Black Fox is accepting submissions for our Spring 2025 Fox Tales Prize. The theme for this round is “Mixed Messages.” We are open to loose interpretations of the theme in any genre, as always.

As writers, we love working with words, but what happens when they fail us? We are asking writers to explore the chaos, heartbreak, and transformation that can come from misunderstandings, made-up truths, and intentions gone wrong. We're looking for work about how missed connections can influence outcomes, where silence appears to speak louder than words, or where a simple miscalculation in communication leads to unforeseen consequences. We are always interested in all kinds of work. Whether it’s a humorous mix-up, disastrous failure, or the quiet tension of words left unsaid, the theme of miscommunication should be at the heart of your work.

Please submit your strongest fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, and we will choose one winner that we feel interprets the theme best. The prize is $325 and print publication in the Summer 2025 issue. All submissions are considered for print publication in the Summer 2025 issue. The contest entry fee is $12, and submissions must be submitted before midnight (EST) on June 1, 2025.

Please make sure your manuscript is double-spaced with 12-point font. Submissions should be no more than 5,000 words. For poetry, send up to three poems in the same document. For flash fiction, send up to two stories in the same document. Author’s name and page number should appear in the top right-hand corner of every page. We also ask that you specify the category/genre of your work in the cover letter. Please see our Submission Guidelines before submitting. 

We will select a winner by the beginning of August 2025, and each entrant will receive a response.

Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

***Writers, please note that entry fees and feedback fees are non-refundable, and payment to the winner is awarded via PayPal. We reserve the right to extend the contest deadline if necessary.***

The Black Fox team looks forward to reading your wonderful submissions!

Announcing Black Fox Writing Academy’s May class! 

Writing about trauma is often framed as a path to healing, yet directly recounting personal experiences can make it difficult to see our work as a malleable piece of art. When we write too close to our own pain, revision becomes overwhelming, and feedback can feel personal rather than constructive. This course explores an alternative approach: distillation and transplantation of emotional truths.

Through readings, guided writing exercises, and discussions on narrative craft, students will explore how to process their own emotions through fiction. Rather than recounting lived experiences directly, they will learn to distill the core emotions within their memories and transplant them into completely new stories. We will experiment with techniques for creating emotional distance including metaphor, varied structure, and subtext to give shape to complex feelings. In doing so, students will develop tools for engaging with difficult emotions safely and creatively, transforming them into powerful fiction that is universal.

By the end of the course, students will have the tools to effectively engage with personal emotions through fiction. Students will leave with several original pieces of writing to continue transforming on their own. 

This class draws on the following research: 

Morgan, Ava T. Trauma and the Body: Turning to Fiction as Inquiry, The Ohio State University, United States -- Ohio, 2021. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/trauma-body-turning-fiction-as-inquiry/docview/2607677478/se-2.

Osman, K. T. . “Trauma and Fiction:: Representational Crises and Modalities”. Crossings: A Journal of English Studies, vol. 8, Aug. 2017, pp. 160-7, doi:10.59817/cjes.v8i.140.

Class will be held via Zoom and attendees may decide to attend live or register to receive the recorded class. 

When: Saturday, May 31, 2025, 2 - 4 PM EST

Investment: $67 USD

*Zoom access info for live attendees will be sent out immediately via Submittable, so be sure to check under the messages tab. Please note this particular class will only be live, and will not be recorded.
 

About Your Instructor:

Mary Shaver is a writer, educator, and MFA candidate in Fiction at the University of South Florida. She earned her BS in Elementary Education and Sociology from Vanderbilt University, where she studied curriculum design and taught creative writing workshops to K-5 students. 

Now, she teaches various workshops at the University of South Florida, grief support camps, and veterans art communities. In her own work, she explores research on creative writing pedagogy and narrative therapy practices. Her short stories emerge with themes of memory, transformation, and the intersection of the real and the imagined. Her fiction has been published in The Vanderbilt Review, Writing Queensland, and The Colored Lens, among others.

*Note: We will not be able to offer refunds once registration has been completed. Please make sure you are available during the time of the class before registering. However, in the event that Black Fox has to cancel class, we will refund participants who have signed up. If you have any questions, please reach out to racquel@blackfoxlitmag.com. 

Thank you for your interest in teaching your class at the Black Fox Writing Academy! The Black Fox Writing Academy offers writing classes (focused on craft, genre/category, and workshopping) to writers of all experience levels and our classes are held online via Zoom. 

This form is for class proposals from experienced instructors. We are looking for instructors who excel at teaching and inspiring writers. Our future instructors will be knowledgeable, compassionate, open-minded, and approachable. We want instructors who have a lot of heart. If that sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you.

This is a paid opportunity. All instructors are paid a flat hourly rate of $100/class hr. Classes should be a combination of lecture/instruction, writing exercises, analyzing, and class discussions.

To see what classes we have coming up, visit our blog.

     We are looking for classes in the following areas:
 

• Short stories
• Poetry
• Novels
• Essays
• Memoir
• Publishing
• Craft (plotting, character creation/development, dialogue, setting, etc.)
• Genre (mystery, romance, thriller, speculative, etc.)
• Editing/Revision
• Lit Analysis and discussion
• Any unconventional ideas you might have!

Once we review your application, we will reach out if we feel the class is a good fit. If we are interested in your class, you will be asked to submit a formal outline for your class, and send us a sample instructional video before we accept. Please don’t take it personally if we don’t accept your proposal. We don’t have the capacity to host every class submitted. We really wish we could. If we pass on your class, we encourage you to submit again.

