Fairy Tale Review

***We received thousands of works to consider for Volume 22 and had an intense, wonderful summer reading the manuscripts entrusted to us. Thank you all for your submissions! Gratitude also to our hard-working, all-volunteer editorial team. What an abundance of exceptional, moving works we encountered this year. Decisions were hard with such breathtaking abundance. Please join us in congratulating the thirty contributors whose poems, essays, and stories will appear in Volume 22 in Spring 2026. To all who read, write, and love fairy tales: you bring us hope. Watch this space in Spring 2026 for submission guidelines to Volume 23. Our usual reading period is around March 15 - July 15 each year, but it might be earlier next year. We haven't yet decided. Suspense! Thank you again. p.s. We are leaving these guidelines up so you can get a vibe on what our submission period looks like, if you don't know our history yet.***

Founding Editor Kate Bernheimer and Guest Editor Anca Szilágyi will collaboratively edit Volume 22 of Fairy Tale Review. The issue will have a theme of food, which may be interpreted with minimal intervention. We are always looking for your best new fairy-tale informed work. 

Submissions will be accepted March 15, 2025 – July 15, 2025. Simultaneous submissions are welcome (and we welcome your disclosure if you are sending the work elsewhere too, though it is your choice to note this or not). Please notify us and withdraw the submission if the work is accepted elsewhere, and accept our congratulations if so! We welcome submissions directly from authors and literary agents. 

After a pause during Volume 20 (now in print in a glorious two-issue edition!), we are so gladdened to return to our routine editorial process. If you have not received an acceptance by August 20, you may assume we were unable to find a place for your work, despite our gratitude for the chance to have read it. We aim to reply to every submission, of course; this is just safeguard so that you will experience no uncertainty. We receive thousands of submissions each year and these are the most difficult decisions we make. We are grateful for your trust in our editorship.

Submission guidelines: We invite unpublished manuscripts in all forms and styles, and through the writer's artistic direction. We can consider up to 30 manuscript pages from writers. These pages can be comprised of a single work or multiple complete works. We need your submission as a single Word document; please include page numbers and a cover sheet with titles, if the document includes multiple works. We consider prose fiction, verse fiction, nonfiction, creative scholarship, and poetry; we also welcome work that does not fall neatly into any category. The best way to get a sense of the range of material we accept is to read more than one back issue of Fairy Tale Review. The website does not have archived content from the print journal on it; you can request that copies be ordered by your public library, including e-versions via Libby. In-person requests to librarians have a high success rate.

For original artwork: Artists may submit up to five high-resolution images in a single portfolio. Please be sure your work would convey to print format within limitations of the trim size. Too often we receive beautiful and moving and funny and wonderful new artwork that would be impossible to publish in the manner your work deserves to be seen (it would be so tiny in the print journal). Color printing is prohibitively expensive so we rarely can include color artwork, but give us a try if you'd like. We enjoy seeing your newest art. 

For translations (to English): Writers may submit translations of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Submissions in translation must include the translated work itself as a Word document, a copy of the work in its source language (as published in a book as a PDF, or if previously unpublished in its source language, in manuscript form); and a letter of documentation of any permission necessary for the translator to publish the work in both languages (original and English).

Fairy tales have long represented under-sung communities and painful realities. We celebrate the power of fairy tales to represent, resist, and reflect on power, especially as manifested in patriarchy and capitalism.

Volume 22 of Fairy Tale Review will be published in Spring 2026. Contributors will receive two (2) copies of the issue and a $50 honorarium upon publication. A standard contract between the contributor and Fairy Tale Review will be sent to all authors prior to editorial and production. Fairy Tale Review is published by the Journals Division of Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI, and is proud to be part of their Series in Fairy Tale Studies.