Spring 2026 Anthology Submission Prompt and Guidelines

Theme: Walls – real, imagined, perceived, constructed, demolished, and rebuilt

Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Fee: always free

Pay: No submission fee, $50 payment per author

Submission timeframe: October 1 through November 30

Response: 60 days

Walls: A Writing Prompt to Get You Started

Whether breaking through a wall, scaling it to freedom on the other side, or sitting at the top as you take in the view, walls are structures where great stories happen. Walls are not neutral; they divide and imprison, they enclose, they exclude, they liberate.

Walls welcome weary travelers and define sacred spaces. Walls guard wounded hearts. And let’s not forget, walls don’t just have one side to them. In fact, some walls, like hedgerows, can become their own ecosystems and communities from within.

We want your stories about walls: real, imagined, perceived, constructed, demolished, and rebuilt. Tell us of walls you’ve left behind and walls you dared to exist on the wrong side of. Tell us, too, of walls you’ve scaled, broken, or broken yourself upon. The wall might actually be a glass ceiling, a broken/unbroken fourth wall, or it might be a literal barrier keeping someone in or out. What social, cultural, and institutional walls have you encountered, fought, or even found yourself building?

While we have boundaries in our submission requirements, your writing on this theme should be boundless. The essays we select are ones that break our hearts, delight and open our minds, and push us into new—possibly even uncomfortable—places. Works must be creative nonfiction, and we look for the craft of storytelling to shine through.

Small Robin Press champions intersectional voices. If you find yourself at the crossroads of disability, neurodiversity, queerness, poverty, ethnicity, or race, your voice belongs here.

We highly encourage writers who have not previously had publishing experience to submit their work. We recognize the very real barriers in the publishing world. Our press exists to confront those barriers by extending a hand to small writers with big voices. Publishing with Small Robin Press showcases your voice to a community of over 5000 readers looking for precisely the kind of thing you create.

Help us keep making books and supporting small artists

If you are interested in supporting this anthology please consider donating to Small Robin Press. It takes many hours of intense labor to write and edit beautiful essays, to craft them into book form, and to build all of the supporting spaces where readers can find this vital work.

Small Robin Press believes that artists deserve to be paid fairly for their time, their dedication, and their skill. Your donation keeps the books printing, the writers writing, and the Small Robin Press Team livin’ the dream.