ISSUE
159
EMERGING VOICES CONTEST
CONTEST SUBMISSIONS
JUNE 1 - NOVEMBER 1
$100 Prize
Reed Magazine seeks to celebrate the young voices of the San Francisco South Bay region. Submit your original fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, photography, and scholarly works to share your creativity with readers of California's oldest literary journal.
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This contest is for high school students of Santa Clara County, California, ONLY. Our Emerging Voices Contest requires proof of local high school attendance to win.​
Please be sure to:
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All submissions
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provide a cover letter that includes your preferred first and given last names, name of the high school you attend, and genre you are submitting to (but exclude this information from the works themselves)
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include a brief bio, up to 50 words
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check that your Submittable profile is up-to-date
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​Fiction and nonfiction
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save submissions as a Microsoft Word (.docx or .doc) or Portable Document Format (.pdf) document
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double-space text, and use any readable 12-point typeface (such as Times New Roman)
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number pages
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include word count (1,000-word limit)
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Poetry​
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save submissions as a Microsoft Word (.docx or .doc) or Portable Document Format (.pdf) document
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single- or double-space text, and use any readable 12-point typeface (such as Times New Roman)
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number pages
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submit up to two (2) poems in a single file
Visual Art and Photography
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​include available art credits: title, medium, dimensions, year
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render submissions in an easily accessible format, such as .jpg
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size submissions to at least 300 dpi
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submit up to two (2) works
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Winner receives a monetary prize, as well as publication in and a free copy of the latest issue of Reed Magazine. Up to two (2) multiple submissions are accepted as separate entries. Contest submissions not selected for final judging may still be considered for publication in the journal and/or online.
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Emerging Voices Contest submitters can expect to hear back from Reed Magazine by the end of December 2025.
San José State University has a rich tradition of reaching out to its surrounding community, and Reed Magazine is no exception. In 2017, while planning the 150th issue, editor-in-chief Cathleen Miller founded a writing contest connecting the university with local high school students. The competition brought together two wonderful extremes: young artists and California’s oldest literary journal. Jen Clem took on the management of this project during her final semester in the MFA program. She writes, “As a teacher in San José Unified School District, I have encountered many students who write and create not because of an assignment, but because art fuels them. The Emerging Voices Contest is a conduit for these students, whose work quite often stays scribbled in the margins of a notebook or buried on a hard drive.” Ever since then, in the pages of Reed Magazine, the voices and artistic visions of the upcoming generation have mingled with the work of experienced writers from all over the world. The Emerging Voices Contest began by accepting poetry and has expanded to encompass nonfiction, fiction, and art, as well. Please join us in celebrating these young writers and artists, whose work inspires us to see through new eyes—and yet, somehow, to feel ever more like ourselves.
Jen Clem (Left) and Cathleen Miller (Right)
