Connections Magazine

Cover of College of Southern Maryland’s Connections Spring 2026 Literary Magazine, featuring an abstract artwork with colorful shapes and black looping lines.

Connections Literary Magazine is a regional literary journal published twice a year that features the very best poems, stories, artwork, and photography of Southern Maryland.

Submissions are accepted from writers and artists throughout the region during designated open submission periods. Contributors may submit original, previously unpublished poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, visual art, and photography for consideration.

Also included in each issue is featured material from visiting writers. Publication readings take place in December and May each year.

General Submission Guidelines

Connections Literary Magazine accepts unsolicited submissions of prose, poetry, and photography for both its Fall and Spring issues, published at the start of December and May, respectively.

Fall issue deadlines for submission are October 30, and Spring issue deadlines are March 20 of each corresponding issue’s publication date.

We are transitioning to using Submittable as our new submission manager, starting August 1, 2026. If you have previously submitted work to the Connections@csmd.edu email between April 2026 and July 2026, please re-submit your work to our new submission manager, Submittable.

Please review the guidelines below for submitting your work to the appropriate genre. Simultaneous submissions are fine, and you may submit once to each genre per submission period.

For Fall 2026, we will be open to general submissions.

For Spring 2027, we will put out a special call for work centered on Invisible Disabilities. More details to come.

Guidelines

Prose (Fiction and Nonfiction)

Please submit (using Submittable) in a single file up to two (2) short prose pieces, with each piece started on a separate page. Please use a standard 12-point font, such as Times New Roman, Garamond, or Aptos, and double space your work. Do not exceed 10 pages. We greatly prefer work to be submitted as a .doc or .docx file (PDFs become difficult to convert for our print magazine).

As our print magazine is limited to shorter margins (8.5x5.5 printed), we are more likely to accept prose pieces that are under 2,000 words.

Do not submit more than once per category per submission period (Fall/Spring). You are welcome to submit work to the other genres, per their guidelines.

Poetry

Please submit (using Submittable) in a single file up to five (5) poems, with each poem started on a separate page. Please use a standard 12-point font, such as Times New Roman, Garamond, or Aptos. Do not exceed 10 pages. We greatly prefer work to be submitted as a .doc or .docx file (PDFs become difficult to convert for our print magazine).

With poetry lines, shorter lines are preferred. With longer lines, understand that formatting may be changed to fit magazine typeset.

Do not submit more than once per category per submission period (Fall/Spring). You are welcome to submit work to the other genres, per their guidelines.

Photography (Art)

Please submit (using Submittable) up to five (5) photos for consideration. Best practices: name each photo file as the title of the piece (i.e. Mammoth.jpeg).

Do not submit more than one set of photographs per issue per category, as we have a small staff.

All submissions should be sent through our Submittable page. We no longer accept submissions via email, starting in Fall 2026.