What we publish
We publish fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, hybrid works, translations, book reviews & visual art. We are a biannual online publication. We love a wide range of genres and styles, especially writing that is innovative in form and progressive in content.
Now accepting submissions for Issue 38
Theme: POP!
You got us wet for our last issue. Now, for Issue 38, we want you to evoke pop. Subvert our expectations. If your bubble burst, if the world ended, if everything you knew came to an end, where would you run to? Think of pop culture, pop stars, iconography, bubblegum. Think of sharp points and rough edges. Think of popsicles. Think loud, obnoxious. Take big swings. Surprise us. Send us poetry that pops out of its form to shift into something messy and new. Send us stories that take us places we never thought of going, but we’re oh so happy to be. Send us lyric essays, contrapuntals, prosimetrums. Send us work that doesn’t fit into any one bubble. Memoir that unravels in all directions until, pop, the words just splatter all over the page. Think of more sex. Think of sticky. Think about gum stuck to the bottom of your desk. Think about your fingers poking at that gum, mushing it around, digging in its center. Think of burst blood vessels and popping pimples. What makes your eyes bulge out of your head? Better yet, show us how you pop those eyes back into their sockets. Send us whatever you want - just make it POP!
More important than any theme, we welcome all submissions as long as they're honest and authentic - what we want most of all is your best work. Work must be original, created without the use of AI, and previously unpublished (with the exception of translations - see genre guidelines).
Not sure if your work is suited to our magazine? Find out what we like by reading our current issue.
We acknowledge that literary spaces traditionally have centered the white, heterosexual, cisgender male experience at the expense of other voices. We want to break from that tradition and are therefore especially interested in reading work from those who are often marginalized in literary spaces, including Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC); all women, including but not limited to, trans and cis women; LGBTQIA+ people; agender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people; people with disabilities; and people who live at the intersections of identities.
Limits
Fiction: 5,000 words (or 3 pieces of up to 1,000 words)
Creative Nonfiction: 5,000 words
Poetry: 3 poems per submission
Hybrid: 5,000 words (may include up to 5 images, B&W only)
Translations: 3 poems or 5,000 words of prose (must include original piece)
Book Reviews: 500-750 words (books must have been published within the past year)
Visual Art: up to 5 pieces
How to submit
Please submit your work through submittable.
No submissions through email or mail unless you have an invite to do so from the editors. (For example, prisoners may request to do this.)
Include a bio of up to fifty words along with your cover letter.
We do our very best to respond within 6 months, but due to the volume of submissions, it can sometimes take longer.
Guidelines
-Reading fee of $3. (For a fee waiver, reach out to the editors).
-International submissions are welcomed, but English only this year.
-Multiple submissions are welcome at $3 per submission, but please, no more than one submission per genre at a time.
-Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you notify us if it’s accepted elsewhere.
-No submissions from current FIU students.
-If we have published your work, please wait one year after your publication to submit again. For example, if you were published in Issue 37, please do not submit for Issue 38, but feel free to submit for Issue 39 (visual art and contest submissions are exempt and can submit for every issue).
-Submissions accepted from FIU alums two or more years after graduation.
Copyright Info
We hold first serial rights for the material we publish, with the copyright reverting back to the author upon publication.
Reviews & interviews
No unsolicited submissions or requests, please.
Contact
General submissions for visual art are now open Although Gulf Stream Magazine is predominately a literary journal, we also publish visual art. Our aims are to enhance our issues and provide a platform for up-and-coming artists. Unfortunately, we can't pay for the art we publish (yet). But our magazine does offer you a chance to get your work independently published and seen by a large audience. If we select your work, we would also publish your artist’s bio, website and social media links. What are we looking for? We consider original work by the artist in any medium, including painting, drawing, photography, graphic illustrations, photos of installations or sculptures. We have eclectic tastes—we like the pretty and the ugly, the loud and quiet. If it is fresh and original, please send it our way. Take a look at our theme description for more guidelines! Guidelines Please submit no more than 5 pieces per submission. Give each image file the correct title as you would like it to appear in the issue, if accepted. Upload as .jpg format, at the highest resolution possible at no more than 100K. To understand the difference between resolution and file size, and how your image will appear on our site, please see this helpful Wordpress article on Image Size and Quality. Copyright Info We hold first serial rights for the material we publish, with the copyright reverting back to the author upon publication. Contact gulfstreamlitmag@gmail.com
We're thrilled to announce a Gulf Stream Flash Prose Contest!
About Gulf Stream
Gulf Stream Literary Magazine champions vibrant and eclectic literature and art. Based in beautiful Miami, Florida, we publish emerging and established writers from the USA and beyond.
Previous contributors include Hanif Abdurraqib, Tony Hoagland, Jensen Beach, Kristen Arnett, Steve Almond, Jan Beatty, James Carlos Blake, Lee Martin, Robert Wrigley, Dennis Lehane, Liz Robbins, Stuart Dybek, David Kirby, Ann Hood, Ha Jin, B.H. Fairchild, Naomi Shihab Nye, F. Daniel Rzicznek, and Connie May Fowler.
