Poverty in the South is too often discussed at a distance. Flattened into stereotype, policy language, nostalgia, or shame, it is rarely given the complexity, dignity, and literary force it deserves.

Hand to Mouth seeks new work by Southern writers whose lives have been shaped by poverty. We are interested in writing that reflects on poverty as lived experience, inherited condition, social structure, class passage, stigma, kinship, resourcefulness, hunger, desire, labor, and survival.

While nonfiction will anchor Hand to Mouth, we welcome work that is personal, reflective, critical, and formally alive. We are especially interested in personal essays, lyric essays, hybrid essays, memoir-driven criticism, and other nonfiction forms that help us think more fully about what poverty means in the South — including grounded theory and scholarship. We will also consider a limited number of poems and visual art.

Possible points of entry include, but are not limited to:

• the first time you understood, or misunderstood, class
• food, housing, debt, labor, illness, family, education, faith, and care
• government aid, kinship networks, mutual aid, and informal systems of survival
• what poverty taught you to hide, stretch, save, mend, borrow, or go without
• how poverty shaped your sense of beauty, ambition, pleasure, shame, or worth
• what poverty in the South reveals that broader American conversations often miss
• what it means to leave poverty, return to it, remain inside it, or realize leaving is never complete

We are especially drawn to work that resists flattening poverty into one kind of story. We want writing that is specific, intelligent, emotionally honest, and alert to contradiction. Hand to Mouth is not interested in spectacle. It is interested in truth, texture, authority, and the realities people carry in and beyond conditions of scarcity.

For this project, Southern refers to writers who were born in or spent a significant part of their life in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, or Tennessee.

Upon publication, contributors will receive a one time payment of $50. Select contributors may also be invited to share their work at a public event hosted by the editor and the publisher.

Submission Guidelines

• Submit original, unpublished work.
• Suggested length: 1 piece, 2,000–6,500 words for prose.
• Poets: 1–2 poems
• Artists/Photographers: 1–2 pieces
• Simultaneous submissions allowed — please notify us immediately if work is accepted elsewhere.
• Format: PDF for writing. High-quality images for visuals.
• Include a short third-person bio in your cover letter, and please also include a statement about your connection to the American South. 

Timeline

• Call opens: Spring 2026
• Call closes: Sept. 1, 2026
• Contributors notified: End of 2026
• Publication: Fall 2027

Please note that this will be a carefully curated selection process, and we will not be able to accept every submission. We will communicate our timeline clearly so you have the space to place your work elsewhere if this anthology is not the right fit at this time.

Submit your work here: SUBMIT – Loblolly Press