Best of the Net Anthology

26/08/2024

Just FIVE MORE DAYS left to submit your full-length poetry manuscript to this year's open reading period! We can't wait to read yours! http://www.sundresspublications.com/submit

25/08/2024

Just ONE MORE WEEK to get your applications for Spring 2025 residencies at the Sundress Academy for the Arts! For the spring, we have residency fellowships for LGBTQIA+ writers and Black and/or Indigenous writers! http://www.sundresspublications.com/safta/residencies

02/08/2024

ATTN: Editors! The Best of the Net Anthology is now open for nominations for our 2025 edition! Nominations are due by September 30th. https://bestofthenetanthology.com/submissions/

16/07/2024

Sundress Publications are pleased to announce the release of the 2024 Best of the Net Anthology! Judges for this year’s anthology were Kristen Arnett, C.T. Salazar, Tijuana O. Eaton, and Astri Snodgrass. See the full list of winners and finalists on our site! http://bestofthenetanthology.com/

03/05/2024

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Mapping & Memory: Poetic Cartographies,” a free virtual workshop led by Kenzie Allen on May 8th, 2024, from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. In this generative workshop inspired by Indigenous and extracanonical methods of mapmaking and storytelling, we’ll chart the literary cartographies of authors like Craig Santos Perez, Richard Siken, Pattiann Rogers, and more, to uncover new possibilities for using context-aware forms and patterns in books and individual poems. https://www.facebook.com/events/1169947707507103

Send a message to learn more

12/02/2024

Just THREE MORE DAYS to apply for summer residencies at the Sundress Academy for the Arts! Fellowships available for Palestinian writers, Black & Indigenous writers, writers of color, and women writers over 50. https://sundressblog.com/2023/12/18/sundress-academy-for-the-arts-now-accepting-residency-applications-for-summer-2024/

07/01/2024

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is hosting its fourth generative writing retreat celebrating survival and healing on March 22-23, 2024. This two-day retreat for sexual assault survivors will be held in Oak Ridge, TN and will be a safe space for creativity, generative writing exercises, discussions on ways to write trauma, advice on publishing, and more. Come join us in mutual support for a weekend of writing time for healing, safety, and comfort. Deadline to apply is 1/15. http://www.sundresspublications.com/safta/retreats

05/12/2023

Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length prose manuscripts in all genres including short stories, novellas, memoir, creative nonfiction, hybrid work, etc. From December 1st to 14th, submissions to this open reading period are free for the first submission for any and all writers. http://www.sundresspublications.com/news/2023/12/sundress-publications-open-for-full-length-prose-manuscripts-2/

01/12/2023

Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length prose manuscripts in all genres including short stories, novellas, memoir, creative nonfiction, hybrid work, etc. From December 1st to 14th, submissions to this open reading period are free for the first submission for any and all writers.

Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length prose manuscripts in all genres. All authors are welcome to submit manuscripts during our reading period, which runs from December 1, 2023 – February 29, 2024. Sundress is particularly interested in prose collections that value genre hyb...

11/10/2023

Sundress Publications is looking for members for our newly created Reader Board. These volunteer readers’ responsibilities would primarily include reading manuscripts for contests, open reading periods, and solicited submissions, but they may also review residency and reading series applications or serve as readers for Best of the Net. http://www.sundresspublications.com/news/2023/09/sundress-publications-seeking-applications-for-new-reader-board/

22/09/2023

We are very excited to announce that Astri Snodgrass will serve as this year's Best of the Net judge for art! Astri Snodgrass is a visual artist and educator based in Boise, Idaho. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Alabama and a BA in Art and Spanish from Luther College. Studies in Norway and Argentina helped shape her interests in language, light, and perception. Her work has been exhibited nationally in solo and group shows at COOP Gallery, Mild Climate, and Channel to Channel in Nashville, Tennessee, the Fuel and Lumber Company in Birmingham, Alabama, The University of North Carolina Asheville, the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho, Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the University of West Georgia. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Studios Midwest, Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, VCCA, and Vermont Studio Center. Snodgrass is an Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting at Boise State University.

21/09/2023

This year's poetry judge for Best of the Net is C.T. Salazar! Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking, is now available from Acre Books. He’s the author of three chapbooks, most recently American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021). He’s the 2020 recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in poetry. His poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, RHINO, and elsewhere.

19/09/2023

Very excited to introduce this year's fiction judge, Kristen Arnett! Arnett is the q***r author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction, and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019), which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and the Millay Colony, and was shortlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career writers of fiction. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, and elsewhere. Her next book (an untitled collection of short stories) will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House). She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida.

04/08/2023

Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts! We’re looking for manuscripts of forty-eight to eighty (48-80) single-spaced pages! Our submission fee is waived for writers of color or those who purchase a book!

Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts. All authors are welcome to submit qualifying manuscripts during our reading period of June 1st to August 31st, 2023, but we especially welcome authors from marginalized and underrepresented communities. We’re looking ...

02/08/2023

Very excited to announce Jillian A. Fantin will serve as one of our two new Assistant Editors at Best of the Net! Jillian A. Fantin (they/them) is a poet with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a former Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut micro-chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.

