Submissions

Cherry Tree's aesthetic champions image-rich, sonically adventurous poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction which showcase whimsy and wit alongside risk and urgency. In 2016, we introduced "Literary Shade," a section featuring work that responds to and challenges oppressive social structures. Our name recalls the apocryphal story of George Washington's ax, and we encourage writers to craft new and inventive ways to critique, to re-imagine, and to chop away at literary traditions. We endeavor to serve as both a site of coalescence and protest and a vibrant archive of human thought and feeling.

Cherry Tree is open for submissions between August 1 and October 1, submitted electronically via Submittable. We only consider original, unpublished work. For accepted work, we purchase First North American serial rights. Payment is $20 per contributor and two contributors' copies. Our reading fees help us pay authors and defray the cost of producing the journal.

All work submitted to our poetry, fiction, or nonfiction categories will be considered for inclusion in the Literary Shade feature section of our upcoming print issue. If you're not yet familiar with our Literary Shade feature, which we debuted in Issue 3, here's a brief description of what we're keeping a lookout for:

The expression “throwing shade” has been around for a while, though it has recently become more widely used to describe witty takedowns and acerbic critique. Merriam Webster’s first recorded use of “shade” is from the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, which chronicles the mid-1980s NYC ballroom culture as seen through the eyes of Latinx and Black queer and trans performers. Merriam Webster added the term to its pages in 2017, which is also the year we began publishing Literary Shade.

Literary Shade aims to publish impeccably-crafted poems, short stories, or non-fiction that throws shade at the institutions that have whitewashed our literature and history, be they laws or events or texts authored by cisgender, white supremacist, misogynistic homophobes. We believe that shade—subversive wit, withering critique—can empower.

And there is a lot of shade underneath the cherry tree.

Cherry Tree is listed on Duotrope and NewPages.

Submission Guidelines

• Please send no more than 5 poems, 5 flash prose pieces, or 20 total pages of prose uploaded as a single file. We have a tendency to publish shorter, well-voiced prose pieces.
• Simultaneous submissions are fine. If any of the submission is accepted elsewhere, please notify us by adding a note to your submission in Submittable. We will happily consider the remaining work in your original submission.
• Please do include a cover letter with a brief bio and contact information, including a phone number.
• Cherry Tree does not allow any revisions to submissions during the reading period. Rest assured that typos and other minor mistakes will not deter us from accepting otherwise outstanding work. If your work is accepted, you will be allowed to make necessary corrections prior to publication.
• You are able to withdraw a part of your submission (a poem or flash piece, for instance) by making a note in Submittable. If you want to withdraw an entire piece, you are welcome to submit again in that genre, though each submission will incur a separate reading fee.
• We welcome work in translation that has not yet been published in English. It is the translator's responsibility to secure all necessary permissions before submitting.
• If your work has been published in a previous issue of Cherry Tree, please wait 2 years before submitting again. For example, if you were published in Issue 12, please wait to submit again until we are reading work for Issue 14.
• Further queries may be directed to managing editor Amber Taliancich (aallen5FREEwashcoll). All submissions will receive a response by the end of November.
• Writers currently incarcerated may send paper submissions to: James Allen Hall c/o Rose O'Neill Literary House, 300 Washington Ave., Chestertown, MD 21620 or via email to lit_houseFREEwashcoll.
• Current Washington College students and those who have graduated in the past 4 years are not eligible to submit to Cherry Tree.
• We accept original, previously unpublished work that has not been written by generative AI. If you have used AI in producing any part of your work, in any part of your process, please identify that in your cover letter. 

Subscriptions are $15 for 1 issue (1 year) and $26 (2 years). Back issues are available for $10 each, or $25 for a bundle of 3. Cherry Tree can be purchased at our online store, where we also have letterpress broadsides, chapbooks, and swag items available for purchase.