CapLit welcomes submissions year-round of original short prose selections for our reading series. We’re looking for gorgeous writing, distinct voices, and stories we haven’t heard before—that are conducive to being read aloud. Does that sound like something you’ve written? Read on!
If selected, your piece will be read by a professional actor at one of our public events in Sacramento. You must agree to be present at the event in question. We pay authors a $100 honorarium; overnight accommodations may also be available if arranged in advance.
We are primarily interested in fiction of all kinds, both literary and “genre” fiction. We sometimes feature nonfiction as well. Please follow the sensible guidelines below. If you don’t, you’ll just get a sad email from us.
We welcome short stories and personal essays, published or unpublished.
We also welcome excerpts from published novels and book-length memoirs. Excerpts must work as standalone pieces (i.e., they require minimal setup to appreciate & have a satisfying arc). We strongly prefer that excerpts come from published books that can be offered for sale at our event. Please do not send us an entire book and invite us to select an excerpt. We don’t have time to do that.
We are happy to read work from anyone who can attend our event if selected, but we especially encourage submissions from Sacramento-area writers and from writers who identify with underrepresented groups.
We do not accept poetry, children’s books, scholarly work, journalism, drama, or screenplays. We love these literary forms but this is not the venue for them.
Length: 2000-5000 words, with the sweet spot being between 3000-4000 words. We may occasionally solicit longer or shorter work for special events (e.g., a Flash Fiction Night).
Please send only one submission at a time and please don’t submit new work until you’ve heard from us about the first submission. We often invite writers to try again; you should take us up on that.
Please send your submission as a Word document or PDF, with conventional formatting: i.e., double-spaced, at least 12-point type, in an ordinary & legible font, 1” margins, etc. It makes us happy when pages are numbered. Please do not copy & paste your submission into the body of your email.
We hate that we even have to say this, but we want to present work that is wholly human-authored. If you have used AI in any way in the creation of your submission, you must disclose this in your cover email and explain how the AI was used. (An example of something we’d be open to: “I used AI to help translate some articles in researching this work of historical fiction.” An example of something that would likely elicit an immediate rejection: “I wrote my first draft of this short story using ChatGPT.”) In any case, you must disclose your use of AI. It’s unethical to do otherwise.
Please be patient with us. We are volunteer-run, and often there is just one person reading all of the submissions. If you haven’t heard in six months, feel free to ask us what’s up.
Submissions are free and accepted year-round. If we turn down your piece, we generally will not have time to explain why. Please do not revise the piece and re-send unless we have specifically asked you to do so. Please don’t write back demanding to know why we turned your work down; that will put you on a blacklist of writers we find alarming.
We are offering paid feedback from one of our readers (a published, experienced writing teacher & editor). It costs $50, paid in advance, and you will receive an email from our reader with feedback and suggestions. The fee will be refunded if we select your piece. Feedback fees go to CapLit’s general operating fund, but are not tax-deductible, as you will be receiving a service at well below market rate. Please indicate in your cover letter that you would like to exercise the paid-feedback option, & we’ll send you payment info.
Sound good? If so, please email your submission to caplitwriters@gmail.com. You can also email there with any questions not already answered above, or to inquire about a submission we’ve had for longer than 6 months.
Thanks for reading all the way through, and we look forward to seeing your writing!