Bennington Review is published twice a year in print form. Submissions are customarily read every fall, winter, and spring.
The Bennington review team aims to stake out a distinctive space for innovative, intelligent, and moving fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, film writing, and cross-genre work. In the spirit of poet Dean Young’s dictum that poets should be “making birds, not birdcages,” they are particularly taken with writing that is simultaneously graceful and reckless.
Eligibility for Bennington Review
- They only accept unsolicited submissions through Bennington Submittable.
- There is, at present, no reading fee. Application is free.
- Anyone can apply
- The Bennington review team are unable to respond to paper submissions or unsolicited e-mail submissions, or to comment on individual pieces.
- They do not accept unsolicited submissions from current or recent students, faculty, or staff of Bennington College. Undergraduate and graduate alumni, as well as past employees of Bennington, are asked to wait two years before submitting work to the magazine.
- Submissions response times vary, though they aim to respond to most submissions within five to eight months.
Submission Guidelines
- Entries must be previously unpublished in print or online, including on personal blogs.
Prose submissions must be double-spaced and paginated. - Please include a cover letter with your submission. They welcome simultaneous submissions, as long as you notify them immediately when work has been accepted elsewhere.
- BR welcomes submissions from established and emerging writers alike.
- They ask that writers who submit to the journal possess a familiarity with contemporary literature in the genre of their work.
- For poetry, please send no fewer than three and no more than five poems per submission. For fiction and creative nonfiction, please send no more than thirty pages per submission; any excerpts from a longer project must work as self-contained essays or stories.
- For film writing (and/or television writing), BR is not looking for evaluative “reviews”; rather, please send essays that engage with cinema in a unique and/or personal way.
- They want writers who are aware of the greater cultural, aesthetic, and social significance of their subject, be it domestic, international, avant-garde, classic, or contemporary cinema.
- They will also consider pieces on television, video art, viral videos, Vines, or any of the other alternative forms that moving images might take. Our preferred length for film writing is ten to twenty pages.
- BR is additionally interested in publishing translations: translators should have permission from the copyright holder and a copy of the work in the original language.
- They do not accept unsolicited reviews or interviews, though we are always happy to entertain queries about genres of work that fall outside the journal’s current scope.
- They will consider all submitted work for the print journal; some work will additionally be featured on Bennington Review’s website. We acquire first North American serial rights for all accepted work.
- If you have any questions about these guidelines, please email us at [email protected].
- The submissions will be opened till January 9, 2023.
Pay
For submissions received on or after September 1st, 2022, they will pay contributors $120 for prose of six typeset pages and under, $250 for prose of over six typeset pages, and $25 per poem, in addition to two copies of the issue in which the piece is published and a copy of the subsequent issue.
Goodluck!