## Background River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative is a biannual journal dedicated entirely to creative nonfiction — narrative reportage, personal essay, and memoir — alongside critical essays examining the effects of nonfiction writing on the writers, subjects, and readers involved. Its name refers to the dense, resinous knots of wood that remain after a log has decomposed, an intentional metaphor for the durable, essential fragments of a life that memoir and narrative nonfiction try to capture. The journal is well established in the creative nonfiction world as a serious, dedicated venue for the genre, distinct from general-interest literary magazines that treat nonfiction as one category among several. River Teeth also runs Beautiful Things, a weekly online publication for micro-nonfiction (250 words or fewer), giving writers a lower-barrier, faster-turnaround way to place very short true stories, and it awards an annual Literary Nonfiction Book Prize for a full-length manuscript, published by the University of New Mexico Press. ## Submissions - Reading periods: September 1 – December 1, and January 1 – April 1. - Accepts narrative reportage, personal essays, and memoir; no minimum or maximum word count. - Submitted via Submittable; $3 processing fee. - Pays $100, plus two contributor copies and a one-year subscription. - Response time: roughly 3–6 months. - Simultaneous submissions accepted if disclosed, with prompt notice on acceptance elsewhere. - Previously published work (including on blogs) not accepted. - Actively encourages submissions from underrepresented writers, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled writers. - Beautiful Things (micro-nonfiction, 250 words or fewer) accepts submissions on a rolling basis as a separate, faster track. Full guidelines: [riverteethjournal.com/submission-guidelines](https://riverteethjournal.com/submission-guidelines/) Submission manager: [riverteeth.submittable.com/submit](https://riverteeth.submittable.com/submit)