AMERICA’S FUTURE, AN ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY & PROSE Open for Submissions September 1-December 31st
We invite you to contribute to AMERICA’S FUTURE, an anthology of poetry and prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) by the Washington Writers’ Publishing House scheduled to be published in September 2025. We are the nation’s longest, continuously operating cooperative literary nonprofit press in the United States. We plan to explore our nation’s hopes, dreams, challenges, and joys through a literary lens. SEE OUR PROMPTS BELOW. Our Submittable link is now live here.
Why now? (America’s Future prompt)
To celebrate the Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s 50th anniversary and the Nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.
As literary artists, we believe that while the past should never be forgotten; it is also critical that we imagine the possibilities of the future in writings across genre and form.
We seek poems/stories that grapple with the past or present as they look toward tomorrow and the unknown. We want the realities of challenges and conflict and insights of America in 2025 and beyond to resonate in your work.
We seek poetry and stories that enlighten us on what could be possible, what we wish could come next, or what we hope will never come next (but still dare to write about it). We aim to have this anthology be a mix of lighter and darker themes.
We seek creative works that bring America forth in setting, character, and/or themes.
We seek creative works focused on the future in any timeframe—one minute from now, a year, a decade, a hundred years, etc. We want forward-looking pieces. We are not looking back.
We are not seeking easy answers or inspirational work. We are looking for poetry and stories of the highest literary quality that challenge us and surprise us.
General Guidelines:
1. We do seek diverse voices. We aim to have America’s Future be an inclusive anthology representing the richness of the voices that have roots in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. There is a $5.00 submission fee to offset our production costs.
2. We acquire First North American serial rights, and payment is a $25.00 honorarium per contributor made possible by our grant from the Amazon Literary Partnership.
3.WWPH does not accept work that has been generated by artificial intelligence in any manner. We want your original work only.
4. WWPH does not accept work that has been previously published or curated, in print or online—work cannot have been published in books, magazines, or similar collections open to the public. We want to be the first publisher to highlight the works, but never want to discourage anyone from sharing their poems themselves. For more on this, read “Uncurated: The Case for a New Term of Art.”
5. Please submit no more than 3 single-spaced poems at a time, with a maximum of 5 pages per total submission.
6. Please submit any single work of prose (fiction or cnf) up to 2,500 words. Flash fiction/cnf under 1,000 words is strongly encouraged.
7. Writers must have some connection to DC, Maryland, or Virginia (i.e. a writer does not need to reside in the DMV at this time, but must have some roots in DC, Maryland or Virginia. For example: attended school here, resided here, and have family roots here).
8. All writers will be invited to participate in a reading (live or via zoom) to share their work and ideas.
9. Please NO simultaneous submissions. Write a piece that you think is right for AMERICA’S FUTURE. Be part of the literary conversation with us about what’s next.
Please read our last anthology, This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Prose from DC, Maryland, and Virginia, edited by Caroline Bock and Jona Colson (the same editors for America’s Future) and WWPH Writes (https://www.washingtonwriters.org/wwph-writes/) for the kind of literary writing that we have published.
For inquiries or to be considered for a fee waiver, email our editors at:
We are grateful to grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Amazon Literary Partnership for supporting AMERICA’S FUTURE.
