We publish both web features and a quarterly print journal; if you have a preference for web or print publication, you can note that preference in your cover letter; we will offer digital or print publication based on our current publishing needs. Regardless of platform, you can expect a payment of $50 for poetry and $100 for prose. (These are minimum payments and may increase in the event of increased funding or special initiatives.)
We are open for submissions of critical writing year-round, including reviews of books, performances, and exhibits; general nonfiction; literary and arts criticism; public-facing scholarship; and interviews.
We are open for submissions of poetry, fiction, literary translation, personal essay, and creative nonfiction in September and October; read our guidelines here. While we are not currently open to unsolicited submissions of non-literary visual art, we DO consider submissions of literary work with visual components (comics, visual poetry, photo essays, and so on), and you can submit those in the genre category you think fits best.
We are open to simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your work promptly if it is accepted elsewhere. Please send a message if a flash fiction piece or poem from your submission is accepted elsewhere, so we know what's still available.
We open for contest submissions for the Stephen Dixon Fiction Prize for JHU affiliates and Anne Frydman Translation Prize for emerging and early career translators in April; read about the prizes and their guidelines here.
We open for the fMRI Writing Prize, a unique new flash fiction fiction contest for Baltimore's youth and adult writers, in June. This contest is free to enter. Read more here.
Our three-dollar administrative fee is waived for subscribers, as are our contest fees. If you are interested in becoming a subscriber, click here. Subscribers can send submissions of any kind year round; if you are a subscriber, email thehopkinsreview@gmail.com to request your fee-waived "Subscriber Submission" link.
For a sense of what we publish, buy an issue, check out our open-access web features, or take a look at the year's sample print issue on Project MUSE.
Thank you for your interest in The Hopkins Review.
We consider book reviews and literary essays/criticism, public-facing scholarship, and arts criticism (film, dance, theater, performance, visual art, and beyond) year-round. We welcome reviews of work in translation, books published by smaller presses and university presses, and work that has received less critical attention. If you are including work by another artist or artists (visual art or a substantial literary excerpt, for example) in your review or essay, it is your responsibility to obtain permission and cover any permissions fees. Submit one work at a time, but feel free to let us know in your cover letter if you would be interested in contributing critical writing on a more regular basis.
Please do not submit fiction, poetry, translation, or personal essays and creative nonfiction without a critical or craft connection; we consider those during our yearly open reading period for creative work in September and October.
We publish both web features and a quarterly print journal; while we can consider a preference for web or print, we cannot accommodate all such requests, and we will offer digital or print publication based on our current publishing needs. Regardless of platform, you can expect a payment of $100 for prose. (This may increase in the event of increased funding or special initiatives.)
Our submission fee is waived for subscribers. If you are interested in a subscription, click here. If you subscribe, email thehopkinsreview@gmail.com to request a private, fee-waived “Subscriber Submission” portal to submit your work. Subscribers can submit in any genre at any time of year.
For a sense of what we publish, buy an issue, check out our open-access web features, or take a look at the year's sample print issue on Project MUSE.
Thank you for your interest in The Hopkins Review.
We are actively seeking essays that engage with the seventeen years of literature and culture in The Hopkins Review’s quarterly print archive, available on Project MUSE. These essays could take a number of different forms including but not limited to essays that . . .
- contextualize a piece first published in The Hopkins Review aesthetically, historically, or in its author’s body of work
- give a close reading of a particular piece
- provide a pedagogical framework to encourage and enable instructors to incorporate work from The Hopkins Review in their teaching of creative writing or literature
- memorialize an author’s passing and celebrate their body of work using their work in The Hopkins Review as a jumping-off point
- draw attention to a newly published book that includes a piece or pieces first published in The Hopkins Review
- continue a conversation begun in a piece first published in The Hopkins Review
There is no submission fee to submit to this special call; a digital subscription or print+digital package gives access to THR's entire archive. Subscribe today.
Writing successful prose is kind of like building a house, or tailoring a garment; like coding a video game, or planning a city. It requires thinking through elements to improve the experience for the user (reader). How can adopting the design theory practices of leaders in architecture, fashion, and graphic arts, help us become better creative writers? How might principles of form and function strengthen our personal essays, memoir and cross-genre projects? In this session we will apply methods of design thinking to the function of prose, looking at intersections between the work of landscape architect Sara Zwede, French theorist Gaston Bachelard, and American author Toni Morrison.
The Hopkins Review Workshop Series is a new benefit for our community of subscribers, as well as the Writing Seminars community at Johns Hopkins University. All workshops are FREE to current subscribers and Writing Seminars community members. If you aren't a current subscriber, get access to a whole year of workshops and all four quarterly print issues for just $35! This contribution goes towards supporting an award-winning independent journal, the students who run it, and the authors we publish.
When:
Saturday, December 6th, 2025 at 12 pm – 2 pm ET
Where:
Zoom
Donald Edem Quist (he/they) is author of two essay collections, Harbors, a Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner and International Book Awards Finalist, and To Those Bounded. He has a linked story collection, For Other Ghosts. His writing has appeared inAGNI, North American Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and was Notable in Best American Essays(2018 & 2025). He is creator of the online nonfiction series PAST TEN, and co-editor of The Past Ten: An Anthology. Quist has received fellowships from Sundress Academy for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Kimbilio Fiction. He is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University of Missouri.
(Read “My Father, Bruce Willis” from THR 18.1 and "Be Not Afraid: Notes on Jackass Forever" from THR 17.2, which was recently honored as notable in The Best American Essays 2025.)