Young Adult Fiction Writers: Call for Submissions!
About CommonLit
CommonLit is an educational technology nonprofit based in Washington, DC, dedicated to advancing children’s literacy and preparing all students for success in college and beyond. Our free online library features over 2,400 high quality reading passages for grades 3–12.
Our Ask
We are currently seeking submissions for highly polished short stories aimed at young people between the ages of 9–14. Submissions can range in theme and genre, though we are keen on receiving stories that feature diverse topics, ideas, and characters. We use diversity in its broadest sense here, which includes race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, physical, and mental disability, nationality, and more.
All accepted stories will be purchased by CommonLit and made available to educators under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. All authors will be compensated for their work and will be credited as the author. Stories will include an author biography.
Why are stories licensed under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0?
Making stories available under a Creative Commons license eliminates legal obstacles and encourages sharing of knowledge and creativity. The CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license make the stories an Open Educational Resource (OER) and allow teachers and students to re-use and share work, given that they provide proper attribution, use it for noncommercial purposes only, and create derivatives of the work under the same license.
Teachers and schools’ reliance on OER has skyrocketed during the pandemic especially in the nation’s most under-resourced schools. Because OER is free, they expand equitable access to learning and make it possible for teachers, parents, and schools to distribute high-quality learning materials widely, without red tape.
General Guidelines
- We can only accept submissions from contributors aged 18 and above.
- Submit only previously unpublished works.
- Multiple submissions are not accepted and will not be read or responded to.
- All stories should be typed, double spaced, and paginated.
- Submissions should be sent either as a Word Doc or PDF attachment.
- Your name, address, phone number, and email address should appear on the first page, title on subsequent pages.
- Stories should range between 3,000–5,000 words. We are unable to read submissions of more than 5,000 words.
Please email submissions@commonlit.org with a brief cover letter and short bio within the body text of your email.
We regret that we are unable to provide people with individual feedback due to the large volume of submissions we receive.
