Copper Nickel accepts submissions of poetry, fiction, essays, and translation folios from August 15 to December 15, January 15 to March 1.

Please submit four to six poems, one story, three flash pieces, or one essay at a time, and please wait at least six months between submissions. For prose we do not have any length restrictions—but longer-than-normal pieces have to earn their space.

For a translation feature, submit five to ten poems or a piece of prose (fiction or nonfiction). If we accept, we’ll ask for a contextualizing introductory essay of 800-1200 words.

We DO accept simultaneous submissions, though we ask you to contact us if submitted work is accepted elsewhere.

To withdraw full submissions, please withdraw through submittable.

To withdraw individual poems or flash pieces but not a whole submission, please message us through submittable indicating which individual pieces should be removed from consideration.

We try to respond to all submissions within eight weeks, though response times can be longer—particularly in the spring. We receive many thousands of submissions each year; reading and responding to them all is sometimes slower than we would like. Please do not query about your submission until at least three months have passed.

And: we shouldn’t have to say this, but please be kind and professional in your correspondence with us.

Also, please note that when you submit your work to Copper Nickel you’re adding yourself to our contact list and, thus, consenting to receiving infrequent emails about our book prize, subscriptions drives, etc. We’ll send no more than 2-3 of these emails per year.

Finally, our Submittable account can receive only 1800 discrete submissions in a given month—after which the account will close until the new month. Please submit early each month to avoid being shut out.

Copper Nickel pays $30 per printed page + two copies of the issue in which the author’s work appears + a one-year subscription. (Per-page payment could vary slightly from year to year based on funding. And international writers please note: all payments sent overseas are subject to a 30% tax, which is withheld on the front end. This is beyond our control.)

We also award two $500 prizes per issue—the Editors’ Prizes in Poetry and Prose—for what we consider to be the most exciting work in each issue, as determined by a vote of our in-house editorial staff.

For information about the Jake Adam York Prize for a first or second book of poetry, visit here.