In tandem with our special double issue New Southern Writing, the High Beams section of The Headlight Review is sending out a call for a series of short meditations on specific southern experiences and how they inform your craft as a southern writer. Why do you have an affection for a particular memento of your southern experience and how has that token affected your craft as a writer and, in particular, your identity as a southern author? Do you have a published piece of writing that this southern token inspired? If so, please include a link to the published piece in your submission. Please keep the meditations under one thousand words. No submission fee!
Types of Southern Mementos
· Postcards
o Meditation on a particular place in the south
o Can be a landscape and/or manmade establishment
o Please include a photograph of the place in your submission
· Recipe Cards
o Meditation on a particular southern food
o Can be an entire meal or a side dish or a dessert
o Please include a photo of the dish(es)
· Color Palettes
o Meditation on a piece of southern art
o Can be a sculpture or painting or drawing or pottery or engraving
o Please include a photo of the art
· Sheet Music
o Meditation on a particular piece of southern music
o Can be one song a certain instrument or singer
o Please include an audio file and/or a photo of the instrument/musician/singer/album cover
· Sewing Patterns
o Meditation on a particular piece of southern clothing
o Can be one article or an entire outfit
o Please include a photo of the clothing
· Portraits
o Meditation on a particular person in the south
o Can be someone you know personally or an icon
o Please include a photo of the person
· Seed Packets
o Meditations on a particular garden plant in the south
o Can be a flower or food crop or herb
o Please include a photo of the plant
· Junk Drawer
o Meditation on a particular southern object
o Can be a family heirloom or an artifact or a mundane object of everyday life
o Please include a photo of the object
We Believe That Anyone Can Be a Storyteller.
About our Publication
- Waymark Literary Magazine is a fully online magazine in html format. We publish fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art.
- Waymark accepts submissions from undergraduate students from North America (Canada, Mexico, North America, the Caribbean islands) and its affiliated territories. Work submitted by students residing outside of North America or work from non-undergraduate students will not be considered for publication.
About Our Issues
- Waymark publishes two issues every academic year, one per semester. Submissions for our Spring '26 issue open December 28, 2025 and close on April 19, 2026. Due to winter break, Waymark staff will return to reading submissions in late January. Any submissions turned in prior to the staff's return will be read ASAP.
- Please expect a turnaround time of 2-3 weeks for decisions on submissions. If you have not heard back within this time frame, please feel free to reach out to us at waymarkmagazine@gmail.com
- Any submissions submitted after the April 19th deadline can still be considered for the next issue instead.
Submission Guidelines
- All pieces should be submitted with adherence to MLA formatting: 12 pt. font, Times New Roman, double-spaced, page numbers in the top-left.
- Waymark does not publish erotica or fan fiction of any kind. We reject works with excessive violence, hate speech, and unnecessary gore.
- All submitted works should be self-contained stories that are not parts of larger works. Waymark does not publish chapters of books or book excerpts.
- To see our guidelines for specific genres, please check out our website: https://waymarkmagazine.com/submission-guidelines/
The Headlight Review presents the fourth annual Anthony Grooms Prize in Short Fiction
First prize of $750 is awarded to the winning writer, along with 20 copies of the winning chapbook, published by The Headlight Review Press. The chapbook will be perfect-bound and feature a four-color cover. Submissions will open on June October 1 and will run through January 31, 2027.
Manuscript Guidelines
Manuscripts are not to exceed 12,500 words. The content may include a single story, multiple stories, multiple flash stories or a stand-alone novel excerpt. Any submission that exceeds this word count will not be considered.
Stories may have been published individually. However, none of these stories are to have been published in a previous collection. A novel excerpt cannot have been part of a previously published novel.
All manuscripts are anonymously submitted. First-round judging will be conducted by staff from The Headlight Review. Finalists will be revealed by March 31 and will be judged by Tina Mozelle Braziel and James Braziel.
About the Judges
Tina Mozelle Braziel co-wrote Glass Cabin (Pulley Press) with her husband, writer James Braziel. A meditation on hope, on frustration, and on people’s places in the wilder parts of the world, Glass Cabin chronicles the thirteen years the Braziels spent building their home by hand on a ridge in rural Alabama. Tina has been awarded the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for Known by Salt (Anhinga Press), an artist residency at Hot Springs National Park, and a fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. As the first Eco-Poetry Fellow for Magic City Poetry Festival, she collaborated with the Cahaba River Society to create eco-poetry curriculum and videos. In 2023, she was selected to serve as an Alabama Poetry Delegate, a multi-regional service initiative implemented by Alabama’s Poet Laureate Ashley M. Jones. For her Alabama Poetry Delegate Project, she partners with the Alabama Rivers Alliance to enable local poets to hold outdoor poetry workshops and to create eco-poetry films for Southern Exposure films. Tina leads poetry writing hikes for The Friends of the Locust Fork and serves on the Board of Directors of The Friends of Big Canoe Creek. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The Cincinnati Review, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. She directs the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop for high school students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Tina holds an M.F.A in Poetry from the University of Oregon, an M.A. in Poetry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a B.A. in Intercultural Studies at the University of Montevallo.
James Braziel is the author of four books, most recently Glass Cabin (cowritten with his wife, Tina Mozelle Braziel). A meditation on hope, on frustration, and on people’s places in the wilder parts of the world, Glass Cabin (Pulley Press) chronicles the thirteen years the Braziels spent building their home by hand on a ridge in rural Alabama. Glass Cabin was named Southern Literary Review’s 2024 Poetry Book of the Year, and one of AWF’s Best Books of 2024. His collection of stories, This Ditch-Walking Love, won the Tartt Fiction Award. Ditch-Walking (Livingston Press) was inspired by the people who live on Alabama’s Cumberland Plateau. His novels, Birmingham, 35 Miles (Bantam) and Snakeskin Road (Bantam) follow a family in the aftermath of an environmental disaster in the future South. His shorter works have appeared in the New York Times and other places. He has received fellowships from Hot Springs National Park, Alabama State Council on the Arts, and Georgia Council for the Arts. He has been a writer-in-residence at the Lowrey Guest House at Auburn University, and he currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The Grooms prize winner will be announced by May 1 with publication scheduled for fall 2027.
Entry fee: $20.