Welcome to the Good Life!
The Good Life Review is an online literary journal committed to exploring the overlooked. Based out of Omaha, Nebraska—astride the oft unnoticed—we recognize that there are a myriad of voices that call the regions surrounding us home. Our mission is to lift up the strange, the daring, and the underrepresented to reveal complexities hidden in the heartland and beyond.
We are currently open for multiple publication opportunities plus artwork! We nominate for Pushcart and Best of the Net and pay $25-$75 for each published piece of writing.
General guidelines are as follows:
- Simultaneous submissions are accepted as long as we are promptly made aware of acceptance elsewhere. Simply withdraw in Submittable – or – for individual flash pieces or poems, initiate a message in Submittable indicating which title(s) are being withdrawn.
- The Good Life Review acquires First North American Serial Rights and the right to maintain an archive copy of work online. All other rights revert to author upon publication with a request that if the work is reprinted, appropriate acknowledgment to The Good Life Review is made.
- We do not publish offensive work or pieces which exhibit hatred directed toward a particular gender, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual identity, socioeconomic class, or other status, regardless of protected by law. In other words—if you are an asshole, we don’t want your writing or your money.
- Each submissions should include work from only one genre/category (for example do not create a submission with both fiction and poetry unless it is to be considered as a hybrid piece). Please only one submission per category at a time and wait to hear back before submitting again.
- Work must be original and previously uncurated. Please reference this thoughtful article by Tim Green on curation versus publication. We want your very best!
Currently Supported Genres:
Poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, micro fiction, short cnf, flash cnf, micro cnf, and any of the aforementioned translated from Spanish to English (with the original author's permission).
Reading Periods:
The Good Life Review is always open. Reading and selection for our seasonal issues is based on the following schedule:
February 1 – July 31 (Autumn Issue)
August 1 – January 31 (Spring)
November 15 – April 15 (Summer Honeybee Prize Issue)
As of February 2023 we publish micro prose and short poems on a semi-monthly basis on “The Buzz.” Pieces submitted to any category/project that meet the micro requirement (page/word count) will also be under consideration for this segment.
We are always open for artwork to be featured in our seasonal issues which are also free to submit.
To get an sense for the kind of work we publish, please visit thegoodlifereview.com/
Work submitted here will be considered for our "Micro Monday" segment (online) and not our quarterly issues. We currently pay $25 per piece for work published in this segment. Guidelines are as follows:
- One piece per submission, please. Once you submit, please wait until you hear back from us before submitting to this micro prose / short poem category again. Other submission opportunities for publication at TGLR are here.
- We consider original, previously uncurated work only.
- Max word count for fiction and CNF is about 500 words.
- A single poem, no longer than 1 page.
- Submissions should be typed using 12 point serif font, preferably Times New Roman in Word or PDF format. Prose should be double spaced whereas poems should be formatted as the author desires. We do our best to retain any special formatting when publishing.
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We support Spanish translations as long as the rights to translate have been previously acquired.
We will respond to all submitted work. It may take from one to six months depending on when the work is submitted. Thank you in advance for your patience.
A comprehensive set of guidelines can be found on our submission page.
Does your original photography or artwork tell a story? We are currently looking for pieces to feature in our next issue. There are no specific guidelines and the only requirement is that artwork must be original. We would encourage you to check out our latest issue @ https://thegoodlifereview.com/ to see if we would be a good home for your work.
Please note: We're a 501C3 nonprofit organization and every member of our staff is a volunteer. We put a priority on creating a beautiful platform for artists and writers to showcase their work and a positive experience with publishing but are only able to pay for artwork used on the cover of our seasonal issues at this time, which is $50 as of the spring 2024 issue. We appreciate all the love that goes into every piece and hope that we can pay all artists for their efforts soon.
We will respond to all submitted work, however, pieces we have a particular interest in may remain "in process" for the duration of a calendar year. Our aim is to select pieces that visually complement the writing accepted for our seasonal issues and therefore we don't know what might make a good match until the writing is selected. Thank you in advance for your patience.
Work submitted here will be considered for our Spring 2024 issue (online). We publish poetry, flash fiction, flash nonfiction, short fiction, short nonfiction, and Spanish translations. Payment for this issue is $75 per published piece of writing ($100 for two pieces). Genre guidelines are as follows:
For Fiction and Creative Nonfiction:
- We consider original, previously unpublished stories and essays up to 5000 words (if it’s a little more, we will keep reading, but the story has to earn it). Please select the correct category on the form so the submission can be routed to the correct editorial team.
- For flash and micro, no more than 3 pieces in a single submission.
- Submissions should be typed, double-spaced and paginated with one-inch margins and a 12 point serif font, preferably Times New Roman in Word or PDF format.
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For Poetry:
- We consider original, previously unpublished poems in formal, free verse, and experimental forms.
- There is no length limit on individual poems, but please send no more than 5 poems per submission and no more than 10 pages in total.
- Poems should be typed with at least one-inch margins and a 12 point serif font, preferably Times New Roman in Word or PDF format. We do our best to format poems to the exact specification desired but those with long lines may wrap unconditionally when rendered on some tablets and mobile phones.
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We support Spanish translations as long as the rights to translate have been previously acquired.
A comprehensive set of guidelines can be found on the submission page of our website.
We will respond to all submitted work, however, it may take from one to six months depending on when the work is submitted within the given reading period. Thank you in advance for your patience.
This year the prize payout is $2000 across 3 genres.
Four to six finalists in each of the categories (Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction) will be sent to our guest judges who will select a winner and runner-up. Our 2024 Poetry Judge is Nebraska State Poet, Matt Mason, and our prose judges will be announced in December.
The winning entry in each of the three categories will receive $500, publication in our summer 2024 issue, and a jar of honey from a Midwest apiary. The runner-up in each category will receive $75, and publication. Other finalists may be invited to be published as well.
The contest fee is $15, increasing to $18 on February 15th. Finalists will be announced in May and winners in June. Response time on contest submissions may be up to six months depending on the submission date. Thank you in advance for your patience.
Other submission guidelines are the same as our regular publication guidelines. We will not consider previously published work and request that all personal identifiable information is removed from the submitted manuscript. For a comprehensive set of guidelines and genre specific details, please visit our general submission page.
Finalists will be selected by our current editorial team.