To give our contributing writers and artists the widest possible exposure digital issues of 3rd Wednesday are now free to everyone.
To open free electronic issues (PDF) of Third Wednesday just click a cover image. That issue will open in your browser. You can read it online or you can download the file and open it with the PDF reader of your choice.
Print editions are available at Amazon.com at a modest price.
We enter our 16th year of publishing 3rd Wednesday with this winter issue featuring some fine poetry,
stories and artwork from names both familiar and new. The print issue was mailed out to contributors and subscribers on New Year’s Eve.
The autumn issue of 3W features the winning and honorable mention stories from the annual George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest as selected by this year’s contest judge, Ron Koertge. Ron has also graced us with a short fiction of his own. The issue is also packed with the usual array of great poetry.
Here is the summer issue of 3rd Wednesday. In this issue you’ll find a special feature of four annotated poems by Richard Tillinghast. As a preface, we include a brief biography to introduce you to this special poet. We also mark the return of student poetry from The Inside/Out Literary program from Detroit Area Schools, as usual curated by Peter Marcus.
Here is the annual spring contest issue of 3rd Wednesday. Our judge this year is poet and writer Keith Taylor who recently retired from the University of Michigan where he taught in the undergraduate and graduate programs in creative writing. Keith is the author of sixteen collections of poetry. The most recent is Let Them Be Left, poems from Isle Royale published by Alice Greene & Co. As always, the winning poems in this contest are “co-winners”. We don’t award 1st, 2nd and 3rd places so the three poems receive the same prize of $100.
We enter out 15th year of publication with this winter issue. 
This issue marks a substantial change in the way we publish 3rd Wednesday. We look for ways to expose our contributors to an ever-wider audience, and beginning with this issue, each of the poetry and fiction pieces included was posted on our website with a brief biography of the contributor as the piece was selected.
The autumn issue of 3rd Wednesday means our annual George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest, judged this year by Elizabeth Kerlikowske. We lead off the poetry in this issue with two poems by Joanne Durham. The first of those, Old Folks, is the winner of this issue’s 50/50 poetry contest. Joanne receives a check for half the entry fees and a one year subscription to 3rd Wednesday. We close out with a fine suite of student poems from Inside/Out, curated by Peter Marcus who brings us poems from ten Detroit area 5th and 10th grade poets.
Volume XIV, No. 3: The Summer issue features the return of the our Inside/Out Student Poetry feature, this time with a suite of poems by Detroit area fifth grade poets. We have a 50/50 contest winner and four fine pieces of short fiction. This issue has an international flavor, with offerings from Ukraine, Wales,, Canada, England, Spain and Malaysia.
Volume XIV, No. 2: The annual spring contest issue features contest winners Shutta Crum, Ken Hines and Zoe Robles along with honorable mentions by Naomi Ling, Pete Mackey, Jane Marek and Peter Schireson, as chosen by this year’s contest judge, Joy Gaines-Friedler. Other poems are by Jack Ridl, Raymond Byrnes, Kelly Fordon, Susan McLean, Patricia Hamilton and many others. There is also short fiction from Phillip Sterling, David Rogers, Laura Remington and Kurt Luchs.
Volume XIV, No. 1: Our guest associate for this winter issue was Leslie Schultz of Northfield, Minnesota, a hotbed of poetry that is also home to Robert Hardy, the winner of this issue’s 50/50 poetry contest. There are muliple poems by a favorite of ours, Buff Whitman-Bradley, also by Patricia Hale, Michael Carrino, Roxanne Henderson, Ann Hudson, David Chorlton, James Scruton, Steve Cushman, Stephan Roberts and Mary Rohrer-Dann.
TW Volume XIII, No. 4 – Autumn 2020
Guest associate editor for this issue is Jude Dippold of Concrete Washington. Jude is a poet and his nature photos have graced several issues of 3W. In this issue are the winning stories from the 4th annual George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest (thanks go out to this year’s judge Lisa Lenzo).Our 50/50 Poetry Contest winner is Notes from the Field by Alexandra Wade.
Highlights in this issue: A flash piece by Ron Koertge (Yes, that Ron Koertge), poems by Claire Rubin, James Crews and many others, as well as student poetry from Inside/Out.
