Thank you for your interest in SHIFT, a publication of MTSU Write. Please find our general call for submissions below, along with a call from our partner organization, Poetry in the Boro. 

Each year, the Southern Literary Festival Association accepts creative writing entries from undergraduates at members schools in the following categories: POETRY, FICTION, SHORT PLAY, FORMAL ESSAY, CREATIVE NONFICTION, LITERARY PRINT AND EZINE.

Winners will be published in the 2024 SLFA Anthology and present their work at the 2024 Southern Literary Festival, April 4-6, hosted by the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.

Writers must be undergraduates and must be enrolled for credit during the 2023-2024 school year at MTSU. 

Works entered cannot have been published except in campus newspapers or magazines.

Essays, stories (including groups of stories), and plays may not exceed 5,000 words. Poetry may not exceed 100 lines for either one poem or a group of related poems.

The category for literary e-zines is intended for literary magazines produced exclusively in and for an electronic format. E-zine submissions must also adhere to the rules of submission for literary magazines.

Entries must be double-spaced (poems should be single spaced) and (with the exception of print literary magazines) submitted in Word

Groups of short poems or flash fiction submitted as a single entry must be submitted as a single document.

Shift: a Publication of MTSU Write