Welcome to the University of Alabama Creative Writing Program submissions page. 

Find active calls for submission below. For more about UA's Department of English and our undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs see our website. Contact Paul Albano (ppalbano@ua.edu), Assistant Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing, with questions.

Send up to four poems in separate word documents (.doc or .docx). 

We invite you to submit original illustrations, graphics, and photographs that connect to food and place. We ask that you identify the material used to create your work and the date of creation along with your submission. Please submit your work in PNG or JPEG format, up to 10 MB. If visual art has been edited, we ask that you include the raw, unedited image in your submission. We cannot wait to see your creative submissions that highlight your (and our) passion for food!

Give us a recipe from the last Thanksgiving with your creepy uncle, that awkward first date at Applebee’s, or the time you lost the Carrolton County hot dog eating contest. The house recipe for Zen soup or your church’s sherbet punch? Whatever it is, make sure to include a recipe -- nonfictional or fantastical -- and short narrative (500 words or less). We want to eat your words!

What do you imagine Elle Woods, George Washington, or Neil deGrasse Tyson would eat over the course of a day?  Now is your time to dive into your influencer roots and tell us what those meals look like. Dessert for breakfast (and lunch and dinner)? Fried Friday? Game-day eats? We want it all! Short (500 word) submissions welcomed, the serious and satirical.

We welcome additional, nonfiction prose (up to 1,500 words) exploring the relationships between food and place.

Eligibility: Students must have declared a Minor in Creative Writing, and must enroll as a full-time undergraduate student for the 2025-2026 school year.

To apply: Upload a creative writing sample in PDF or Word Document format: no more than 15 pages (double-spaced) prose, OR 4-5 poems (10 pages max). If a mixed-genre application, please adhere to the 15 page limit.

Our judges will be evaluating the submissions blindly, so please do not include your name in the body of your submission.

Red Rook Press is a growing publishing press dedicated to celebrating the work of undergraduate writers. As we expand, we're continuing to explore new mediums to promote fresh and exciting works, and we're happy to announce that we're now accepting digital content for publication on our website! Whether there's a piece of media you can't stop talking about, a viewpoint you feel like sharing, or a written piece you're ready to show the world, we're burning the midnight oil to see what you've been working on! 

 

Our digital content consists of three sections, each of which you can submit to through the google form linked here: 

 

Reviews: If you're like us, sometimes there's a story you just can't stop thinking about! Whether it's about a book, movie, tv show, video game, or piece of music, we want to your thoughts. Reviews should be between 350 and 1000 words. 

 

Rhetoric: Our rhetoric section contains more formal essays on a wide range of topics, including literary analyses. Essays should be no more than 3000 words. 

 

Writes: This section includes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry pieces. As with our publication submissions, we happily accept pieces from a wide variety of genres and styles. For prose, we request submissions be between 250 and 2500 words, and for poetry no more than 2 pages. 

 

Simultaneous Submissions: Perfectly fine - just make sure you let us know if your work is selected elsewhere. 

 

Payment: Our digital submissions are unpaid. 

University of Alabama Creative Writing