31/07/2023

Meet Amber Alexander, one of our two new Assistant Editors at Best of the Net! Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They are a former editorial intern for Sundress Publications, former editorial board member for Cornfield Review, and was a Sundress Academy for The Arts Writing Resident in 2023. Their work has been published by Cornfield Review and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University. on twitter.

28/07/2023

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is now accepting applications for short-term writing residencies in all genres—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, screenwriting, journalism, academic writing, and more—for their spring residency period which runs from January 1 to May 12, 2024. Fellowships available for LGBTQIA+ writers and Black and/or Indigenous writers.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is now accepting applications for short-term writing residencies in all genres—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, screenwriting, journalism, academic writing, and more—for their spring residency period which runs from January 1 to May 12, 2024. Th...

27/07/2023

The 2024 Best of the Net Anthology is open for nominations! Editors can nominate work in the categories of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art.

We are currently OPEN for submissions. We will close on 9/30/2023. Submit to Best of the Net here. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES **The guidelines below remain here for reference only and may shift from year to year. We update these just before opening every year thus the guidelines below, when we’re close...

26/07/2023

We are thrilled to introduce our newest Fiction Editor, Shipra Agarwal! Shipra Agarwal is a doctor-turned-author who studied creative writing at Harvard. A Pushcart nominee, Shipra writes about the small towns of India, similar to the one she grew up in. She’s currently revising a linked collection, a story from which was published in Witness and nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize, 2023; another was shortlisted for the First Pages Prize, 2022, and was a semifinalist at the IHLR long story contest, 2022. Her writing has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Sundress Academy for the Arts, GrubStreet, and Women’s National Book Association. Founder of Lityatra—a platform that celebrates the journeys of BIPOC authors—Shipra can be found hiking and kayaking in Arizona, and at www.shipraagarwal.com.

19/07/2023

We are very excited to introduce you to our newest Nonfiction Editor for Best of the Net, Ching-In Chen! Descended from ocean dwellers, Ching-In Chen is a genderq***r Chinese American writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2009) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing (speCt! Books) and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 1st edition; AK Press, 2nd edition) and currently a core member of the Massage Parlor Outreach Project as well as a Kelsey Street Press collective member. They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center and the Intercultural Leadership Institute as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. They are currently collaborating with Cassie Mira and others on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation, health and environmental justice. They teach in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics at University of Washington Bothell and serve as Writer in Residence at Hugo House. www.chinginchen.com

14/07/2023

Doubleback Review is looking for a Nonfiction Editor! This volunteer position would consist of reading nonfiction submissions and working with the editorial board at Doubleback Review in order to select pieces for re-publication. Applications due by 7/25!

Does rifling through poetic lost and found bins sound like your idea of a good time? Do you hate to see good poems disappear into the void? Do you have a weird thing for poems, zombies, and zombie poems? Join the Doubleback Review team!

27/06/2023

Calling all poets! We are looking for readers for our Fall 2023 reading series in Knoxville, TN. We support our readers with a $100 honorarium and promotion on our social media pages. Applications due by 7/15!

From September to November of 2023, the Sundress Reading Series will be back in person at Pretentious Beer Co. in the Knoxville Old City. This year’s iteration of the reading series will feature two headlining poets with an open mic to follow. The Sundress Reading Series is an award-winning litera...

01/06/2023

"I Dream in English" in Santa Clara Review
– Ria Unson



https://bestofthenetanthology.com/2023-2/art-2023/i-dream-in-english/

31/05/2023

"OCD Portrait I" in The Adroit Journal
– Adam Lupton



https://bestofthenetanthology.com/2023-2/art-2023/ocd-portrait-i/

30/05/2023

"Linger" in Club Plum
– Nicole Brayan



https://bestofthenetanthology.com/2023-2/art-2023/linger/

29/05/2023

"Inkling of Dreaming" in antonym
– Ambyunderock



https://bestofthenetanthology.com/2023-2/art-2023/inkling-of-dreaming/

25/05/2023

"A baptism is a surrender to death, in hopes that one might come back up for air transformed."

'Ophelia’s Baptism' in Vita Poetica
– Abigail Platter



http://bestofthenetanthology.com/2023-2/art-2023/ophelias-baptism/

24/05/2023

"Soon after I moved to the UK, a woman sprinted through my village’s main crosswalk, where traffic from two hills streams into a dip in the road."

– April Yee

Soon after I moved to the UK, a woman sprinted through my village’s main crosswalk, where traffic from two hills streams into a dip in the road. I had rushed to make the light many times myself, running to the beat of the flashing green man. New to my adopted country, I did not know that the flash...

23/05/2023

"He swims through grief that is the same texture as loneliness. He swims through the breakdown of his body."

– Sunni Brown Wilkinson

Earl leaves a message I don’t get for some reason until the next day. He starts off by clearing his throat and says, “It’s Earl who lives across from your cul-de-sac and I’ve washed your container, the one you brought that soup in, and it’s waiting for you here. Just come on over and we’...

22/05/2023

"On their second date, insisted he did not want to be the first party’s therapist. Spent the next seventeen years analyzing her every move and utterance."

– Lucy Wilde

This Mutual Release and Hold Harmless Agreement (“the Agreement”) is effective as of this date, July 24, 2013, between the first and second party. Both parties enter the Agreement at Vancouver General Hospital Intensive Care Unit, Vancouver, B.C. Between:         Lucy Wilde (the first par...