wanted: your great literature!
Send us great work! We are open for submission! (Remember: All authors get paid!)
Please note our new feature: all non-contest submissions will be considered for our new $200 Staff Choice Award: an accepted piece chosen by our staff as best embodying two things we love and respect about writing: stylistic ambition and social engagement. One author each issue will receive this award, announced with the issue's release in May.
Generally: As always: we hope to read your very best, we're excited to read it, and we want more, we hope for more, we quietly plead for/demand more. Simply: we love great literature, especially literature that is urgent and/or strange, and we love all voices, be they new, emerging, or established - certainly those from underrepresented groups. We always put samples from past issues on our homepage if you'd like to get a sense of our sensibilities (which, of course, change).
Note: Future submissions will be read for our spring 2024 issue. They must be previously unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are totally fine (but please withdraw accepted pieces immediately; the lack of this practice has increased far too much for us lately).
Note 2.0: We generally charge a two dollar fee so that we can do something we hope all agree is a good thing: pay all our authors, at least $40 per writer; usually we have free submissions in early Dec and May ... and during June and July, we offer free submissions to any authors who self-identify as being from underrepresented or minoritized communities or simply can't afford the $2 fee.
Happy submitting, and feel free to visit/like our Facebook page!
We've added this category to better accommodate a type of submission we've seen an increase of lately--maybe it's prose poetry, maybe it's flash fiction, maybe it's hybrid, maybe it's non-fiction. Usually tone and language and rhythm are elevated, and maybe there's a touch of narrative ... or not, your call!
Feel free to include 3 pieces in a submission, and each can be up to 1200 words or so. (Each single piece will be considered for publication.)
We crush on poetry of so many variations - poetry that is witty and poetry that is moving, poetry engaged in the world and poetry that couldn't care less; poetry from ironic authors and from those poets who paint strange, beautiful, and exquisite shadow-boxes. Stretch yourself - stretch us. (Donika Kelly, Brandon Som, and C.D. Wright are three among the many thousands of poets we adore.)
Since we're shifting to fees - again, all authors will be paid - we suggest you group your poems in a single submission, up to five at a time. (If any get accepted elsewhere, just shoot us an email as soon as you can.)
We love non-fiction and would love to see more! We're keen on recent work by, among many others, Esmé Wang, Maggie Nelson, and Claudia Rankine, and of course forebears such as Joan Didion, Audre Lorde, and Anne Carson.
Please - one submission at a time. We rarely take pieces over 5000 words but hey, we know that sometimes it just takes more words, so if that's the case for you, please give us a shot. We look forward to reading your work!
We love fiction of many stripes - to give you a sense of what gets our hearts especially a-thumping, we're very much moved by the urgency of Edward Jones and the strangeness of Carmen Machado, by the passion of Justin Torres and the ruminations of Lucia Berlin.
Please - one submission at a time. We rarely take pieces over 5000 words . . . but hey, if that's your jam, and you know the story is better for its length, please give us a shot.
Please select this option to purchase our current or any past issue. We'll assume you want the current issue unless you designate another (issues 14 & 15 are sold out, just so you know).
Current issue 24 features work from a bevy of fantastic and award-winning fiction writers and poets, including poetry by Luiza Flynn-Goodlet, nicole v. basta, and Kay Lin, prose by Lisa Beebe, Steff Sirois, and Ahreeda Ryter, interviews with several contributors and Carribean Fragoza, and our annual review of contemporary indie books.
Thanks!