Please read guidelines before submitting: 

Bellingham Review's annual writing contests are open from February 1st to March 15th.

$1,000 first-place prizes will be awarded in poetry (49th Parallel Award), fiction (Tobias Wolff Award), and creative nonfiction (Annie Dillard Award).

Through Submittable, please submit 3 pieces of flash fiction of up to 1,500 words each OR a story of up to 4,000 words. All entries will be considered for publication in the journal. 

$15 entry fee. 

Important notes: 

* The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Manuscripts including identifying information will be disqualified. 

* We only consider previously unpublished work.

* Simultaneous submissions are encouraged; please let us know if you work has been accepted elsewhere by withdrawing your submission. 

Our guest judge for 2025 is Laura Chow Reeve

Laura Chow Reeve is the author of the short story collection A Small Apocalypse. Her writing and graphic work can be found in The Offing, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, Catapult, Joyland, and elsewhere. She is a winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and was a Blackburn Fellow at the Randolph College MFA program. She lives in Richmond, VA. 

Thank you and we look forward to reading!

Please read guidelines before submitting: 

Bellingham Review's annual writing contests are open from February 1st to March 15th.

$1,000 first-place prizes will be awarded in poetry (49th Parallel Award), fiction (Tobias Wolff Award), and creative nonfiction (Annie Dillard Award).

Through Submittable, please submit 1-3 poems. All entries will be considered for publication in the journal. 

$15 entry fee. 

Important notes: 

* The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Manuscripts including identifying information will be disqualified. 

* We only consider previously unpublished work.

* Simultaneous submissions are encouraged; please let us know if you work has been accepted elsewhere by withdrawing your submission. 

Our guest judge for 2025 is Gabrielle Bates

Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), an NPR Best Book of 2023, a New York Times Book Review Critics Pick, and finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium and co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere, and she has served as visiting faculty for a variety of universities, arts organizations, and museums, including the University of Washington Rome Center and the Tin House Writers' Workshops.

Thank you and we look forward to reading!

Please read guidelines before submitting: 

Bellingham Review's annual writing contests are open from February 1st to March 15th.

$1,000 first-place prizes will be awarded in poetry (49th Parallel Award), fiction (Tobias Wolff Award), and creative nonfiction (Annie Dillard Award).

Through Submittable, please submit 3 pieces of flash nonfiction of up to 1,500 words each OR an essay of up to 4,000 words. All entries will be considered for publication in the journal. 

$15 entry fee. 

Important notes: 

* The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Manuscripts including identifying information will be disqualified. 

* We only consider previously unpublished work.

* Simultaneous submissions are encouraged; please let us know if you work has been accepted elsewhere by withdrawing your submission. 

Our guest judge for 2024 is Lilly Dancyger

Lilly Dancyger is the author of First Love: Essays on Friendship, and Negative Space. Her work has been published by The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, among others, and she writes the Substack newsletter The Word Cave. Dancyger lives in New York City, and teaches creative nonfiction in the MFA programs at Columbia University and Randolph College. 

Thank you and we look forward to reading!