your unwritten excuse for missing the deadline receives nothing.

Go. Submit. Be brave. We believe in you.

Kirstin Scott’s “His Poem in Your Words” is funny, devastating, strange, tender, and sharply alive all at once. Set betw...
05/13/2026

Kirstin Scott’s “His Poem in Your Words” is funny, devastating, strange, tender, and sharply alive all at once. Set between a hospital class on burnout and a snowy Christmas market, the story follows a doctor trying—and failing—to outrun grief, memory, love, and himself.

There’s John Donne. There’s an old dog. There’s existential dread. There’s Krampus.

And somehow it all works beautifully.

Read the story now on the New Letters website. https://bit.ly/4udwCsa

This is your sign to finally hit submit. The deadline for the New Letters Literary Awards is just ONE WEEK away.We’re lo...
05/11/2026

This is your sign to finally hit submit. The deadline for the New Letters Literary Awards is just ONE WEEK away.

We’re looking for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that makes us laugh, gasp, underline sentences aggressively, or immediately text a friend.

Winner receives $2,000 + publication in New Letters.

So dust off that draft. Trust your work. Send it.

Deadline: May 18. Enter here: https://www.newletters.org/general-submissions/.

Three weeks left. That’s it.The clock is ticking on the New Letters Literary Awards—submit your work by May 18.We’re acc...
05/06/2026

Three weeks left. That’s it.

The clock is ticking on the New Letters Literary Awards—submit your work by May 18.

We’re accepting:
• Poetry
• Fiction
• Nonfiction

One winner in each category will receive $2,000 and publication.

If you’ve been thinking about submitting, this is your sign. Don’t let it sit in your drafts folder.

Enter now.

www.newletters.org/general-submissions/

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