Cold Mountain Review is a twice yearly print publication that is interested in essays, narrative non fiction, short fiction, and poetry. Cold Mountain Review has been around for 35 years. They are only open for submissions until the 30th of May, after that they will not consider submissions until August.
Cold Mountain Review is published by the Appalachian State University. They are well respected and have published many well known authors over the last few decades. They are only available in print, but excerpts of pieces they particularly enjoy are available online, so that you can get a feel for what they like.
They only accept one submission per writer per year, so choose what you are going to submit carefully. They only accept postal submissions, which actually helps your chances as most writers now exclusively submit online. This may account for their relatively high acceptance rate. They accept almost 15% of the work submitted to them. This is very unusual because they are established and respected journal.
Your submission must include an SASE (self addressed stamped envelope), otherwise they will not read it. They do not accept previously published work but they do accept simultaneous submissions. You can submit up to five poems at a time. Short stories and works of creative non fiction should be no more then 6,000 words in length. Poems should be single spaced and all other work should be double spaced.
When choosing poems the editors really seem to gravitate towards images and an easy to follow narrative. In terms of fiction and non fiction the editors seem to gravitate towards details.
They usually respond to submissions within two months, so if you haven’t heard from them by the third month it might be the right time to send them an email.
In conclusion Cloud Mountain Review is a respected, established journal, that publishes good detail driven story. They are an excellent journal to have on your list of publications, so please submit before the end of May.
