How to submit to The Dodge

The Dodge takes submissions through our Submittable for our quarterly issues (Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall).

Please take the time to read our submission guidelines below before submitting work.

Fiction and nonfiction submissions have now re-opened (as of March 31, 2024).

Translation & poetry submissions remain open.

We charge a $3 fee per submission in order to maintain our online submission platform. If you’re unable to afford this fee, please email us at editors@thedodgemag.com for a fee waiver.

We only accept hard copy submissions from incarcerated writers and those with accessibility needs: The Dodge, Dept. of English, The College of Wooster, 716 Beall Ave, Wooster, OH 44691

General Guidelines

The Dodge seeks your best work in eco-writing, writing about animals, and translation on these themes. Surprise us! We might see these categories differently if an especially good piece of writing strikes us as relevant. We’re excited by a wide range of forms and approaches, including hybrid and experimental work. Among other things, we’re interested in broadening the scope of stories, poems, and essays about nature and animals; we hope to see translations across borders, time, and space.

We receive a lot of work focused on dogs, cats, and charismatic megafauna. Obviously, these non-human animals are important in our human lives, and people write great things about them, many of which we’ve published. But we’re really excited to read about other less explicable creatures as well. Eco-writing as we see it can include minerals, fungi, forests, insects, fire, etc.

We’re eager to champion emerging voices and actively encourage writers historically underrepresented in magazine publishing and eco-writing to submit. We want to read writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA+ folks, gender-nonconforming people, people with disabilities, women, and others.

• Submit your work in .docx or PDF; Times New Roman, 12 point font. Double-space prose submissions. Single-space poetry is fine.
• Do not include identifying information on your manuscript.
• Cover letters are optional for all genres except translation. 
• Please include content notes for any material in your submission for which you think readers may appreciate advance notice. Examples include: violence, sexual assault, racism, suicide, self-harm.
• We accept simultaneous submissions, but withdraw your piece on Submittable promptly if it is accepted elsewhere. If you have submitted multiple works, send a Submittable message to tell us which works you must withdraw. We do not publish previously published work at this time.
• Once you have submitted work, please wait to receive a response from our editors on that submission before submitting again. Please limit your submissions to once or twice a year. 
• We aim to respond within 3-6 months.
• Readers and editors of the magazine may not submit work.
• If your work has been published in The Dodge, we ask that you wait 12 months from your date of publication to submit again. 

Genre-specific Guidelines

Fiction
Submit works of fiction up to 8000 words in length. We are open to flash and micro fiction.  See full details below.

Nonfiction
Submit works of creative nonfiction up to 7000 words in length. We are open to flash nonfiction. See full details below.

Poetry
Submit up to 5 poems in one document. See full details below.

Translation
Submit up to 8 poems in translation or 20 pages of prose. Submission of the work in the original language and permission from the writer is required. A short (2 page max) introduction to the writer and their work can also be included, plus an intro of the translator(s). See full details below.