Good River Review is the literary journal of the Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. They have published two issues a year online. They were founded in 2020. In that time they have already published a number of well-known writers, and have started to establish a reputation as publishing strong writing.
You can easily get a good feel for what The Good River Review has published recently by reading their most recent issue here. As a side note, the editor in chief, Kathleen Driskell, wrote a thoughtful letter from the editor about the shuttering of The Gettysburg Review, and literary journals in general. You can read it here.
Current students at the Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing can not submit to the journal, but everyone else can. Work must not be previously published. Simultaneous submissions are permitted as long as you reach out if your work is accepted elsewhere.
They try to respond to all submissions within 4 months.
Each issue has a section for prose work, lyric work, dramatic work, as well as reviews and interviews. In all genres work intended for children and young adult readers is published alongside work intended for a broader audience, which is unusual. For writing for children and young adults, you do have to submit through a different category listed at the bottom of their Submittable page.
They are also open to queries to review books that have been published within the past two years. These books can include works of fiction, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, hybrid and cross-genre forms, and writing for children and young adults. They are also seeking reviewers.
They ask that prose writers submit one story, or one longer-form essay, memoir, or immersive journalism that is no longer than 5,000 words, or if the work is less than 2,000 words, they can submit two two shorter stories or essays.
Lyric writers can submit up to five poems or micro pieces, no more than ten pages. They don’t set strict length limits for micro pieces but they are generally between 50-300 words.
Dramatic writers can submit scripts for 10-minute stage plays or short films, including TV. They do also consider videos of produced scripts.
To learn more, please visit their submission page here.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2023 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
