Issue 17 contest: The Climate Issue

submissions open April 2-30, 2026

Earth is in a climate crisis – literal climate, political climate, literary climate (looking at you, AI slop). From the deepest gems within this planet’s mantle to the endless expanse of outer space, our gorgeous world is reaping the consequences of human waste, greed, ignorance, and indifference. That’s why, for our summertime themed contest, we’re asking for work exploring the earth here at its pressure point.

We want your fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid writing around natural beauty and unnatural disaster, the life cycle of growth, the gravity of change. Show us stories on a slippery slope, poems prepping for the apocalypse, essays that restore hope and inspire action, pieces that recycle anxiety and rage into world wonders on the page. Evoke through environment and preserve ecosystems in ink. Send us your nature writing. Share your seedling dreams.

Contest submissions fee: $7 USD

Prizes: 1st Place - $75 USD, 2nd Place - $50 USD, 3rd Place $25 USD, Honorable Mentions - $10-20 USD per our standard honorariums

The first week (April 2-9) will have limited free submissions alongside our $7 USD contest submission fee (& $15 USD feedback option), and run until following caps are reached: 20 subs of hybrid work, and 30 subs of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction work collectively. If the free period closes and our fee is a barrier to submitting your work, please email us for a no-questions-asked link to our fee-waived submission form. All standard submission guidelines still apply.

17: The Climate Issue is slated to publish on our website in July. Contest winners and honorable contributors will be announced in June. At that time we will also share our selection of charitable organization(s) that BTL will be donating to as part of this issue’s thematic focus on nature and environmentalism.

general GUIDELINES

Blood Tree is dedicated to showcasing evocative writing that takes linguistic risks to push the boundaries of conventional language and genre. We favor lyrical pieces that do not withhold depth or resonance. With that in mind, submit to us your best, the box under your bed marked UNSHARABLE, the orphan poem or black sheep fiction. Send us your experimentals; be vulnerable, be calculated. 

• Maximum word count per piece: 2500. We like to keep it flash-y.

• Maximum fiction or nonfiction pieces per submission: 1

• Maximum amount of poems or hybrid writing per submission: 3

• Mixed-media submissions or pieces that include images/audiovisual elements must be fully owned by the submitting author; pieces utilizing unlicensed images/audiovisual elements will be rejected for copyright liability.

• Submission fee: $3 USD. Submission fees allow us to maintain our Submittable and website/domain, as well as pay our contributors and contest donations!

  • We now offer a free submission period during the first week of open calls, with a cap of 20 hybrid submissions and 30 collective poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction submissions.

  • If the free submission period has closed and our fee is a barrier to submitting your work, please email us at bloodtreelit@yahoo.com for a no-questions-asked link to our fee-waived submission form.

  • With a $15 USD submission fee, we will provide detailed feedback and constructive notes on your submission. This applies to all genres.

• Abusive or derogatory submissions are not allowed — not now, not ever. BTL is a pro-choice, trans-inclusive, anti-racist publication. AI-generated works are strictly prohibited. You will be asked to include any relevant trigger warnings in the cover letter of your submission.

We do not read full-length manuscripts or translations at this time, and currently only read works written in English. We read reprints only if the piece(s) were previously published in a now-defunct publication — please indicate in your submission if that is the case and attribute the publication of first appearance.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed under the condition that you withdraw your work immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. Please do not submit more than once per genre until you’ve heard back on your pending submission. If you have not received a response on your submission within three months, please query us via email to bloodtreelit@yahoo.com.

Rights & Compensation

Per piece accepted, we pay $10 for poetry, $15 for fiction and nonfiction, and $20 for hybrid pieces; all are in USD and processed through PayPal. Published work is also eligible to be nominated for annual awards like Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and more.

Contributors release one-time electronic rights of their accepted piece(s) to Blood Tree Literature and the right to electronically archive the work as a part of the issue in which it first appeared. Contributors retain copyright for their accepted work and may publish that work elsewhere after six months has passed since the BTL publication date with attribution to its first appearance. View a sample acceptance agreement here.

Without in any way limiting a published creator’s and Blood Tree Literature’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited. Creators reserve all rights to license uses of their work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

CONTRIBUTOR BOOKS

If applicable, in your submission you may also include information for your recently published book with a link to where it can be purchased. Should your piece(s) be accepted, we will include the provided book in our Contributor Books page. If you are a previous contributor to BTL, you can notify us of new book publications for inclusion via our email: bloodtreelit@yahoo.com.

If you’d like to submit a review of a BTL Contributor Book, please query us via email to bloodtreelit@yahoo.com. There is no fee to submit Contributor Book Reviews. We offer a $15 USD honorarium for reviews accepted for publication.

• Maximum word count for reviews: 2500.

• Reviews must not have been previously published by another publication, organization, or review-centric platform (i.e. NetGalley, GoodReads).  Exception: reprints of reviews are allowed only if it was previously published in a now-defunct and unavailable publication — please indicate in your submission if that is the case and attribute the publication of first appearance.

• Reviews that have been previously published to social media or review sections of distribution/non-review-centric platforms (i.e. Amazon, StoryGraph, Bookshop.org) are eligible for submission only if the submitted review has been expanded on from its original post.  Exception: if your full review was posted on the aforementioned platforms in a language other than English, submissions of the full review translated into English are allowed.

• All other general submission guidelines apply.

Submissions are processed through Submittable. If this is not an accessible tool for you, please email us at bloodtreelit@yahoo.com to discuss an alternative.

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