ISSUE 155

EMERGING VOICES 

CONTEST

Submissions open June 1 - December 1

$100 Prize

PLEASE NOTE: This contest is for Santa Clara County, CA, high school students only.

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Reed Magazine is looking to publish the young voices of the South Bay. Submit your original fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or visual art/photography and let your voice be heard! Scholarly works are also accepted. We do not accept work that has been previously published. Please limit prose submissions to 1,000 words.

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Please be sure to:

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All submissions

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• include your preferred first and given last name, and name of high school you attend when submitting

• provide a 50-word bio

• indicate the genre you are submitting in your cover letter

• make sure your Submittable profile is up-to-date

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Fiction/Nonfiction

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• attach written pieces as a Word document

• format pieces in double-spaced 12-point font 

• include word count

• number pages

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Poetry

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• attach written pieces as a Word document

• format pieces in 12-point font 

• submit up to two (2) poems in a single file

• number pages

Visual Art/Photography

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• include available art credits: title, medium, dimensions, year 

• ensure submissions are rendered in an easily accessible format such as .jpg

• submit up to two (2) works 

• ensure images are at least 300 dpi

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Winner receives a free copy of the latest issue of Reed Magazine, as well as cash prize and publication. Multiple submissions are accepted as separate entries. Contest submissions not selected for final judging may still be considered for publication in the magazine.

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)