Submit Your Work

WE PUBLISH:

  • All forms of expression, including poetry, prose (i.e., poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, interviews, and reviews), and visual art;

  • Work that reflects our values of curiosity, justice, and community;

  • Work that explores questions of ecology and spirituality from within and outside all religious traditions.

SCHEDULE

We publish four issues per year, aligned with the seasons.

This means our reading window for text-based work, i.e., Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Interviews, generally opens around the equinox or solstice and closes around two weeks later.

For 2026, we will be open March 1-15 (Spring issue), May 1-15 (Summer issue), June 21 - July 5 (Autumn issue), and September 22 - October 6 (Winter issue).

Reviews and Visual Arts are curated on a rolling basis via Submittable and, for the latter, Call for Entry (CaFE). More details are below.


GENERAL GUIDELINES

  • Explore the content and types of work we publish before submitting to ensure your submission is a good fit for us.

  • We consider all submissions for publication on our website and/or in our quarterly print issues.

  • We use Submittable for text-based submissions (i.e., Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Interviews). To check for open calls for text-based submissions and submit your work, visit us on Submittable (click here).

  • For Visual Art, see the guidelines at Submittable or CaFE by clicking here or visiting https://callforentry.org, and search for “EcoTheo Review.”

  • Please allow us at least three months to review your submission. Our editors are volunteers with other work, family, and creative commitments. We appreciate your patience as we give all submissions the consideration they deserve.

  • We do not accept previously published work, but we do accept simultaneous submissions. Please notify us promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere.

  • Work that has been created, in any part, with the assistance of AI tools is not eligible for submission or publication.

  • Genre-specific guidelines are available below and on Submittable when the submission window opens.

For inquiries related to the website or other matters, email etr@ecotheo.org.

submit

+ Poetry

Poets must limit submissions to two per calendar year. Each submission may not include more than 3 poems and may not exceed 10 pages total. Poets who exceed the number of submissions per year, the number of poems per submission, or the number of pages per submission will be rejected.

  • Submit poems as a single file.
  • All efforts are made to preserve formatting.
  • Allow 3 months before querying on the status of your work.

+ Prose

We welcome previously unpublished prose -- fiction and nonfiction -- up to 5000 words in any genre. For pieces less than 1000 words, you may submit up to three prose pieces at a time.

+ Interviews

We are looking for interviews with writers, artists, and leaders of diverse communities whose work examines and sparks discussion around faith, ecology, and the complexity of the human condition. Interviews EcoTheo has featured include Tess Taylor, Li-Young Lee, Vijay Seshadri, Ellen Davis, Norman Wirzba, Kathleen Dean Moore, Fred Bahnson, Malcom Tariq, Jihyun Yun, and Lauren K. Alleyne.

If you have an interview that aligns with EcoTheo’s mission and focus and that you would like us to consider, please send a query to esteban@ecotheo.org (please indicate whether the interview is complete).

+ Visual Arts

We welcome most forms of visual art, including but not limited to: painting, photography, drawings and sketches, sculptures, and more.

Image submissions must be in either .jpg or .png format. Lower resolution images are fine for submission, but if accepted we will need higher-resolution images for publication.

To submit Visual Art, see the guidelines at Submittable click here or CaFE click here or visiting https://callforentry.org, and search for “EcoTheo Review.”

+ Reviews

We welcome reviews that engage deeply with ecological and theological concerns in the broadest sense. We look for writing that moves beyond summary toward critical inquiry—reviews marked by an artful sensibility and a clear, distinct voice.

You can pitch, submit, or share an Advance Review Copy on a rolling basis via Submittable by clicking here. Please note that while we list upcoming titles for our contributors, our reviewers choose books based on their own interests; inclusion on our list is not a guarantee of a review.

Reviews can be any length, but we are particularly interested in the breadth and depth offered by 1200-1500 words. Our reviews editor may work collaboratively with writers on tone and formatting.

In terms of review content, we are interested in how you read the work. Identify the text’s concerns and how the writer makes them visible. Does the text present itself/its argument via sound, image, form, logic? Who is the text’s ideal audience? An excellent EcoTheo review generally includes:

  • An exploration of how the work speaks to our core themes in the sacred and the natural world.
  • Insightful critical engagement with the author’s craft, imagery, and central arguments.
  • Brief, impactful quotes that showcase the book’s prose or poetic style.
  • A concluding thought on why this work is significant for our community in this current moment, which points to the cultural relevance.

FORMATTING

At the top of your review, please provide the following information:

  • [Book Title] by [Author Name]. [Press] ([Publication Date]). [Pages]. [Price].
  • In your cover letter, please include a brief bio of yourself.

Poetry Reviews

  • When citing poetry, we ask that you handle the text with care: please replicate the original lineation faithfully and double-check all quotations. To give the reader a true sense of the work, aim for three or four excerpts of at least three lines each.
  • Follow these general poetry citation guidelines.

+ Multimedia/Web Features

EcoTheo Review welcomes submissions of immersive multimedia work for publication online. In these features, visual art, audio, video and text that work together to tell a story or share an idea around EcoTheo's mission of celebrating wonder will be given their own page on EcoTheo Review's website. To submit or pitch a multimedia web feature, contact our web editor, Carter Boyd.

+ Social Justice

In 2020 we launched a new space on our site for considerations of Social Justice. EcoTheo Review is guided by the words of Dr. Cornel West, who says Justice is what Love looks like in public, as well as Dr. Melanie L. Harris, who says that Earth Justice is Social Justice, and Social Justice is Earth Justice. We invite paintings, poems, photographs, essays, and other creative, scholarly responses to the ways environmental justice and social justice intersect. Our digital folios will explore particular aspects of these intersections.