CRAFT Summer Feedback Sprint

CRAFT Summer Feedback Sprint
August 1 – 31, 2025

Registrations open through August 31!

We know time is short and waiting is a drag, and so with summer sprinting to a close, we’re excited to introduce our Summer Feedback Sprint. For this event, we’ll pair your story or essay with an experienced editor and return your feedback within two weeks. You’ll receive line-level marginal notes, as well as a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. While editorial feedback is inherently subjective, our suggestions will always be actionable and encouraging.

Why request feedback? Maybe you’re stuck on a scene, or can’t quite find a home for a particular story or essay. New eyes on your work can make all the difference in your revision process. As we all know, writing successful prose is a lifelong endeavor that takes time, perseverance, and patience. As writers, we can continue to thrive through a strong sense of community by sharing our work with others eager to give feedback.

In your cover letter, include a brief introduction to your story, any specific feedback you’re looking for on the manuscript, as well as any challenges you’re facing in revision.

For this event, we’re thrilled to partner with Literistic to provide a free one-year subscription to their newsletter service for all participants (an $84 value), no strings attached, no automatic charges unless you choose to continue the service after twelve months.

Registration for this event is $99 per manuscript. For an additional $5, participants can sign up for a raffle, with winners selected in early September. One lucky winner will receive an editorial feedback voucher for a future submission. Other prizes include a copy of Phillip Anderson’s Landing in Andonia, the winner of the CRAFT 2024 Novelette Print Prize; and a selection of craft books from CRAFT’s curated Bookshop.org bookshelf.

GUIDELINES:

The Summer Feedback Sprint is open to all prose writers.
Please send fiction or creative nonfiction only.
International submissions are welcome. Work must be written primarily in English, but some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
Please adhere to the 6,000-word-count maximum.
Note that work that has received editorial feedback from CRAFT is not eligible for submission to our contests.
Multiple submissions are welcome, though you must pay the $99 registration fee for each manuscript.
Kindly double-space and use Times New Roman 12.
We do not consider or review AI-generated or AI-assisted work.
We strongly discourage simultaneous submissions in conjunction with editorial feedback. If your piece is already under review by our team and you withdraw it, we will not be able to offer a refund. If you withdraw your piece before we have begun feedback, we will be happy to let you substitute another piece of equal length.
We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason.
Additionally, we do not tolerate discrimination in the writing we review. Work we find discriminatory on any of the bases stated here will be declined without complete review (you will be refunded, less fees).
We are always happy to answer any questions. Email us: contact@craftliterary.com.

EVENT PARTNER:

Literistic was founded in 2015 by Liam Sarsfield and Jessie Jones as a newsletter service compiling submission opportunities for fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction writers. Since then, the list has only grown to be more robust, more equitable, and more useful. Literistic is now run by Jen Dupree, who works hard to present the very best opportunities available each month. Contests to cut your teeth on. Fellowships to give you that extra support and room of your own. Journals to bring your lovely words into the world. And more. There’s always more, and you can bet we’ll find the best new opportunities and share them with you each and every month.

EDITORIAL FEEDBACK TEAM:

KATE BLAKINGER is a writer and editor. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Epiphany, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Offing, and other journals. She is a Tin House Workshop alumna and holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. The Elizabeth George Foundation, MacDowell, Jentel, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center have supported her writing with fellowships. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

ALEXA DORAN recently completed her PhD in poetry at Florida State University. Her full-length collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). Look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Witness, Salt Hill Journal, and Gigantic Sequins, among others.

ROSS FEELER’s fiction has appeared in Electric Literature’s “Recommended Reading,” The Common, New South, Potomac Review, Story | Houston, Hypertext, and others. His novel-in-progress received the Marianne Russo Award from the Key West Literary Seminar and was a finalist for James Jones First Novel Award. He teaches English at Texas State University.

B. B. GARIN is a writer living in Buffalo, New York. Her echapbook, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. Her work has appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Palooka, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, and more. She is currently a prose reader and blog contributor for The Masters Review. She continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels. Connect with her online @bb_garin.

JILL KOLONGOWSKI writes the Substack Tiny True Stories and is also the author of the essay collection Life Lessons Harry Potter Taught Me (Ulysses Press, 2017). Her work also appears in Electric Lit, Insider, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brevity, River Teeth, and elsewhere. Her essays have won Sundog Lit’s First Annual Contest series and the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Nonfiction at Lunch Ticket, and she earned her MFA from St. Mary’s College of California. Jill teaches writing at the College of San Mateo, and lives in Northern California with her husband and daughter. Find her on Twitter @jillkolongowski.

VAL M. MATHEWS is a big-hearted, fun-loving editor who teaches courses in developmental editing for the University of California Berkeley Extension, Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and the Editorial Freelancers Association in New York City. Val also freelances on the side and works as an editorial consultant for CRAFT and The Masters Review. Previously, she was an editor for The Wild Rose Press, a small traditional publishing house in New York. She earned an MA in professional writing from Kennesaw State University and a BFA from the University of Georgia. Fun fact about Val: She’s been an FAA-certified flight instructor for over twenty-five years, and in the past, she flew Lear jets for a living.

JUSTINE PAYTON is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington where she is a recipient of the Philip Gerard Graduate Fellowship and the Bernice Kert Fellowship in Creative Writing. She has been published or has work forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, Isele Magazine, The Masters Review, The Keeping Room, and others. She is currently the managing editor of ONLY POEMS, an editor for Ecotone, and an editorial intern with Tin House. Find her on Instagram @just_a_rose4.

REBECCA REYNOLDS has an MFA in creative writing. Her short fiction has been published in various literary magazines, including Ascent, MudRoom, and The Boiler, and her story collection This Is How We Speak is forthcoming with Cornerstone Press. She lives outside Boston with her husband and three boys, and by day she is a children’s librarian. Find her on Twitter @rsreynolds611.

GAGE SAYLOR is the assistant director of creative writing at Oklahoma State University. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Passages North, Tampa Review, Crab Creek Review, Iron Horse, and elsewhere. He has won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize at Nimrod and is a previous semifinalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize at North American Review. He received his MFA at McNeese State University, where he was awarded the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction.

CHLOE CHUN SEIM is the author of CHURN, an illustrated novel-in-stories, which won the 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize and was named a finalist for Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Texas Review Press published CHURN in late 2023. Chloe’s fiction has appeared in LitMag, where she won the 2021 Anton Chekov Award for Flash Fiction, and in Split Lip Magazine, The McNeese Review, Potomac Review, and more. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas.