The Yale Review is currently closed for submissions. We will open for certain genres at the end of the summer. Our guidelines have recently changed, so please read the below carefully.
General Guidelines
All submissions to The Yale Review must be in English, and all must be previously unpublished in print or online, including on personal websites, blogs, or Substacks. We are happy to consider simultaneous submissions, but we kindly ask that you notify us promptly if a piece is accepted for publication elsewhere.
Please note that we do not accept mailed submissions. Any work sent by mail to our offices will not be read.
Poetry
We will accept a limited number of submissions via Submittable beginning on August 26, 2026.
To defray the labor and software costs associated with Submittable, we charge three dollars per submission. Submitters may claim this fee against a new subscription to the journal. Because we believe that financial hardship should not be a barrier to submission, we offer a limited number of fee-free submissions; to request a waiver on or after August 26, 2026, please email theyalereview@gmail.com with the subject line “Fee Waiver.”
Every poetry submission received during our September submission period will receive a response by the end of May 2027. We are unable to respond to inquiries about the status of your submission via email.
Fiction
Due to an unprecedented number of submissions this year, we are not currently open for fiction submissions. Please check back for updated information in 2027.
Nonfiction
We will open for both nonfiction pitches and submissions on August 26, 2026. Time-sensitive ideas should be sent as pitches according to the guidelines below. Completed personal essays and other finished nonfiction drafts should be submitted as Word document attachments to theyalereview@yale.edu with the subject line “Submission: [Your Name].” Note that we are unable to consider submissions that do not adhere to these formatting instructions. Please include a cover letter and a short bio in the body of your email.
We try to respond to every submission, but if you haven’t heard from us within four weeks, please assume we’ve passed. Please submit only one completed draft at a time.
Pitch Guidelines
We primarily publish two kinds of work. The first is criticism: review essays with strong arguments rather than straight reviews of single books, films, pieces of music, or other cultural items. The second are critical essays. These essays tend to be untethered to new releases, and they may combine reportage, argument, and/or personal reflection. For essays of either kind, we look for pitches that contain a clear articulation of the argument and the stakes. When pitching pieces with timely pegs, bear in mind that because we are a quarterly publication, we plan at least four to six months out.
We accept pitches on a wide range of subjects—literature, art, history, politics, film, television, music, internet subcultures. We seek sharp, original voices driven by curiosity and verve—writers who take apart and reconstruct their subjects in surprising ways, and who are unafraid of unexpected juxtapositions. We welcome pitches with an urgent or timely peg, but we are equally excited by ideas that command us to see an old subject with fresh eyes, rescue what has been overlooked, or convince us that something we'd never thought about is actually vital. We want criticism that goes further than the traditional review, plays with form, and commits to argument.
For a sense of what we publish, see Maggie Doherty on the abortion stories we tell in a post-Dobbs world; Brandy Jensen on polyamory and its discontents; Rizvana Bradley on the visual politics of the George Floyd protests; Maggie Millner on why Mary Oliver’s best poetry has been misunderstood; Jerome Ellison Murphy on conspicuous erudition in today’s Black poetry; Dan Chiasson on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick; Tiana Reid on what a lost Zora Neale Hurston novel reveals about her legacy; and Christopher Hawthorne on why The Brutalist isn’t really about architecture.
To pitch us:
Email theyalereview@yale.edu with "Pitch:" at the start of the subject line, followed by the topic or proposed title. In three paragraphs or fewer, introduce yourself, lay out your idea and argument, and give us a sense of your timeline. Pieces typically run 2,000 to 5,000 words, occasionally longer. Link to or attach up to three clips, ideally on related subjects. Please tell us in the body of your email if you have pitched the piece elsewhere, and notify us promptly if it is accepted by another publication.
We accept pitches only for English-language work that has not been previously published in print or online. We try to respond to every pitch, but if you haven’t heard from us within four weeks, please assume we’ve passed. Please submit only one pitch at a time.
Please note that we are not currently accepting pitches for interviews.