Slush Pile Event

Saturday, October 17, 2026 at 1:00pm ET - Slush Pile Event

Please join our mailing list at the bottom of the website's home page to receive the Zoom link two days prior to the event.

Welcome to the Writers' Morning Out semiannual slush pile event. This event is your chance to submit your work (or a portion of it) for feedback from an expert in the literary field. Our panelist may not be able to provide feedback on all submitted pieces, so submit early, as she will read them in order of receipt. Even if your piece is not read, the feedback on others' pieces will likely resonate in some way with your work in progress.

Submission Guidelines:

The quickest way to get rejected when submitting anywhere is to ignore the guidelines!

• Deadline: Friday, October 9, 2026, by midnight

• Entries will be read in order of receipt. We may not get to all submissions, so submit early.

Format:

• Prose: One page, 300 words or fewer, with one-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, and the first line of each paragraph indented by half an inch.

• Poetry: One page, at least one-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font.

• Identify your primary genre—fiction, creative nonfiction, nonfiction, or poetry—at the top of the manuscript. Please also include if this is a finished, stand-alone piece (e.g. flash) or if it is the beginning of a larger piece (e.g. short story or novel). This information will not count toward the piece's total word count.

• Do not include your name or identifying information in the manuscript.

• Submit via email: Send your manuscript as a .doc or .docx file to info@writersmorningout.org with the subject line: Slush Pile (Title of Work).

• Include your name, title of work, and contact information in the body of the email.

If you’re unfamiliar with the slush pile format, please see the recording of our October 2025 Slush Pile event here: https://youtu.be/NEL6ztfVvOs?si=2LONB0uKvz3J5EZh. We encourage you to submit—this event is a valuable opportunity to receive constructive feedback on your work!

Tracy Crow will be our panelist for the event. A former Marine Corps officer, Tracy is a literary agent and the

president/publisher of MilSpeak Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to the creative writing endeavors from within the military community through writing workshops and a traditional publishing pathway for books authored by military veterans and family members.

She is a former assistant professor of journalism and creative writing and the

author/editor of six books to include her award-winning memoir, Eyes Right:

Confessions from a Woman Marine, and the historical biography with co-author Jerri Bell, It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan, earning a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to her role as an online MFA adjunct at SNHU, Tracy teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina.

Currently, as a work-for-hire author, Tracy is writing the first historical biography of women in Air Force special forces from 1990 to 2022, scheduled for release in 2027 from Air University Press.

She lives in central North Carolina on ten storybook acres with her husband—a Major League Baseball lifer—and their three pups, Rocky, Hope, and Fenway.