At Uncharted, we want to help you achieve your publishing goals, and one way we can do that is to offer intuitive and precise feedback on your short story or novel excerpt. We’ve got talented, experienced guest editors, and you’ve got an almost-ready project, so let’s work together to get your piece submission-ready!
We’re speeding up the process and will get feedback to you within 4-6 weeks of your submission. And you can use your revision suggestions to hone your craft and fix up your piece in order to submit it to our always open, always free genre categories or even one of our contests! You don’t have to wonder if your work is ready when we’ve got writing pros to help you with actionable advice and suggestions to make your work shine!
For this event, we will not consider these pieces for publication. This is for feedback only. We will consider both short stories and novel excerpts. We will provide two-page global letters discussing the writing’s strengths and recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Uncharted. A significant portion of the editorial letter fees goes to our feedback editor.
For this event, we’re thrilled to partner with Literistic. Every registrant will receive a free two-month trial for Literistic. (Note that trials do not stack and are not available to current Literistic subscribers.)
Guidelines:
- The Feedback Frenzy is open to all prose writers.
- Please send fiction only.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- Note that work that has received editorial feedback from Uncharted is not eligible for submission to our contests.
- Your $69 registration fee allows ONE short story or novel excerpt of 1,001–5,000 words per entry.
- We encourage multiple submissions—each story or novel excerpt should be a separate submission with its own registration fee.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with what areas you’d like our editors to focus on when giving their feedback on your piece.
- We do not consider or review AI-generated or AI-assisted work.
- We strongly discourage simultaneous submissions in conjunction with editorial feedback. If your piece is already under review by our team and you withdraw it, we will not be able to offer a refund. If you withdraw your piece before we have begun feedback, we will be happy to let you substitute another piece.
- Please include a content warning to help safeguard our staff (if applicable).
EVENT PARTNER:
Literistic helps writers find, filter, and track submission opportunities without getting overwhelmed by endless lists of deadlines. Each month, the Literistic team curates a focused list of worthwhile contests, publications, residencies, fellowships, and other opportunities, while the new Literistic portal will let you search and personalize results based on your genre and goals. Write more, search less.
EDITORIAL FEEDBACK TEAM:
B. B. GARIN is a writer living in Buffalo, New York. Her echapbook, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. Her work has appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Palooka, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, and more. She is currently a prose reader and blog contributor for The Masters Review. She continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels. Connect with her online @bb_garin.
ELIANA GRUVMAN is a passionate reader, editor, and writer. She graduated from Fordham University with a degree in English and Spanish language and literature. She is currently a flash fiction editorial assistant at CRAFT and previously interned for Gallery Books at Simon & Schuster and for Ladderbird Literary Agency. Her work has been published on Fordham’s platforms—the Ampersand, MODE Magazine, Bricolage, and RELISH—and has been performed by Free Pizza Sketch Comedy.
JUSTINE PAYTON is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where she is a recipient of the Philip Gerard Graduate Fellowship and the Bernice Kert Fellowship in Creative Writing. She has been published or has work forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, Isele Magazine, The Masters Review, The Keeping Room, and others. She is currently the managing editor of ONLY POEMS, an editor for Ecotone, and an editorial intern with Tin House. Find her on Instagram @just_a_rose4.
GAGE SAYLOR is the assistant director of creative writing at Oklahoma State University. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Passages North, Tampa Review, Crab Creek Review, Iron Horse, and elsewhere. He has won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize at Nimrod and is a previous semifinalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize at North American Review. He received his MFA at McNeese State University, where he was awarded the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction.
CAROLJEAN GAVIN has published in places such as 7×7, Milk Candy Review, Barrelhouse, New World Writing, Fractured Lit, and Best Small Fictions 2021. She’s the editor of What I Thought of Ain’t Funny, an anthology of short fiction based on the jokes of Mitch Hedberg published by Malarkey Books. She’s the author of the short creative nonfiction, Caught in the Throat (Alien Buddha Press) and a collection of short stories, Magical Objects forthcoming from ELJ. She has also read and edited for Pithead Chapel, Split/Lip Press, Best of the Net, and Clarion West’s Six Week Workshops. Her website is. She’s still on Twitter @caroljeangavin
DANIELLE STONEHIRSCH holds a B.A. in English Literature with a focus on creative writing. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in many online journals and print magazines as well as in anthologies Reflections, This Is What America Looks Like, Roar: True Tales of Women Warriors, and Grace and Gravity: Grace in Love. She was Pushcart Prize nominee of 2021.
DEIRDRE DANKLIN holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins University. Her novella, Catastrophe, won the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Her flash fiction chapbook, How to Start a Coven, is available from Variant Lit. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, son, and two cats.