Meridian is an annual literary magazine produced at the University of Virginia in conjunction with the university’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, whose students serve as the magazine’s editors.
Founded in 1998, Meridian has featured the works of numerous Pulitzer Prize Winners, National Book Award Winners, and established writers including Rita Dove, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gregory Pardlo, Seamus Heaney, Lydi Conklin, Ann Beattie, George Garrett, Heather McHugh, Richard Bausch, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Celeste Ng, Laura van den Berg, Mark Strand, Cathy Song, and Eric Pankey. But don’t let the big names fool you. As a magazine edited by early career writers, we value nothing more than showcasing tomorrow’s talent, often publishing a new author’s first story or poem. We welcome and carefully read every submission that comes our way.
Meridian poetry and prose has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and New Stories from the South. Our stories have also been short-listed for the O. Henry Prize, and our fine authors and poets have won many awards.
In addition to fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, Meridian also features author interviews and book reviews.
This submission pool is for general fiction submissions. Please do not submit your work here if you intend to send it to Meridian's Short Prose Prize or Editors' Prize in Prose.
Send us precarious stories, volatile stories, stories zinging with electric energy—whether absurdist parable or realist tragedy. Beyond aesthetic sensibilities, we're most interested in ambitious sentences and inimitable style.
Each submission should contain only one unpublished story. While we do not have a strict word count limit, please note that we rarely publish stories over 5,000 words. If you are sending flash or micro fiction, you may submit up to 3 stories of under 1,000 words in a single submission; please include all stories in the same document. We do not accept work produced using AI.
Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please withdraw your work immediately if it is accepted by another publication.
This submission pool is for our poetry submissions only. Please do not submit your work here if you intend to send it to Meridian's Short Prose Prize or Editors' Prize in Poetry.
Send us poems steeped in the strange, the particular, the individual voice—the poem that could only be yours, that’s building its own world for itself. Give us your rarities, your experimentations with language and/or form, your poems that resist and retaliate.
Each submission may include up to five unpublished poems, totaling no more than ten pages. Please submit all poems in a single file. We do not accept work produced using AI.
Simultaneous submissions are encouraged, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
Anything goes! Send us your micro fiction, hybrid bits, lyric essaylets, prose poems, short-short stories...whatever you call it, we want to read your vibrant, electric writing.
The winner of the Meridian Short Prose Prize will receive $250.00 and publication in our print magazine. All submissions, including those selected as finalists, will be considered for publication.
Submit as many times as you like, but please only include one unpublished work of 1,000 words or fewer per submission. Entry fee is $6. All submissions will be read anonymously by our staff.
We can't wait to review your work!
Other Eligibility Rules:
- UVA MFA students, UVA MFA alumni, and former Meridian staff are NOT eligible.
- Current UVA students, staff, and faculty are NOT eligible.
- Friends, relatives, and former teachers and students of current Meridian staff or its advisor are NOT eligible.
- Please do not submit if you have been selected as the winner of either Meridian's Short Prose Prize or Editors' Prize in the past.
This submission pool is for nonfiction submissions only. Please do not submit your work here if you intend to send it to Meridian's Short Prose Prize or Editors' Prize in Prose.
Each submission should contain only one unpublished essay. While we do not have a strict word count limit, please note that we rarely publish pieces of over 5,000 words. You may also submit up to 3 pieces of under 1,000 words in a single submission; please include all pieces in the same document. We do not accept work produced using AI.
Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please withdraw your work immediately if it is accepted by another publication.