Debut Prize
As we settle into the fall and watch the earth change with the season, we want to invite new writers to create change too—with a new opportunity to publicly share their works! Touchstone is accepting submissions for the Debut Prizes in Poetry and Art. There is no theme or prompt for Debut Prizes so that you can showcase your best work in these genres! This opportunity is for unpublished writers to submit and publish their work. The submission window will be open from September 23rd to October 14th (a three-week window for submissions), and winners should be announced in late October.
Pop-Up Projects
The Pop-Ups for Fiction and Nonfiction now have submissions open on October 8th Submissions will close on October 15th (a one-week window for submissions).
Fiction
Does the thought of creatures outside of scientific cannon fill you with morbid curiosity? Are you a believer in the strange, the spooky, the things that we only whisper about in folktales and around campfires? It may be time for you to put on your cryptozoologist hat and start seeking out beasts that others are more comfortable ignoring... We invite pieces of short fiction which center any cryptid(s) of your choosing, bringing to light their stories which so often are left in the dark!
Send Touchstone your best story or stories fulfilling the theme of Cryptids and show us your creativity!
nonfiction
Resiliency is the ability to recover, bounce back, endure; to be resilient is not to be invincible, but rather to face hardships, be affected, and to come out the other side regardless. Resiliency requires strength, but also flexibility—another definition for the term is specific to the elasticity of objects, their ability to be formed and reformed back to their original state. We would like to read your essays on this quality, in any context.
We are looking forward to reading your essays that uniquely approach this theme of Resiliency.
Submit
Submission portals can be found here, and all submissions must follow our General Guidelines listed below. Make sure to follow us on Twitter (or X if you prefer to call it that) to stay up to date on submissions, publications, and developments from Touchstone.
Touchstone accepts all submissions on our Submittable portal.
General Guidelines
Your work may be in any style, format, or subject, unless unless it's a themed submission. We simply want to see your best work. Surprise us. Move us. Expand our understanding of art & literature. Remind us what great art can do
Each new piece should start on a new page. The author's name and personal information should not appear on the submission itself
For prose & poetry: Please use easy-to-read, standard fonts such as Times New Roman and Garamond. 12 point font. Please include page numbers. Attach your file as a Word document on the submissions page. We only recommend PDF if the piece has special formatting
For art submissions: We will accept all mediums: painting, digital art, photography, experimental, sculpture, multimedia, etc. One art piece should appear on a single page with the following information at the bottom right: title, media, dimension, & date of completion.
Include a cover letter with your submission. Journals and contests frequently ask for a short cover letter along with the submission, so it’d be helpful to have a cover letter template ready and modify it slightly for all your submissions.
Don’t sweat the cover letter too much--it’s simply a short letter that gives us more context about you and your work before we review the submission. Please fill out the cover letter section on your submission with the following information:
For prose (fiction & nonfiction) submissions, please include the word count in the letter
Indicate if this is a simultaneous submission (meaning if the pieces are--or will soon be--under consideration with other magazines)
A 25-100 author bio in third person. It can be about anything. Commonly, the bio contains such things as pronouns, education/publication history, state of residence, current occupation (if applicable), hobbies/interests, etc
We accept simultaneous submissions. However, if your pieces are accepted elsewhere, please notify us through the “Messages“ tab in your submission on Submittable right away
If your work contains violence, sexual or mental abuse, sexual assault, etc., please put a content warning or trigger warning above that specific piece--we would just like a little warning. Abusive pieces written from an obviously positive perspective will be rejected.
AWARDS
DEBUT PRIZE IN FICTION, NONFICTION, OR POETRY (genre subject to editor discretion)
A cash prize of $50 for one story/essay/poem and an original broadside art designed by our artist will be awarded to a new writer making their grand debut! $30 prize for the runner up writer..
TOUCHSTONE UNDERGRADUATE CREATIVE WRITING AWARD
Touchstone Undergraduate Creative Writing Awards are an annual award series open to current undergraduate students at Kansas State University. In each of the following genres: poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction, two submissions are chosen by the editors at Touchstone. Winner in every genre receives a cash prize of $75, and the runner up receives $50.
PERMISSION TO PUBLISH
Submission to Touchstone implies permission to publish unless otherwise revoked by the writer during the submission stage. Writers retain all later publication rights. Touchstone accepts simultaneous submissions.