General Guidelines (For CDR Kids! Submission Guidelines, please go here)

The Concrete Desert Review publishes one print issue a year and also posts digital content on their website. All work will be considered for both online and print publication. All work will also be considered for production in our Concrete Desert Review Podcast.

We are particularly interested in work from marginalized writers. 

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if the work has been accepted elsewhere. 

Multiple submissions are not accepted. Please wait to hear back from us on a submission before sending us more work. Multiple submissions will be deleted.

We are currently not accepting reprints. Only previously unpublished work, please. This includes work published on your own personal websites. If you have posted it anywhere on the web at any time, we consider it published.

We do not accept work from current faculty and staff of California State University, San Bernardino. However, CSUSB students, including alumni, are encouraged to submit. Please indicate in your cover letter your graduation year and major.

All contributors to the print issue will receive two free copies of the issue. Currently, we cannot offer our contributors payment, but we hope to be able to at some point in the future.

Poetry

Please submit up to 5 poems in a maximum of ten pages per submission.

Prose

Please submit one piece of fiction or non-fiction of up to 5,000 words in standard manuscript format. All files must be either .doc or .docx.

While our journal is primarily in English, we do accept work in Spanish or in a blend of Spanish and English. 

We will consider genre stories as long as they appeal to the readers of literary works. No novel excerpts, please.

Please no extreme violence or sexual abuse. 

Visual Arts 

We are currently accepting artwork for both our online and print publications. 

Files will only be accepted in the following formats: JPEGs, JPGs, PNGs, GIFs  with a minimum of 300 DPI. 

We reserve the right to crop or edit visual art submissions if needed.

Audio

We are currently collecting material for our Concrete Desert Podcast. If you have an audio performance you’d like us to consider, please query before submitting.

READY TO SUBMIT?

Submit using our Submittable link. Please include a short 50-70 word bio (written in the third person) in your cover letter to include with your work should we accept it for publication.

We ask that you allow eight weeks to pass before inquiring about the status of your submission.

Questions? Email them to CDR@csusb.edu