R2: The Rice Review

We are no longer accepting submissions from Rice University undergraduates for our 2023 Edition. Our next submissions period will open in late fall 2023.

R2: The Rice Review strives to showcase work from a multitude of perspectives. We look for pieces that avoid expected outcomes, stereotypes, cliches, and constructions. Our journal commends creativity and celebrates craft, and we seek pieces that will move us all. We encourage you to share the stories that our culture, at-large, might inadvertently forget, or even limit. We admire work that takes us away from where we are, and that allows us to exist, if only for a time, as someone or somewhere else.

While we are big fans of sci-fi, mystery, and romance, we are looking for genre work that also aspires to be literary. Based on our belief in brevity, we also are not accepting any novel-length writing. Send us pieces that experiment with form, be that prose poems, graphic novels, photo essays, collage pieces, or whatever else you can think of. Don’t just work out of the box – blow it up.

General Guidelines

• We only accept submissions from current Rice University undergraduates.
• You may submit to multiple genres: up to 5 poems, 3 fiction pieces, 3 creative nonfiction pieces, and 5 art pieces.
• Please do not include your name anywhere on your manuscripts or artwork. (We like surprises!)
• If you are submitting multiple pieces across the same or different genres, please include all of your pieces in a single submissions as individual files.
• Submit all pieces as individual files, with only the piece’s title as the file name.

Please see length requirements and other details on our Submittable page, linked here.

What Comes Next

Expect to hear back from us by late March. Since our editors and their teams assess submissions anonymously, you will not receive any updates before that time, but you may inquire about the status of your piece anytime. And of course, please let us know if your piece is accepted elsewhere so we may withdraw it from consideration. 

If you’re an accepted writer, you’ll work with one of our editors to polish your work before publication. Editing will generally entail small changes focused on grammar and formatting, and we will not make any changes without your consent.

If you’re an accepted artist, the R2 staff will not make any changes to your work, but we may come to you with the occasional request for cropping or a higher quality photo or scan.