The Prize
The winner will receive a cash prize of $125 plus publication in Issue #38 (online). Please read over the theme description before submitting.
Two runners-up from each category will be published in Issue #38 and reimbursed their entry fee.
The Details
Fiction, creative nonfiction, and hybrid submissions of up to 1,000 words max. You may submit a maximum of two flash prose pieces per submission.
Submissions will be judged blindly. Our readers will choose the top ten to fifteen pieces to send to our final judge. The judge will then choose the first place winner and two runners-up.
All submissions will be considered for publication whether or not you are chosen as a finalist.
Closes on Monday, March 30, 2026.
Judge
Julie Marie Wade's recent collections includeThe Mary Years (Texas Review Press, 2024), selected by Michael Martone for the 2023 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize,Quick Change Artist: Poems (Anhinga Press, 2025), selected by Octavio Quintanilla for the 2023 Anhinga Prize in Poetry,Fisk, By Analogy (CutBank Prose Chapbook Series, 2025), andThe Latest: 20 Ghazals for 2020 (Harbor Editions, 2025), co-authored with Denise Duhamel. A finalist for the National Poetry Series and a winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir, Wade teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami and makes her home with Angie Griffin and their two cats. Her newest memoir, Other People's Mothers, was published in September 2025 by University Press of Florida.
Entry conditions
-Entry fee is $12
-Contest closes 11:59 PM on March 30, 2026.
-Submit via Submittable. No submissions through email or mail
-Submissions no more than 1,000 words; no more than two pieces per submission.
-Submitted work must be original and previously unpublished
-Do not include any identifying features on your submission, only on the cover letter
-Include a cover letter with a short bio of up to 50 words
-International submissions welcomed
-Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you notify us if it’s accepted elsewhere
-Please direct questions or comments to gulfstreamlitmag@gmail.com
-Submissions from current FIU students not accepted. Submissions accepted from alums 2 or more years after graduation
-By submitting, you agree to receive email marketing updates about the contest & general submissions.
The Gulf Stream Poetry Contest is back!
About Gulf Stream
Gulf Stream Literary Magazine champions vibrant and eclectic literature and art. Based in beautiful Miami, Florida, we publish emerging and established writers from the USA and beyond.
Previous contributors include Hanif Abdurraqib, Tony Hoagland, Jensen Beach, Kristen Arnett, Steve Almond, Jan Beatty, James Carlos Blake, Lee Martin, Robert Wrigley, Dennis Lehane, Liz Robbins, Stuart Dybek, David Kirby, Ann Hood, Ha Jin, B.H. Fairchild, Naomi Shihab Nye, F. Daniel Rzicznek, and Connie May Fowler.
The Prize
The winner will receive a cash prize of $125 plus publication in Issue #38 (online). Please read over the theme description before submitting.
Two runners-up from each category will be published in Issue #38 and reimbursed their entry fee.
The Details
Poetry submissions of up to 5 poems.
Submissions will be judged blindly. Our poetry readers will choose the top ten to fifteen poems to send to our final judge. The judge will then choose the first place winner and two runners-up.
All submissions will be considered for publication whether or not you were are chosen as a finalist. If you submit to the contest and to our general submissions, please make sure you are submitting a completely different packet.
Closes
March 30, 2026
Judge
Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging characterize Blanco’s many collections of poetry, including his most recent, Homeland of My Body, which reassess traditional notions of home as strictly a geographical, tangible place that merely exist outside us, but rather, within us. He has also authored the memoirs FOR ALL OF US, ONE TODAY: AN INAUGURAL POET’S JOURNEYandTHE PRINCE OF LOS COCUYOS: A MIAMI CHILDHOOD. Blanco has received numerous awards, including the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, the Patterson Prize, and a Lambda Prize for memoir. He was Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary degrees. Currently, he serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University. In April 2022, Blanco was appointed the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County.
Previous Winners
2025
First Place: Veronica A. Bettencourt for Panini Maker
Honorable Mention: Eric Lochridge for Wild Horse Island
Honorable Mention: Jacklin Farley for After Beholding the Stains On My PBR Can
Entry conditions
-Entry fee is $12
-Contest closes 11:59 PM on March 30, 2026.
-Submit via Submittable. No submissions through email or mail
-No more than 5 poems per submission
-Submitted work must be original and previously unpublished
-Do not include any identifying features on your submission, only on the cover letter
-Include a cover letter with a short bio of up to 50 words
-International submissions welcomed
-Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you notify us if it’s accepted elsewhere
-Please direct questions or comments to gulfstreamlitmag@gmail.com
-Submissions from current FIU students not accepted. Submissions accepted from alums 2 or more years after graduation
-By submitting, you agree to receive email marketing updates about the contest & general submissions.