Willow Springs Books is a literary press housed in Eastern Washington University’s Inland Northwest Center for Writers in Spokane, Washington and operates under the direction of poet Jonathan Johnson. Each year, we host the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction and the Emma Howell Rising Poet Prize. Past judges have included Rick Bass, William Kittredge, Jess Walter, John Keeble, Shawn Vestal, Sharma Shields, Alexis Smith, and Molly Giles. Please view each category for guidelines or visit willowspringsbooks.org/submit.
The Spokane Prize for Short Fiction is accepting submissions of short-story collections of at least three (3) pieces and a minimum of 92 pages. Collections may include no more than one novella (up to 40k words) when included with at least three short-story length pieces.
All authors, regardless of publication history, are eligible.
Current Eastern Washington University Creative Writing MFA students and alumni who have graduated within the past five years from Eastern Washington University's Creative Writing MFA are not allowed to submit.
The prize for the winning manuscript is $2,000 and publication by Willow Springs Books. The press will retain reprint, film, electronic, anthology, translation, foreign publication, and sight and sound rights.
Guidelines:
- Submissions must be original, book-length fiction manuscripts written in English. There is no maximum page count. Translations are not accepted.
- One manuscript per submission.
- Submissions will only be accepted electronically, via Submittable.
- Simultaneous submissions are allowed. If you have submitted your manuscript elsewhere, we request that you notify us immediately if you have an offer for publication.
- Manuscripts MUST CONTAIN page numbers and a table of contents.
- Please format your manuscript in 1.5 or double-spaced line spacing. Any standard font (Arial, Times New Roman, etc.) is acceptable. Please keep the font size between 12 and 14.
- Individual stories may have been previously published in journals, chapbooks, anthologies, or limited-edition volumes, but please note which poems and where they have been published on an acknowledgments page. The collection as a whole must be previously unpublished.
- Authors do not need to be Spokane residents to submit. :)
Note: We primarily publish manuscripts in the literary genre. While we do accept manuscripts containing elements of other genres (ie, fantasy, romance, science fiction, etc.), our preference is fiction that fits most literary conventions.
Willow Springs Books reserves the right to reject any manuscript for any reason.