We’re headed to the open ocean for our Out at Sea contest! Four Tulips is looking for short prose and poetry with themes of water, sea life, and sunrises over the horizon. Bring us swashbuckling tales and musings of mermaids—poems of floating and leaving life vests at home. Wining pieces will have rich imagery and taste faintly of salt.

The Out at Sea Contest is accepting submissions until March 31st.

The winner and finalists will be published in the online magazine and in a Four Tulips print anthology. Winners receive 5 free copies of the print anthology.

Submission Guidelines 

Prose: Submit no more than one prose piece at a time. Prose formatting should be single-spaced and no longer than 5,000 words. Submit as Microsoft Word or PDF.

Poetry: Submit no more than three poems at a time. Poems should be formatted single-spaced as a Microsoft Word or a PDF file.

Include your full name, the title of your submission, your email address, and a short 100-ish word bio. We do not accept submissions previously published in other publications. We do, however, accept submissions previously published on personal blogs.