TWVolumeXIII, No3 – Summer 2020:
Joining us for the summer issue as a guest associate editor for poetry was Katherine Edgren. Katherine is author of two chapbooks and a collection, “The Grain Beneath the Gloss”, from Finishing Line Press. She has been a frequent contributor to 3rd Wednesday.
This issue features poetry by a number of old friends and many new ones. We’re thrilled to have multiple poems from Jude Dippold, who will be guest editor for the fall issue and by Leslie Schultz, who will join us this coming winter.
Spring 2020: Winning poems from our annual poetry contest along with honorable mentions and other great poetry from a diverse assortment of poets, including the return of our student poetry feature from the Inside/Out Literary Project. Print copies can be purchased at Amazon.com.
Winter 2020: In this issue you’ll find winning poems and poems of merit from our fourth One Sentence Poetry Contest. We have poems by Marge Piercy, Leslie Schultz, Gary Wadley, Jane Blanchard, Tiffany Babb, Alan Harris, Lisa Timpf, Terry Allen and many others. The print edition is available now at Amazon.com.
Autumn 2019: This issue features the results of our third annual George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest, three winners chosen for us by Jeremy Griffin, author, teacher and faculty fiction advisor/editor of The Waccamaw Journal of Coastal Carolina University. You can also purchase this issue in print at a discount prince from Amazon.com.
Summer 2019: issue 3 of volume XII. This issue features the winning poems from the third edition of our popular One Sentence Poetry Contest. Once again our contributors have come through with some fantastic examples of what a poet can do with the basic building block of writing. Our featured poet is Jennifer McGowan, who lives near Oxford, England. We were taken with her experimentation with a traditional form.
Spring 2019: This issue includes the winners and honorable mentions from our annual poetry contest. We are pleased with the selections made by our judge for this year’s contest, Robert Fanning. In addition to the monumental task of reading and evaluating nearly 450 poems from the contest, Mr. Fanning also curated a special feature of student poems from Central Michigan University where he teaches. This is the latest in our series of student features. We’re excited to give this opportunity to young writers, many of whom are seeing their work in print for the first time.
Winter 2019: In this issue you’ll find the results of our “Second Ever One Sentence Poetry Contest”. You’ll also find new work from Ted Kooser, Marge Piercy, Dan Gerber (with a couple of excellent examples of one sentence poems), Jack Ridl and Robert Haight, as well as from lesser known writers familiar to 3rd Wednesday readers – Sheryl Clough, Lisa Timpf, Jude Dippold, Leslie Schultz and Buff Whitman Bradley.
Autumn 2018: This issue of Third Wednesday includes the winners of our second George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest. Also in this issue, an assortment of great poetry from past and first time contributors, one of whom I’ll single out for special mention. Ted Kooser, Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2004, is a long-time friend of Third Wednesday, reprinting poems from our pages in his nationally circulated “American Life in Poetry” series eight times. Look for his previously unpublished poem, “Fairgrounds”, in this issue and look for more from Mr. Kooser in future issues of TW.
Summer 2018: Our summer issue includes the results of our first ever “One Sentence” poetry contest, an experiment that our editors have had a lot of fun reading. We’ve published not only the three winning poems for you, but a number of other entries in which we found considerable merit. Our contributors have proven that you can pack a lot of poetry into the basic building block of literature.
Spring 2018: We’re excited about this, the annual poetry contest issue of Third Wednesday. We’ve been running this contest for many years. We’re pleased that we were able to have Phillip Sterling judge this year’s contest. This year saw nearly 200 entries, meaning that Mr. Sterling had to read close to 600 poems, from which he had to select just 3 winners.
This issue’s other feature is a suite of poems by undergraduate poets from Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. It was curated by teacher, Lauren Tivey, who was our featured poet in last summer’s Volume X, Number 3. For most of these young poets, this is a first-time publication.
Winter 2018: This is what we call a “between contests issue”. There’s nothing going on except the best writing that was sent to us. Oh, we do have a new poem by Marge Piercy, a good friend to TW, but we’re not going to brag. There are lots of other good friends in this issue too, some old, some new.
Third Wednesday Magazine 