For now, we will keep proposals open, however, we may decide to close if we become overwhelmed. 

Questions? Email us at racquel@blackfoxlitmag.com.

A response time of 2 weeks is guaranteed. Please make sure your manuscript is double-spaced with 12 point Times New Roman font. Fiction submissions should be no more than 5,000 words. Poetry submissions should be no more than 3 poems (poetry does not need to be double-spaced). Author's name, and page number should appear in the top right-hand corner of every page. Please visit our submission guidelines underneath the "Submit" section of our website for more details.

This category is for consideration in our print issue. Accepted contributors to our issues are paid $20 each.

Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

A response time of 4 weeks is guaranteed. Please make sure your manuscript is double-spaced with 12 point Times New Roman font. Fiction submissions should be no more than 5,000 words. Poetry submissions should be no more than 3 poems (poetry does not need to be double-spaced). Author's name, and page number should appear in the top right-hand corner of every page. Please visit our submission guidelines underneath the "Submit" section of our website for more details.

This category is for consideration in our print issue. Accepted contributors to our issues are paid $20 each.

Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

Donations help us with administration costs and with paying contributors. We are also hoping to make it to AWP each year, and donations can help with this. You may submit fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and blog posts to this category. Donations cannot be refunded. This is entirely optional and writers can still submit their work at no cost. Thank you for continuing to support Black Fox.

Make sure to read our submission guidelines before submitting. We expect a clean copy formatted with 12 pt Times New Roman font. Fiction and nonfiction should be double-spaced. Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

This category is for consideration in our print issue. Accepted contributors to our issues are paid $20 each.

Please make sure your manuscript is double-spaced with 12 point Times New Roman font. Submissions should be no more than 5,000 words. Author's name, and page number should appear in the top right hand corner of every page. Please visit our submission guidelines underneath the "Submit" section of our website for more details. 

This category is for consideration in our print issue. Accepted contributors to our issues are paid $20 each.

Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

Please make sure your manuscript is double-spaced with 12 point Times New Roman font. Submissions should be no more than 5,000 words. Author's name, and page number should appear in the top right hand corner of every page. Please visit our submission guidelines underneath the "Submit" section of our website for more details. 

This category is for consideration in our print issue. Accepted contributors to our issues are paid $20 each.

Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

We are looking for quality poetry. We don’t have many requirements for poetry, but please send only three poems at a time in one document. Poems do not have to be double spaced, but poets should still use Times New Roman, 12 pt. font and the poet’s last name/page number should still appear in the top right-hand corner of every page. If submitting multiple poems, submit them in one document. Poets, please keep in mind that our issue pages are 6x9. For this reason, poems with particularly long lines often don't work well. Please also review our general submission guidelines on the Black Fox website. 

This category is for consideration in our print issue. Accepted contributors to our issues are paid $20 each.

Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

We are looking for quality flash fiction. We love flash fiction that makes every word count! Stories should be 1,000 words or less. If your story is over 1,000 words, please submit it to the general fiction category. Please submit a double-spaced document with 12 pt Times New Roman font. Please read our submission guidelines before submitting. 

This category is for consideration in our print issue. Accepted contributors to our issues are paid $20 each.

Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

We're looking for personal essays and creative nonfiction. We tend to resonate more with nonfiction pieces that read more like fiction. There is no submission fee, but please prepare your manuscript according to our guidelines.

Preparing your Manuscript:

Please make sure your manuscript is double-spaced with 12 point Times New Roman font. Submissions should be no more than 5,000 words. Author's name, and page number should appear in the top right hand corner of every page. Please visit our submission guidelines underneath the "Submit" section of our website. 

This category is for consideration in our print issue. Accepted contributors to our issues are paid $20 each.

Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

We are looking for artwork to be featured on the covers of our issues. Please send your best artwork, including drawings, photographs etc. Please do not send more than five pieces of art at a time. If submitting multiple pieces, we prefer images to be in one document. Review previous covers to get a feel for our tastes. Artists are paid $30 for cover art.

The Black Fox blog is always looking for contributors. We are particularly interested in articles on the craft of writing, book reviews, book news, and publishing news. If it's writing, book, or publishing-related then this is the place for it. If we like your article, we'll publish it on our blog.

Blog posts should meet our general submission guidelines and be 1500 words or less. Please DO NOT submit work that isn't ready. Take your time and polish your work to the best of your ability before sending it in. No changes can be made to your submission after we receive it.

Black Fox Literary Magazine is on the hunt for a few good readers! Readers can expect to spend 4-5 hours per week on submissions. More specifically, we assign 10 submissions per week to prose readers and 15 submissions per week to poetry readers. Our reading team positions are voluntary at this time. Black Fox readers are sometimes invited to select classes through the Black Fox Writing Academy or our sister company, Writer’s Atelier.
Black Fox readers are responsible for reading submissions in their entirety, analyzing them from a craft standpoint, and assessing if they’re a good fit for Black Fox. We place much trust in our readers, as they essentially make recommendations to our editors for publication.

A few notes: Readers from historically marginalized communities are strongly encouraged to apply. Please also note that readers cannot have submissions under consideration while reading for Black Fox. If you have a submission under consideration, please withdraw it or wait until a later date to apply.

Potential readers should fill out our application and attach a resume/CV, cover letter, and a writing sample, preferably in the same category you wish to read. We will close applications once positions have been filled.
Thank you so much for considering Black Fox as a magazine worthy of your time. We can’t wait to hear from you!