There are TWO submission opportunties currently open. Please scroll down for all details.

1. Submissions are open for the upcoming issue of the magazine:

The theme for Issue 10 of The Vanity Papers is “Phenomenon” to be interpreted as you wish. We read your work with care and are highly selective. We nominate for the Forward Poetry Prize. Contributors to The Vanity Papers Oxford Literary Review have been published by Faber, Sampson Low, JStor, Wet Grain, The Adroit Journal, Magma Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Minnesota Review, The London Magazine, The Rumpus, The Oxford Review of Books, Ambit, Gutter, Aesthetica Magazine, The Oxford Magazine and have won amongst others, The Gower Prize, The Costa Book Award, Lord Alfred Douglas Memorial Poetry Prize, The PenCraft Book Award and The Oxford-BNU Creative Writing Award. We publish short fiction, poetry, essay, art and photography (with experimental fiction as priority) Please send original work of a maximum of 5000 words. We publish artistically innovative and experimental works. Submissions are open until the 7th of February 2026. Please find the submission form: here

2. The Papers School Inaugural Poetry Chapbook Prize:

We are pleased to invite submissions for The Papers School Inaugural Poetry Chapbook Competition for original collections demonstrating a strong, cohesive vision and experimentation with form.
The Prize:
The wining chapbook will be published online as a collection and featured in the upcoming issue of The Vanity Papers Oxford Literary Review. The winner will receive £100 (transferred through Stripe) The winning chapbook will be announced in the spring of 2026.
The Judges:
Jenny Lewis teaches poetry at the University of Oxford. She has published extensively, her collections include Fathom (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet, 2007), Taking Mesopotamia (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet, 2014), Gilgamesh Retold (Carcanet Classics, 2018) which was a New Statesman Book of the Year, an LRB Bookshop Book of the Week and Carcanet’s first ever audiobook; and From Base Materials (Carcanet, 2024). jennylewis.org.uk
How to Submit:
Manuscripts should be submitted as a single word document. Up to 40 pages. The entry fee is £10. There is no entry fee for members of academic institutions, submission to the competition is free when entered from a university email address. Submissions must be the poet’s own original work. Individual poems may have been published previously but the body of work must not have been previously published as a complete collection.
Submission open until: 10th of February 2026.
Please find the submission form: here