About CommonLit
CommonLit is a teacher-founded, award-winning nonprofit dedicated to closing the global literacy gap. Our digital literacy platform is research-based and proven to accelerate reading growth for students in grades 3-12. Our library is full of texts by award-winning authors!
Our Ask
We are currently seeking submissions for highly polished short stories aimed at young people between the ages of 9–14. Submissions can range in theme and genre, though we are keen on receiving stories that feature diverse topics, ideas, and characters. We use diversity in its broadest sense here, which includes race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, physical, and mental disability, nationality, and more.
All accepted stories will be purchased by CommonLit and made available to educators under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. All authors will be compensated for their work and will be credited as the author. Stories will include an author biography.
Why are stories licensed under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0?
Making stories available under a Creative Commons license eliminates legal obstacles and encourages sharing of knowledge and creativity. The CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license makes the stories an Open Educational Resource (OER) and allows teachers and students to re-use and share work, given that they provide proper attribution, use it for noncommercial purposes only, and create derivatives of the work under the same license.
Teachers and schools’ reliance on OER has skyrocketed during the pandemic especially in the nation’s most under-resourced schools. Because OER is free, they expand equitable access to learning and make it possible for teachers, parents, and schools to distribute high-quality learning materials widely, without red tape.
General Guidelines
- We can only accept submissions from contributors aged 18 and above.
- Submit only previously unpublished works.
- All stories should be typed, double spaced, and paginated.
- Submissions should be sent either as a Word Doc or PDF attachment.
- Your name, address, phone number, and email address should appear on the first page, title on subsequent pages.
- Stories should range between 1,500–3,500 words. We are unable to read submissions of more than 3,500 words.
Please email submissions@commonlit.org with a brief cover letter and short bio within the body text of your email.
We regret that we are unable to provide people with individual feedback due to the large volume of submissions we receive.
