We are temporarily closed to submissions. Please check back later in the year for details on how to submit to future editions.
Despite urban legends to the contrary, editors are human. As such, the shortest, most honest (and doubtless, most irritating) description of what we publish is “we publish what we like.” However, bearing in mind that most contributors (probably) don’t have ESP, here are some rough guidlines as to “what we like” means for us:
Fiction: Please submit only one story at a time. We strongly prefer stories under 5,000 words. Any story over that length will have the odds stacked against it, and those over 5,500 words are simply are not for us. We prefer stories that place a premium on strong characterization and include some semblence of a plot. While there is a lot of good speculative, mystery, and even young adult romance fiction being written, we are not the place for it. Please only submit work that comfortably fits the description of “literary fiction.” If you’re not sure what literary fiction is (it’s okay, sometimes we’re not sure either) go read some of our back issues. The stories in them are probably literary fiction, and more importantly, we liked them enough to publish them!
Nonfiction: Please submit only one essay at a time. Like fiction, essays should typically be 5,000 words or less (and 5,500 at the very most). We’re interested in a wide range of subjects, but it’s important that they fall under the umbrella term of “creative nonfiction.” As such, we prefer that essays contain some sort of narrative. We read a lot of creative nonfiction that has engaging characters. We read a lot that contains meainingful personal reflection or insight. Our favorites contain both.
Poetry: Please submit no more than five poems at a time. Individual poems should be two pages or less. Although we greatly respect formalist poetry, we are not very likely to publish it. We also respect poetry which experiments with formatting — but we appreciate it even more when such formatting is in the service of the poem, rather than simply undertaken simply for it’s own sake (and of course, we are perfectly happy with “non-experimental” formatting as well, truth be told simple formatting saves us a lot of monotonous work when it comes time to publish).
