Welcome to the Good Life! 🍯
☘️ March 2026 Update: Submissions to our Summer Issue are open (fee of $2.50 for flash, $4 for short fiction and CNF). ☘️ Our 2026 HoneyBee Poetry Prize is also open (fee of $18). ☘️ Micro Monday subs are open too (fee of $ 2.50). ☘️
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 nominate for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and the Pen/Dau Short Story Prize. We pay $60 for writing published in our seasonal issues, and $25 for Micro Monday features and cover art.
General guidelines are as follows:
- Simultaneous submissions are cool, cool. Withdraw in Submittable – or – for individual flash pieces or poems, send a message via Submittable indicating which title(s) are being withdrawn.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 the work online. All other rights revert to the 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- We do not publish offensive work or pieces that exhibit hatred directed toward a particular gender, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual identity, age, socioeconomic class, or disability. In other words, if you are an asshole, we don’t want your writing or your money.
- If there is a content warning, please include it in the submitted document before the work.
- We prefer to read blind, so please remove your name from the submitted document.
- Your submission will NOT be disqualified if it was submitted incorrectly. We will not penalize you for a mistake, and if we have a question or concern about your submission, we will contact you. Please know that we are on your side. Thank you for trusting us with your work.
- Work must be original and previously uncurated. Work appearing on a personal blog or social media is fine. Please reference this thoughtful article by Tim Green on curation. 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). We are also dipping our toes into the wonderful world of spoken word. Details available under our open call for the upcoming issue.
Reading Periods:
The Good Life Review is always open. Reading and selection for our seasonal issues is based on the following schedule:
January 21 – April 20 (Summer Issue). Final decisions in May.
April 21 – July 20 (Autumn Issue). Final decisions in August.
July 21 – October 20 (Winter Issue). Final decisions in November.
October 21 – January 20 (Spring Issue). Final decisions in February.
The Honeybee Poetry Prize: October 21 – April 20. Final Decisions in June.
We publish micro pieces on a semi-monthly basis on TGLR Buzz ~ Micro Monday. Work submitted to any category/project that meets the micro requirement (under 400 words) will also be under consideration for this segment.
If a project is not listed / available, it means we have reached our submission cap and our editors are busy working through the queue.
To get a sense for the kind of work we publish, please visit thegoodlifereview.com
Work submitted here will be considered for our Summer 2026 issue (online).
Payment for short fiction and CNF is $60 per published piece.
Genre guidelines are as follows...
- 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.
- 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.
- If there are content warnings, please include those in the submitted document preceding the piece.
- We prefer to read blind, so please remove your name from the submitted document.
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For flash fiction and cnf, please use the flash category/portal instead.
Poetry for the summer issue is being accepted via the HoneyBee prize category/portal only.
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We also support Spanish translations, provided 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 work submitted here within 3 months. Thank you in advance for your patience.
Work submitted here will be considered for our Summer 2026 issue (online), and micro pieces (under 400 words) will also be considered for a spot in our Micro Monday Feature.
Payment for work published in our seasonal issue is $60 per published piece. Payment for Micro Monday is $25 per published piece.
Genre guidelines are as follows...
- Send one piece per submission.
- We consider original, previously unpublished stories and essays up to 1000 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.
- 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.
- If there are content warnings, please include those in the submitted document preceding the piece.
- We prefer to read blind, so please remove your name from the submitted document.
-------------------------
For longer work, please use the short fiction and CNF category/portal instead.
Poetry for the summer issue is being accepted via the HoneyBee prize category/portal only.
-------------------------
For Spoken Word:
- Send one piece per submission, max of 3 minutes.
- If there is a content warning, please include it preceding the piece.
- We prefer to read/listen/watch blind, so please do not include your name in the piece or as a part of the file name.
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We also support Spanish translations, provided 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 work submitted here within 3 months. Thank you in advance for your patience.