Submissions are OPEN, and Jim Peterson has joined the team as a GUEST POETRY EDITOR for our spring issue. ♥
JIM PETERSON has published eight full-length poetry collections, most recently Towheaded Stone Thrower in early 2025, The Horse Who Bears Me Away in 2020, and Speech Minus Applause in 2019. His novel, Paper Crown, was published in 2005, and his collection of short stories, The Sadness of Whirlwinds, was published in November 2021. He has won The Benjamin Saltman Award for poetry from Red Hen Press, a poetry fellowship from the Virginia Arts Commission, and an Academy of American Poets award. Several hundred of his poems and stories have been published in more than 80 journals and anthologies. His plays have been produced in regional and college theaters. He retired as Coordinator of Creative Writing at Randolph College in 2013 and has also taught for many years in the University of Nebraska-Omaha Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing. He continues to live and write in the beautiful and mysterious foothills of Virginia.
WE SEEK THE
FOLLOWING:
Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, humor, experimental/wildly unclassifiable, and visual art—artwork, photography, collage, comics. The prose word limit is 1500. For poetry, submit 1-3 pieces. For visual art, submit 2-4 pieces. We strongly favor work with depth and unique insight that explores the human condition and leans toward unusual, possibly urgent, and slightly unhinged. Life is absurd, and we like being moved in unexpected ways by its absurdity. To make sure we’re a good fit for each other, view our issues
Humor is all about, well, humor. Currently, we’re accepting terrible pitches and delightful 5th-grade book reports. More on humor subs
PUB BASICS
We publish four issues a year.
We only accept submissions through Submittable, and submissions are generally open unless we’re between issues or have reached our capacity, emotionally and Submittably. Note: Poetry subs tend to fill quickly. If you don’t see an option to submit poetry, this means that poetry submissions have closed for that reading period.
We cannot offer payment at this time, but we hope to by late 2025. We never charge a submission/reading fee for general submissions. Only submit to one category per reading period. Multiple submissions will be declined.
Submissions must be previously unpublished, original, and from the original creator. (Shared on your personal social media or personal blog is fine. We don’t consider this as a publication.) We only accept stories written by corporeal humans. We don’t consider AI-written stories. For artwork, it should not have been previously published online or in a major print publication.
Our current response time is max three months.
RIGHTS AND
RELEASES
Your work belongs to you! We will publish, lovingly promote, and maintain a copy online. If your submission is later published elsewhere, please mention its home on Magpie Zine.
P.S.
No-no’s: racist, queerphobic, transphobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, fascist, exploitative, ableist, or appropriation of experiences and communities that aren’t your own. We also refrain from publishing creators whose work may not espouse these views but who personally do. We reserve the right to remove your work, without notice, from our site if we become aware of cringey behavior, plagiarism, or other stipulations not enumerated here.
If we have already published your work, please wait three issues before sending us more.
If a piece was previously declined, please do not resubmit it unless encouraged.
