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• Recommended submission: 3-5 poems (as ONE FILE) or essays up to 20 pages of original, unpublished work.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• We do not publish fiction.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


$19.99

Katherine Indermaur's I|I will officially be released on November 15, 2022, but if you order now, we will knock $3.00 off and ship early. And ship for free!

Ends on $3.00
$3.00
3-5 poems (as one file, please).
Ends on $3.00
$3.00
Essays up to 20 pages.
$3.00

In 1997, in the pages of Seneca Review, Deborah Tall and John D’Agata put words and a name to a self-creating form of thinking, a form that blurred the borders between poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The phenomenon of the lyric essay drew its inspiration largely from the latitude and freedoms of poetry. Since then, the borders between genres of writing and between the arts themselves have become increasingly less distinct. Poets use cameras and bullhorns. Painters use letterpresses and exacto knives. Musicians use Flash and the sides of buildings. Essayists use microphones, algorithm programming, and viral videos. The results are made things/experiences that in many cases can’t be represented on the page alone.

We're looking for work that goes:

Beyond the lyric essay.            Beyond the prose poem.          Beyond just words. 

                          Beyond just images.                  Beyond category.

SR is expanding to allow for a broad range of digital and analog projects.

What we like: experimental typography, splicings, documentary poetics, visual-textual hybrids, multimedia essays, collage, live coding, new media, old media with new applications, audio, video, bio-art, book arts, etc. 25-page limit, please.

Send us outliers, anachronisms and protochronisms, oddball experiments—anything that resists a single genre or medium. If in doubt, send it!

Reviews of contemporary collections of poetry, essays, and hybrid works. Approximately 700-2,500 words.


If you are a writer or a publisher and would like to have your book considered for review, please send two review copies to:

Geoffrey Babbitt

Editor, Seneca Review

300 Pulteney St.

Geneva, NY 14456

Seneca Review