Submit
Meridian publishes one issue each year, usually in mid-May.
Our open reading period for fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction is usually August 20 through November 30. We also host a short prose contest in late summer, and then take Editors' Prize contest submissions in November through mid-January. With the possible exception of artwork, all content sent to Meridian for consideration must be unpublished. We only accept submissions of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and artwork via our Submittable site. We no longer accept postal submissions, with the exception of incarcerated authors, who are welcome to submit via postal mail.
Cover artwork submissions are free and the submission period is longer. See our Submittable site for more details. For best consideration, please pay attention to the required resolution and cover dimensions sizes. We pay our cover artists $250 for their work.
The authors we publish receive two complimentary copies of the issue in which their work appears and can purchase more at a reduced rate. We do accept simultaneous submissions; however, if we accept your work for publication, it is your responsibility to immediately notify all other magazines it is no longer available. Similarly, if someone else accepts your work, withdraw your work from Meridian on Submittable as soon as you can.
We try to respond within three months, but we have sometimes taken longer. Please note that our offices are typically closed May 5 through August 15.
We generally do not accept creative work by current University of Virginia students. Current UVA students should write before submitting.
Rights and Reprints
Meridian asserts minimal and what we hope are commonsense rights to works featured in our pages or on our website and social media.
Meridian asks for the North American rights to publish an author’s textual work in a single print edition and also in future retrospective print editions of the magazine. We currently make our entire magazine available in a print- and copy-protected viewer. We sometimes feature your text in an HTML or PDF form on our website, though authors may opt out of these more downloadable and printable formats. We sometimes feature fragments of your work in social media postings and marketing materials. If we go beyond a line or two, we'll be writing you for approval.
After we publish poetry or prose in Meridian, all rights revert to the original author. You do not need Meridian's permission to reprint your work, though we always appreciate an acknowledgment of our prior publication. If you wish to publish someone else's work that appears on our site or in our pages, it is your responsibility to contact the writer and secure permission. We'll try and help you get in touch, but ultimately, securing those rights is up to you.
Artwork
For Meridian cover art and interior artwork, we reserve the right to publish lower-resolution versions on our website and social media and use the original artwork in other occasional marketing materials for our magazine. We never try to resell your artwork in a standalone form or represent it as ours: you created the object; it always remains your artwork to do with as you wish. For cover art, we often have to place our Meridian logo and edition number on top of your artwork, but we try to do this in an unobtrusive way and will send the cover artist a proof to approve. We generally do not manipulate any artwork except slight cropping to help it fit our pages better, and sometimes brightening a file's color palette to help it print closer to the intended hues and tones of the original.