Most events are installed on their deadline date, unless there is a long submission window or unless it's a rolling submission.
P=Poetry, N=Nonfiction, F=Fiction
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FN – Call for Submissions to Cowboy Jamboree Magazine. Theme: “Hidden behind the door that sorrow locked”
CALL FOR SUBS-CJ FALL 2025
ISSUE Theme: “Hidden behind the door that sorrow locked.”
Where’d it come from? It’s a James “Slim” Hand lyric from a song about sitting in a bar in the corner at a table by a jukebox. Interpret however you like.
Story/CNF/Verse. Deadline: Sept 21. Submit to cowboyjamboree@gmail.com
[Purpose, Style & Tastes]
It’s in the title.
COWBOY [kou-boi] (def.)
1. American plains animal herder who tends cows
2. one who is reckless or ignores risk, i.e. “cowboy attitude”
3. tradesman with questionable or atypical practices, i.e. “cowboy plumbing”
4. fast or careless driver on the highway, i.e. “slow down, cowboy”
5. slang for “outlaw”
JAMBOREE [jam-buh-ree] (def.)
1. a large celebration or party, typically boisterous
2. a carousel of noisy merrymaking
PLEASE NOTE: COWBOY JAMBOREE IS LBTQ+ INCLUSIVE; WE SUPPORT WOMEN’S RIGHTS; WE ARE POC INCLUSIVE; WE ARE SENSITIVE TO MENTAL HEALTH INCLUSIVITY.
If your fiction, creative nonfiction, vignette, flash, or photography jazzes with the above, we’re probably gonna dig it. Not everything we accept for publication looks the same. That said, words that describe stories we tend to like might include rural, hardscrabbled, rough-hewn, pulpy, noirish… and, of course, GRITTY.
In short, we’re a Grit-Lit magazine focused on the rural working class and gritty realism. We are not a traditional western magazine. Western stories we accept tend to stray from archetypes of females as damsels and cowboy gunslingin’ heroes. We’re generally not interested in historical western characters, no matter how fictionalized. We like stories that blend working class and literary language to explore characters and places that find themselves on the hardscrabble rather than heroic side of life.
In other words, our cowboys are more likely to jump off a ’71 Ford Maverick than ride into a dusty town on a black steed.
Some grit lit and rural authors we love and that inspire us are: Larry Brown, Harry Crews, Donald Ray Pollock, Willy Vlautin, Denis Johnson, Barry Hannah, Brad Watson, Breece D’J Pancake, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Dorothy Allison, Bobbie Ann Mason, Wiley Cash, Erika T. Wurth, and Sheldon Lee Compton. Beyond that, “classic” authors we dig vary and are certainly not contained to the following list, but these are some : Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Sam Shepard, Charles Portis, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Raymond Carver, Jim Harrison, & Elmore Leonard.
We’ve always got a soft spot for country western, folk, Americana or rural music. If that finds its way into a piece, we’re likely to be bias readers (don’t mean we’ll take it, just, you know, it’ll tickle our fancy). Terry Allen, Townes van Zandt, Hank Williams, Mississippi John Hurt, the Carter Family, Nanci Griffith, the Flatlanders, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl King, Old Crow Medicine Show, Johnny Cash, Dom Flemons, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, Dwight Yoakam, Justin Townes Earle, John Prine, Charley Crockett, Colter Wall, Tom Waits, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Charlie Pride and Bob Dylan reign supreme here.