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 Charles Wright, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Seamus Heaney, Ann Beattie, George Garrett, Heather McHugh, Richard Bausch, Bonnie Jo Campbell, 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.
Meridian also features regular author interviews, book reviews, photography, and artwork. The magazine’s current print run is about 300 issues, with occasional add-on runs using print-on-demand.
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. For reference, we published three finalists in our 2020 issue.
Submit as many times as you like, but please only include one unpublished work of 1,000 words or fewer per submission.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 undergraduate alumni who graduated after June 2018 are NOT eligible.
- 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.
Meridian is currently considering submissions for cover art. You may submit up to ten images at a time.
Our magazine is printed at a page size of 5 7/8″ wide by 8 7/8″ tall. We use .125″ bleeds. Artists must supply all artwork at 300 dpi resolution or higher. We typically work in an RGB color space. CMYK is usually acceptable.
Cover Art: Cover art that appears only on our front cover should measure at least 6.125″ wide and 9.25″ tall. Given 300 dpi resolution, that would mean a minimum pixel count of 1838 x 2775. Our covers are always portrait in orientation. It is possible to have cover art that runs landscape from spine to outside edge and measures 6.125″ wide (1838 pixels) but does not have enough height to run from top to bottom. We’ve used such images in the past … but find them a little awkward. We work hard not to have our Meridian logo obscure important parts of the artwork, but cover artists should expect that our logo and issue number will appear on their artwork and look at past issues for typical layouts.
Wraparound Covers: Wraparound covers are usually our preference, but they are more difficult to measure in advance because we usually don’t know our spine width until quite late. However, a spine of .3″ is typical. This means a wraparound image needs to be at least 12.55″ wide and 9.12″ tall (3765 pixels wide x 2728 pixels tall). Having more available pixels is always good in case of a thick issue. We encourage artists NOT to submit artwork with elements that must fall exactly at edges or folds or other locations that will limit our flexibility at final layout.
Selected artist(s) will receive a $250 honorarium.