Submission Guidelines

Burningword Literary Journal accepts poetry, flash fiction, flash nonfiction, photography, and digital art submissions for publication. Please read through the brief guidelines and publishing schedule before you submit.

Genres and Details

  • Poetry in any form or style. Your poetry submission may contain up to five (5) poems, may be submitted as one file, run fewer than 10 pages in length, and must be unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are welcomed so long as you withdraw them when accepted elsewhere.
  • Flash fiction (a.k.a. microfiction, short-short story, sudden fiction, etc.) submissions should aim for a word count of 300-500 words or less per piece. You may submit up to two (2) pieces per issue, may be submitted as one file, should run fewer than five pages in length, and must be unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are welcomed so long as you withdraw them when accepted elsewhere.
  • Flash nonfiction submissions should aim for a word count of 300-500 words or less per piece. You may submit up to two (2) pieces per issue, may be submitted as one file, should run fewer than five pages in length, and must be unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are welcomed so long as you withdraw them when accepted elsewhere.
  • Photography & digital art (open call). We seek original photography or 2D digital art for our quarterly publication. Your submission may include up to three (3) image files, each in JPG format with a resolution of 1,850 pixels on the longest side and no larger than 7MB. Due to the unique nature of visual arts, you may submit previously published work and may further disseminate that work as you wish.
  • Please keep your email address updated in Submittable because that’s how we notify you of our editorial decisions, awards notifications, and related requests and calls. We now charge a modest submission fee to help offset the cost of maintaining the manuscript system and web hosting. Because of this change, we now encourage multiple pieces per submission, as outlined above.

Important Guidelines

  • This journal uses a double-anonymous review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. Please remove all instances of your name from your work before uploading it!
  • Your name (or pen name), contact information, and third-person bio should be entered using the submission form. Per the Submissions Agreement, your name and third-person bio will be published with the selected work. Do not include any information that you do not wish to be shared publicly!
  • If you need to withdraw a submission, please do so using our submission system.
  • If you use a pen name, be sure to use that in place of your real name in all instances.
  • Your name (or pen name) and third-person bio will be published along with your selected work.
  • If you need to modify a submission for any reason, including your name (or pen name), contact email, biography, etc., please do so within our submission system. Modifications to work, including byline and bio, are not possible after publication.
  • Due to our double-anonymous reviewing system, we cannot provide a reduction of submission fees without inadvertently revealing the submitter’s identity. Burningword is actively investigating viable workarounds for this regrettable limitation.
  • We accept simultaneous submissions and prefer unpublished material.

Guidelines After Publication

  • There is a limited ability to “proof” your chosen work before it goes into publication. Errors made by Burningword to either the print or electronic versions will be corrected by Burningword ASAP. Please let us know if you find an error.
  • We accept simultaneous submissions; however, if we receive your work for publication, you must notify all other publications it is no longer available immediately.
  • The authors and artists we publish receive a complimentary eBook issue and significantly reduced rates for print copies.

Schedule

Burningword is a quarterly web, print, and digital publication with issues published January 5, April 5, July 5, and October 5. The cut-off date for submissions is the 10th day of the prior month for each quarter:

  • January Issue Submissions open October 1 and close December 10
  • April Issue Submissions open January 1 and close March 10
  • July Issue Submissions open April 1 and close June 10
  • October Issue Submissions open July 1 and close September 10

Copyrights, Reprinting, and Attribution

Burningword Literary Journal typically asks for the right to publish an author’s work in a single print edition, an epub version of the same issue, and future retrospective editions of the journal. We make our entire journal available to subscribers, with the most recent issues available to all. After publication, all rights revert to our authors. If a publisher wishes to reprint, repost, or redistribute Burningword’s published work in any form, you must contact the writer and secure permission. Please read the Copyright Notice and our Submissions Agreement. Our policies were created to help protect your rights and ours.

Submit

The process is simple and will allow you to track where you’re sending your writing. Good luck!
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Last updated January 21, 2025