We are running behind on our reading for most categories and are currently only open for the categories listed below. All other subs are closed until we catch up.
Alternating Current Press is an indie press dedicated to publishing and promoting incredible literature that challenges readers and has an innate sense of self, timelessness, and atmosphere. We love science, history, homebound roots, rural landscapes, sense of place, poetic literary fiction, diverse voices, and all that is electric in the literary world.
We award several annual writing prizes, including The Luminaire Award (best poetry, best prose), The Charter Oak Award (best historical), The Coil Book Award (best published book from a different press), and The Electric Book Award (unpublished adult manuscript), that reward publication, certificates, medallions, cash honorariums, and more. All submissions to our press are automatically eligible for their respective award categories. There is no separate submission process.
We have a heavily trafficked online journal, The Coil, that features fresh content daily. To submit interviews, reviews, columns, editorials, timely personal essays, current event pieces, booklists, or material for our feature columns, please read more here before submitting.
We pay all of our authors for their work.
Read all general guidelines here.
Read about calls for submissions for special projects here.
Visit our book catalog here.
We’re seeking book-length manuscripts of literary fiction, short stories, poetry, plays, novels, long novellas, creative nonfiction, literary memoir, essay collections, or hybrid. We especially want to hear from marginalized and underrepresented writers, and we are an LGBTQUIA+ safe-space.
Winner receives $1,000, our Electric Book Award digital medallion, a certificate, and book publication on Alternating Current Press, which includes distribution through Ingram and all major online retailers. Runners-up may also be offered book publication.
Submissions open: January 1, 2023
Submissions close: April 30, 2023
Winner announced: August 2023
Publication: 2024/2025
- Manuscripts may be of any length in any genre or style. Manuscripts can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, or hybrid. Choose the category of best fit.
- Manuscripts must be geared toward an adult readership. We are not interested in books for children.
- All work must be in English and must be the author’s own. Single work by multiple authors considered.
- Manuscripts are read incognito. DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME OR ANY IDENTIFYING MARKS INSIDE THE FILE, including headers, footers, cover pages, acknowledgments, and file names. If you do leave your identifying marks inside the file, the submission will be read as-is, but the reader may disqualify the submission if he knows you on any personal level.
- If you need to adjust a submission, please use the Request to Edit option through Submittable. Please don’t request to edit for minor flaws, however—all accepted work will go through an editing process and will have the chance to be updated before publication, and your work will not be disqualified for a missing comma.
- All authors must be at least 18 to submit.
- Simultaneous submissions allowed. Please withdraw your manuscript through Submittable if it is accepted elsewhere.
- ACP and The Coil staff may submit work for publication consideration, but they are ineligible to win prizes while on our staff (including volunteers).
- Collections that contain previously published pieces are considered. Don’t include acknowledgments in the file.
- Submit via Submittable only. We do not accept email submissions.
- Straight or scholarly nonfiction should have reference pages.
- There is an $18 fee for each manuscript submitted. You may submit as many manuscripts as you’d like, but each one must be submitted separately with a separate fee. The fee helps us with needed administration and book production costs, but it’s not meant to be too inhibitive. If you are unable to pay, please email us for an alternative submission method.
- Each paid submission comes with a digital copy of our latest Electric Book Award winner, River Weather, a collection of dark Appalachian stories by Cameron MacKenzie ($7.99 value). There is an additional option to purchase the winning Electric Book Award print book (publishing in 2024/2025) as an add-on for a deep discount ($7.99 off the final cover price, shipped free worldwide).
- We will send a response and notification of the winner to every submission by the end of August. Form response only, unless we are interested in publishing your book. We are regretfully unable to provide feedback.
We’re seeking individual pieces of historical writing in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or hybrid that give an author’s intimate or emotional take on historical places, people, events, or ideas. Pieces must noticeably fit a historical theme. We especially want to hear from marginalized and underrepresented writers, and we are an LGBTQUIA+ safe-space.
Winner of the Charter Oak Award receives $100, our Charter Oak Award digital medallion, a certificate, and publication in our annual journal Footnote: A Literary Journal of History and online at The Coil. All accepted pieces, semifinalists, and finalists receive publication in Footnote, as well, among other prizes. See website for details.
Submissions open (issue #10): March 1, 2023
Submissions close (issue #10): February 28, 2024
Winner announced: March 2024
Publication (issue #10): July 2024
- This category is only for INDIVIDUAL pieces (not book-length manuscripts) with themes of history. Submissions can be poetry, fiction, hybrid, creative nonfiction, or straight nonfiction, but must noticeably fit a historical theme. Other than the blanket term “history,” there is no set theme per issue.
- All genres, styles, and subjects within the theme considered. A soft upper limit of 10,000 words is suggested, and preference may be given to shorter works.
- You may submit up to 5 pieces in a single document file.
- Submissions are read incognito. DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME OR ANY IDENTIFYING MARKS INSIDE THE FILE, including headers, footers, cover pages, acknowledgments, and file names. If you do leave your identifying marks inside the file, the submission will be read as-is, but the reader may disqualify the submission if he knows you on any personal level.
- All work must be in English and must be the author’s own. Single work by multiple authors considered. We will also consider reliable side-by-side (English and a second language) translations for this category. We do not consider AI-generated works.
- If you need to adjust a submission, please use the Request to Edit option through Submittable. Please don’t request to edit for minor flaws, however—all accepted work will go through an editing process and will have the chance to be updated before publication, and your work will not be disqualified for a missing comma.
- All authors must be at least 18 to submit.
- Simultaneous submissions allowed. You do not have to withdraw a piece that is accepted elsewhere, as long as you still own the reprint rights after first publication.
- Previously published pieces are considered, as long as you still own the reprint rights. Don’t include acknowledgments in the file.
- ACP and The Coil staff may submit work for publication consideration, but they are ineligible to win prizes while on our staff (including volunteers).
- Submit via Submittable only. We do not accept email submissions.
- Straight or scholarly nonfiction should have references cited.
- There is a $4.99 fee for each submission (up to 5 pieces in a submission). You may submit as many times as you’d like, but each submission must be made separately with a separate fee. The fee helps us with needed administration and journal production costs, but it’s not meant to be too inhibitive. If you are unable to pay, please submit during the free months or email us for an alternative submission method.
- Each paid submission comes with a digital copy of our latest issue of Footnote, currently #4 ($7.99 value).
- It is highly recommended that you read our past Charter Oak finalists and winners.
- We will send a response and notification of the winners to every submission by the end of March. Form response only, unless we are interested in publishing your book. We are regretfully unable to provide feedback.
- Historical pieces can be submitted for free during Black History Month (February), Women’s History Month (March), and Native American Heritage Month (November). We close our free submissions when we reach our monthly Submittable submissions cap, so submit early in the month, and please only submit to free categories once per month, to give everyone a chance to submit before submissions are capped. When free submissions are open, the portal link will be active here.
- We accept approximately 40 pieces per issue. We do not give out complimentary print editions, except to the first-, second-, and third-place winners of the Charter Oak Award whose work is therein contained.
- We acknowledge that we are headquartered on what should be Arapaho land on a street that is instead named for a dead white male president who owned enslaved people and severed Native American Nations apart irrevocably. To honor the reparations that this entire country needs to make, Black writers and Native American Indigenous (United States and Canada) writers may submit for free to this journal (please note that if the portal is not open, then we have reached our free-submission monthly cap until the beginning of the next month).