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What We Are Looking For       When to Submit       What to Submit       How to Submit       Response       What Do You Get Out of It?       Code of Literary Ethics
Poetry can be of any form, including lyric verse that employs rhyme and meter,
and there is no word limit. Short stories can be anywhere from very short to 10,000 words.
Essays should surround writers or
literary works. Profiles of contemporary writers are very much welcome!
We also do a few book reviews with each issue (we prefer poetry and fiction, but occasionally
we review non-fiction as well). If you are a publisher or author and would like us to review
your work, please mail to the address below. We may or may not do a review - basically if
we like the book we'll review it, if not ... well you probably wouldn't want us to do
a review anyway.
Whistling Shade abides by a a code of literary ethics, as described below. See our
Pitfalls page for common mistakes
we see in submissions.
No reprints please.
Simultaneous submissions are okay, just let us know.
Also, please take it easy on our submissions staff and don't submit more than 5 poems or 1 story at
a time (up to 3 stories for flash fiction under 1000 words). Please do not submit again until you hear back from us.
Poetry submissions should be e-mailed to poetry at whistlingshade.com.
Essay and all other submissions should be e-mailed to editor at whistlingshade.com
We can handle most formats (PDF, RTF, HTML, even FrameMaker), or you could just paste the
submission in the body of the e-mail. Note that we don't have access to a Mac,
so if it is in a Mac format please use one of the above.
No mailed submissions, please.
When we do respond it will often be a "sorry, we didn't select your work" sort
of response. Don't feel bad though, because statistically we only accept about
1 in 20 pieces submitted. We may or may not comment on your work. If we do
take it in good faith that the feedback is meant to help you gain some perspective
on the work. Because we have many submissions and lack time for carefully
thought out responses, ours might be rather brief and cryptic ... if you would
like more detailed feedback say so in your cover letter and we'll see what
we can do.
If we do accept your work, we will inform you and give you the details
of publication. The copyright will stay with you. For a story, we might
ask you for an illustration ... if you don't have anything in mind we
will have a member of the staff or an artist create something. We'll also
try to e-mail you a PDF galley of your work prior to publication so that
you can look it over. Then when the issue is ready we will mail you copies,
or (if you are local to Mpls/St. Paul) invite you to the issue release.
Other than that, you get the glory of appearing in Whistling Shade,
being read by a couple thousand readers (more readers than many books)
and furthering your book sales or literary career. And heck, there's
just the sheer pleasure of appearing in print.
Whistling Shade:
What We Are Looking For
Whistling Shade is currently accepting poetry, fiction, essay, review and cartoon
submissions for upcoming issues. Our emphasis is primarily mainstream and literary, but we have a broad
readership and do not espouse any given school of writing.
When to Submit
We are open for submissions year round,
and only post deadlines for special features. Our publishing dates
are roughly mid-April, mid-July, mid-September and mid-January and we usually finalize the content
30 days before press.
What to Submit
All submissions should be by e-mail and should contain:
How to Submit
Fiction submissions should be e-mailed to fiction at whistlingshade.com (substitute the "@" symbol for "at").
Response
We try to respond to submissions within 3 months. It takes this long because we
have more than one editor and we have to meet and chat about these things, and getting
a bunch of editors in one place at one time can be tricky. Feel free to query
us if we have not responded within 3 months and we will give you a status update.
What Do You Get Out of It?
Payment is in the form of 2 contributor's copies. At this time cash payment
is not in our budget. However, if you are a starving artist, please mention
that once the work has been accepted and we will send you a small check.
Code of Literary Ethics
Because there are many more writers shopping their work than there
are 'zines to publish them, writers are sometimes taken advantage of.
So, we've formulated some guidelines, a code of ethics if you will,
that we follow here at Whistling Shade. We hope that you will trust us
with your work; we understand that to be a good literary magazine we
need to publish great writing, and to publish great writing we need
to attract the best writers, and do that we need to treat the writers well.
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