Submit three poems. No fee. Please submit all poems in one document, not individually. If you later need to withdraw one or two poems, please send us a message through Submittable. No need to email us. No need to withdraw the entire submission. One submission per reading period.
Submit poems for contest at that link (during contest submission periods), not this one. Thanks.
Poems (including prose poems, which we love) should generally be single spaced, titled, with clear stanza breaks. Please proofread your work carefully before submitting.
We recommend that you read some poems from our online issues to get a sense of what we do and do not publish. Not that we're looking for any specific kind of poem. We like to be surprised.
We look forward to reading your work.
A micro submission period for micro works. Open two weeks. Responses sent by the end of September.
Because we love micros so much, we plan to feature a group of these small wonders in our fall issue.
Are micros fictions, CNF, prose poems, something in between? Who knows. There's something mysterious in the undefinable nature of many of them. We like this in-between-ness.
How long? We'd like to see micros of 400 words or less. Don't feel the need to stretch it to the max. Micros of 200-300 words, even 100, can pack a punch.
Submit one or two micros. If submitting two, please submit both in one document, not individually. If you later need to withdraw one, please send us a message through Submittable. No need to email us. No need to withdraw the entire submission. One submission in this category during this reading period.
The short forms contest opens on October 1. Just a heads up in case your work leans more toward flash length.
Note that lineated poems should be submitted in the poetry category.
For micros: Double space or single space or something in between. However you want to present your work. Standard 12-pt font. Something easy on the eyes. Please proofread your work carefully before submitting.
No fee.
We look forward to reading your work.
Submit one short story (really, just one, no more than 5,000 words; shorter is often better, to be honest). Flash fiction, one story only, may also be submitted here. Submit only one story per reading period. No fee.
We enjoy a wide range of literary short stories and recommend that you read same sample stories from our online issues to get a sense of what we publish.
Submit stories for the contest at that link (during contest submission periods), not this one.
Stories should be double spaced, 12-point standard font, one-inch margins, with indented paragraphs. It's helpful to include the word count on the first page. Pages should be numbered.
Please proofread your work carefully before submitting. A couple of typos isn't a deal breaker, but taking some time to polish your story—checking for spelling, grammar, punctuation, word usage, and other errors—before submitting it to any journal is a good idea. Also be careful not to submit a doc still in track changes mode. When you finish editing your work, accept the changes, eliminate comments, and save the doc.
We sometimes need to cap submissions to keep the numbers manageable. If writers withdraw their work to fix something and then re-submit it, this counts as two submissions in Submittable—which could end up being a problem. A minor typo? Let it go. A major revision? Send the new doc as an attachment to a Submittable message rather than withdrawing and re-submitting. But again, taking time to carefully proofread your work before submitting is best.
No need to tell us what your story is about or include extensive information about yourself. A "thank you for considering this story" and brief bio like others you see on our website is really all you need for the cover note box.
Please be sure to withdraw your work promptly if it is accepted by another publication.
We look forward to reading your work.
Submit one creative nonfiction piece (no more than 5,000 words). Shorter works of CNF are often a better fit for us.
No fee.
A few thoughts on what we're looking for:
For creative nonfiction, we look for the hallmarks described by Philip Gerard in Creative Nonfiction: particularly, an apparent and deeper subject, a well-told story, and the sense that the writer has spent considerable time exploring the subject and making connections outside personal experience—to subjects such as current events and social issues, history, science, politics, religion, the arts—and demonstrating fresh insight. CNF involves telling true stories about people and events using narrative techniques, with a careful attention to language. It rises above chronological description. The narrator is involved with the subject, and there is evidence of reflection in the work. Although the work usually involves the narrator's experience and opinions, the story should rise above the personal and speak to a larger truth. Readers want to learn; they also want to feel and care. This category should not be used to submit autobiography, life writing exercises, scholarly articles, research papers, book reviews, opinion pieces, rants, acts of revenge and other works that one of us might regret later, memoir that does not employ CNF techniques, and other work that doesn't fit this category. There are many markets for them, and no doubt we'll accept work from time to time that seems to defy our criteria, but this is where we stand right now.
Submit CNF for the contest at that link (during contest submission periods), not this one. Work should be double spaced, 12-point font, one-inch margins, with indented paragraphs. Pages should be numbered. We appreciate seeing the word count on the first page.
Please be sure to withdraw your work promptly if it is accepted by another publication.