General Guidelines:
Seneca Review typically accepts submissions twice annually—from September 1st through October 31st and from February 1st through March 31st. (Reviews are accepted year-round and require no submission fee.)
• Recommended submission: 3-5 poems (as ONE FILE) or essays up to 20 pages of original, unpublished work.
• Only one submission per reading period, please.
• We do not publish fiction.
• Editors typically respond within 9 to 12 months, sooner if we can.
• Accepted authors receive two complimentary copies of their issue and a two-year subscription to Seneca Review.
• Copyright is held by Hobart and William Smith Colleges until publication, at which time rights revert to the author.
• Due to budgetary concerns, and in an effort to curb our Submittable expenses, Seneca Review charges a $3 fee for work sent via Submittable. However, since we believe that writers should, ideally, be able to submit without paying any fee whatsoever, we will still accept free submissions mailed to our physical address. (Mailed submissions *must* include a SASE, or they will be recycled.)
• We cannot consider work by current HWS students. Please do not submit if you currently attend HWS.
Seneca Review
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
300 Pulteney St.
Geneva, NY 14456
(315) 781-3392
Guidelines
Review-Essays
We welcome review-essays centering close readings of one or more collections of poetry, lyric and experimental essays, and hybrid works.
As we prefer more in-depth reviews that demonstrate their points through closely-read examples from the text, the length of your review should fall approximately between 800 and 2,500 words (that’s really very “ish”). The fundamental point for us is to give readers as clear a picture of what it’s like to read this book without actually reprinting the whole book. Don’t just make disconnected interpretive claims that sound great; show us how that “tick” tocks!
We value a variety of approaches to the review, including some that might take a more circuitous route of engagement (as befits the work or the reviewer’s instinct) or one that is directed in a clearly linear manner by an overarching idea or “thesis” (or whatever else you might dream up—try us and see). We do not dismiss mixed reviews but believe them a necessary part of an honest and healthy critical discourse, and while we truly love to celebrate books that you wholly love and find flawlesslessly stunning, we disdain language that is both vague and inflated, amounting to little more than a lengthy blurb. We want critical discourse that “thinks feelingly” to produce attentive explorations of rich and engaging texts.
Just what constitutes “rich and engaging” texts? You convince us! But at best, a work constructs an experience of language using a great deal of its “biodiversity” (if we think of language as a living landscape), which, of course, includes its many realms of socio-cultural and historical diversity.
For the best guidance, see prior reviews (and the books they review), such as Lisa Pasold on Carolyn Hembree’s For Today (in our Fall 2023 issue) and Jane Yager on Donna Stonecipher’s The Ruins of Nostalgia.
Rediscoveries
We are not only interested in publishing review-essays on recent books but are eager to highlight books that passed largely under the radar and to rediscover others from decades past. With that in mind, please feel free to submit engagements with any non-canonical book (whether the author is or not) from either the 20th or 21st centuries.
Flashes
After all that about lengthy, attentive reviews—we really do want substantive discourse!—we also think an impression-offering flash of light over the pages of a carefully-read book can inspire interest in deserving work, and we’re open to considering short “flashes” embodying the overall impression or zoomed-in “detail of” perspective—as long as it comes from an equally attentive eye on the book. We’re thinking 200 to 600 words of original text (that is, not including quoted material). One of the most recent reviews that comes closest to exemplifying this approach (prior to our actual call for it) is rob mclennan’s review of Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson’s Rendered Paradise.
For Writers and Publishers
If you would like to have your book considered for review, please send two review copies to:
Geoffrey Babbitt
Editor-in-Chief, Seneca Review
209 Smith Hall
300 Pulteney Street
Geneva, NY 14456
We can't wait to read your reviews! Thank you.
Michael Tod Edgerton
Seneca Review
Assistant Editor of Reviews and Poetry
Matthew Morris's The Tilling
The Tilling was selected by Wendy S. Walters as the winner of the 2024 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize.