Temporary closure of regular (but not contest) submissions for the month of June 2023:

The Malahat Review is moving office, doing some overdue housekeeping, and even taking a short holiday, so we are not accepting any regular poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction submissions from 1 – 30 June 2023. We apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to receiving work again as of 1 July 2023. Contest submissions remain open as usual.

Welcome!

The Malahat Review acknowledges and respects the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples on whose traditional territory the University of Victoria stands, and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

The Editorial Boards welcome submissions in English of previously unpublished works of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as translations in any of these three genres, by new and established writers from Canada and abroad.

The Editorial Boards are pleased to receive submissions from all writers who wish to send their work for consideration, including writers from communities generally under-represented in literary magazines, in particular Indigenous writers, writers of colour, Black writers, 2SLGBTQIA?+ writers, and writers with disabilities.

Although The Malahat Review publishes current work by contemporary writers, the Editorial Boards will consider translations of work by past writers who are unknown or little known in the English-speaking world and may therefore be of interest to contemporary readers. For all translation submissions, please include a copy of the original text and, for work still under copyright, a copy of a letter of permission from the original author and/or first-language publisher. The same limits and rules apply to translation submissions as to other submissions.

The best way to know what kinds of work we might publish is to order a print or digital issue or to subscribe.

Reading periods

The Malahat Review reads submissions from Canadian writers all year. Because we receive so many submissions, we accept work from international writers only during certain months, depending on the genre (see below for the guidelines by genre). We also run four contests per year and these have their own separate guidelines. See our contests page to read their guidelines.

Response time

We try our best to get back to writers as soon as possible. Due to the high volume of submissions we receive, please allow for one to six months for poetry and up to nine months for fiction and creative nonfiction.

Submitting

Please scroll to the bottom of this page to find the appropriate button for each genre and current contest. We ask that you submit your work in a single .doc, .docx, or .pdf file, and list at the beginning of each piece the word count (for prose) or line count (for poetry). For regular submissions, please ensure that your name and contact info appear on the first page.

Cover letter

Ensure the name, mailing address, and email linked to your Submittable account are up to date. If any of this info differs, you can leave a note in the cover letter section. Please list the title(s) of the work submitted and include a short bio note.

Once per calendar year (per genre, contests excepted)

Excluding any of our contests and theme issues, we ask that writers submit only once per genre (poetry, fiction, cnf, translations) in each calendar year.

Previous publication

We don’t publish any work that has previously been published, whether in print or online, even if the print run or online audience was small. No work that has been excerpted elsewhere is eligible for submission, nor is any work that has been revised since its original publication.

Simultaneous submissions

For regular submissions, please inform us if you’re making a simultaneous submission, and please update us as soon as possible with any changes to the status of your submission. We do not accept simultaneous submissions for any of the magazine's contests.

Payment & copyright

We pay CAD$70 per published page plus a one-year print subscription and two copies of the issue in which your work appears. (Contest winners receive a cash prize instead of a per-page payment.) We purchase first world serial print and digital rights for publication in English; copyright remains with the author.