OUR 2024 SPRING LITERARY JOURNAL IS OUT IN THE WORLD! PURCHASE YOUR COPY BELOW

Welcome to calla press

Calla Press, our print literary journal, has been running for seven years. It’s hard to believe what started as a small community has become what it is today.

Calla Press is a wonderful and engaging community that gathers emerging and established writers, readers, artists, and creatives online.

Mission: Calla Press seeks to publish pure, holy, and good work that expands the Christian unapologetic literary work for the glory of Christ Jesus.

Vision: Calla Press is zealous about standing apart from the mainstream literary magazines that blur faith and spirituality. We desire to be bold in defending the gospel truth and publishing biblically sound yet poetic work.

THE PRINT LITERARY JOURNAL AND ONLINE JOURNAL

  • Guidelines

    Please submit all work in a single document using one email. Submissions with multiple docs and emails from the same author will be overlooked. We also accept simultaneous submissions in any genre but please be clear what you’re submitting. Please put what Genre in the Subject line.

  • Submissions

    We accept literary prose, poetry (3 MAX), articles (1,500 WC MAX), flash fiction (1,000 MAX), and creative nonfiction (2K MAX). All work must be exclusive rand adhere to our mission statement. Please view our dropdown menu for more information on each literary genre. Please follow the guielines.

  • Themes

    Because we only publish our annual print journal during the spring and winter, we ask that submissions do not have a holiday theme to it, unless it is around Easter (Spring) or Christmas (Fall). Otherwise, our journal accepts any topic. Our online journal never has a topical theme, so all topics are welcome.

Please email all PRINT literary submissions to our literary journal editor, Rosa Gilbert, at litjournal.callapresspublishing@gmail.com.

Please email all ONLINE literary submissions to our founding editor, Samantha Cabrera, at callapresspublishing@gmail.com. (opens Dec.1st)

Welcome to calla press, our literary journal

  • Online literary submissions open again December 1, 2024.

    We accept submissions all of December to publish the following year online on a rolling publishing schedule. Please expect to wait 1-3 months to hear back about the status of your submission.

    All submissions must be sent to callapresspublishing@gmail.com.

  • Essays and articles covering any topic that respects our Statement of Faith, from motherhood to apologetics. Do not exceed 1,500 words.

    Creative nonfiction should not exceed one entry of 5,000 words. We publish short memoirs (2K-5K words), personal essays, and narrative nonfiction.

    Flash fiction submissions should not exceed 1,000 words. You may submit up to three poems per submission. We did receive a flash that was three words, believe it or not.

    Poems or prose (3 MAX) should not exceed 200 words each. All poems must be titled or will not be accepted.

  • Our annual print literary journal is published every spring of the year.

    Print submissions will open January 1, 2025 for two months. Please allow 1-3 months to hear back about the status of your submission. The Spring journal will be published May 1, 2025.

    Our 2024 Spring Literary Journal is now available and it's beautiful!

    We are currently looking into possibly expanding into a bi-annual journal. Please subscribe for more updates on that soon!

  • Read our full Duotrope Interview!

    Calla Press on Poets&Writers.org.

    Our published writer's work featured on Ann Voskamp's Blog multiple times.

    Listed on CLMP, Community of Literary Magazines and Presses in their Directory of Publishers.

    Listed in EBSCO'S Humanities collection database, a modern literature database tailored to the specific needs of the college and graduate school communities, offering a distinct portfolio of content and resources, including core scholarly content in English and other languages, reference works, audio video, forums, tools, social media, and primary sources of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. 

  • Starting in 2018, Samantha Cabrera ran a literary blog under a now different website and published hundreds of poems, articles, and fictional work. It grew quickly and developed into an online Issuu literary magazine in 2019, of which you can find here.

    Thus, we have run six literary journals, three being in print! Now, we run both online and in print and we're so grateful for this creative community that supports and submits their incredible work to Calla Press.

  • Depending on the founder's schedule, she may put out her own creative collections and may ask for literary work from writers to feature. Subscribe to hear if and when that happens. You may also follow the founder on her IG @mrsamanthacabrera.

  • Manuscript format:

    • Google Docs with editing permission

    • Document name: Author - Title - Year

    • 1-inch margins all around

    • Left justified

    • No spaces between paragraphs; only indentations at the start of each paragraph

    • 1.5 line spacing

    • Page breaks (not spaces) between chapters/essays/poems

    • Size 12 font, Cormorant Garamond font

    • Completed footnotes (not endnotes) in Chicago Manual of Style standards (see this guide on plagiarism) 

    • When a quote exceeds four lines, use a block quote; block quotes are indented 0.5 inches on both sides with a space below and above them in size 10 font

    • Bold and use title capitalization on chapter/essays titles and headings throughout

    • For section breaks within a chapter/essay, use three stars (***) centered in the document

    • Avoid bulleted lists; try to write in paragraphs whenever possible

    Grammar:

    • American spelling

    • One space after periods

    • Use the Oxford comma

    • Jesus’s NOT Jesus’

    • Whenever you cite Scripture, abbreviate the Bible names and include the translation you are using (reference this guide, using the most commonly used option). See this guide on how to write a Bible reference.

    • Take note that you are using the proper dashes in the right places (if you’re unsure, please reference this guide) 

    • Capitalization:

      • names that refer to God (e.g., King, Savior, Lord, Father), but not pronouns that refer to God (e.g., he, him, his)

      • Scripture and Bible, not scriptural or biblical

      • Gospel is only capitalized when referring to the canonical Gospels (e.g.,. the Gospel of Matthew, Mark)

    • Use active voice whenever possible, avoiding passive voice

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