Wallstrait

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We pay $25 per story. It's always free to submit.

 

We're pretty laid-back, but please at least skim our guidelines before you submit. Like most journals, we appreciate brief cover letters and third-person bios. Original, unpublished work only. No reprints. Please don't add a pitch to the cover letter. 

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Fall Reading Period

September 1 – December 1

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Spring Reading Period

March 1 – June 1

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What We Publish:

No limitations on genre. Just send us your best fiction. See our home page for a weirdly detailed example of the many genres we'll consider. But then again, the whole point of that list is that we'll consider pretty much anything.

 

We welcome flash fiction, longer stories, hybrid, and experimental stuff you can't quite define. We publish a new story every two weeks. Help us keep our readers on their toes. 

 

Note: We'll publish fiction in any genre as long as we love it, but we draw the line at AI-generated prose.  We'll take humans writing about robots—but we don't want robots writing about humans. Please: No AI. We absolutely will NOT consider anything promoting hate or divisiveness.

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What We Pay: 

We pay $25 upon publication. Payments are made through PayPal.

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Word Count:

500 – 3,000 words is our preferred range, but you can submit up to 5,000 words maximum. Please submit only one story at a time. If you have a dozen flash fiction stories, please send us one of them. We respond very quickly, so if we pass, feel free to submit again. Note: We have nothing against microfiction, but since we publish one standalone story every two weeks, we will not consider stories less than 500 words in length.

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Format:

We love hard-to-define fiction, but we also love easy-to-read fonts. All work should be double-spaced and formatted somewhat traditionally. 

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Miscellaneous:

• No Multiple submissions. One at a time.

• We accept simultaneous submissions. Please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere.

• No Reprints. Original, unpublished stories only.

• If we pass, you can submit again immediately. But if we publish your work, we ask that you wait six (6) months after your story's publication date to submit again.

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Cover Letter:

• Please include the word count. There is no need to pitch or describe your story.

• Please include a brief, third-person bio.

• Publishing under a pseudonym is fine — be yourself in the cover letter and let us know the name under which you'd like to publish.

• We don't care how the cover letter is addressed. Some journals are weird about this, which seems weird to us. You can address it however you see fit. 

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Note: We occasionally offer a line or two of feedback. If you're not interested, please let us know in the cover letter and we'll keep our traps shut. All feedback is subjective. More on that below if you're interested.

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​Rights:

Wallstrait asks for One-Time, First Serial and Electronic Rights. All rights revert back to the author upon publication.

 

For first-time writers, here's what that means: we'll email you a legal but straightforward agreement that says Wallstrait gets to be the first place your story appears. After we publish it, you can do whatever you want with it—it's your story. Look the agreement over, and when you feel good about things, give us the go-ahead via email. It's that easy. If you publish your awesome story in a collection, we kindly ask that you give us a shoutout as the publication in which your story originally appeared.

 

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The Important Stuff 

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Miscellaneous Notes of Possible Interest

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Response Times: 

Our goal is to be one of the fastest-responding literary journals in the industry. Occasionally we’ll respond the same day.

 

If you get a quick “pass,” it is not a reflection of your writing but rather a reflection of our commitment to responding quickly.

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In most cases, we'll notify you within 10 days if your submission has been elevated by an editor for further consideration and discussion.

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If you don’t hear anything from us within two weeks, feel free to email us at Editor@wallstrait.com with the subject line “Status of Submission: [Title]”. We’ll look into it and get back to you. 

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Editorial Feedback:

We try to offer occasional feedback in the unlikely event that it's useful. Sometimes, it just helps to have a second set of eyes on something. That said, there are a lot of editors out there. We all have different opinions and different tastes, and feedback from any of us should be taken with at least a grain of salt—perhaps two or three. In many cases, it's safe to just ignore us altogether. 

 

If we liked your overall premise but feel like the prose could be tightened to heighten the effect, we might say something along those lines. Positive and constructive: that's what we're about. If you receive a simple form letter, it's not because we have nothing nice to say — it's because we're a small journal trying keep response times fast.

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Note: Please don't revise and resubmit unless we specifically ask for it.

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If you don’t want editorial feedback, please feel free to let us know. When you submit, you'll notice that we have a nice opt-out option for this.

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Award Nominations:

We nominate for every award we can find—even (especially) the prestigious ones to which we have no business submitting as a fledgling literary journal. If we love your work, we’ll publish it. If we really love your work and can’t stop thinking about it, we’ll submit handsomely formatted nomination packages urging judges to give you the literary recognition you deserve. For genre fiction eligible for awards specific to that genre, we’ll seek those out and submit to those, too.

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Submission Fees:

Nope. None. It will always be free to submit.

 

We do have a Tip Jar option in Submittable. Every penny we receive from this category goes directly to the writers we publish. When/if we ever take in enough tips to put us ahead six months, we'll either close the Tip Jar category temporarily or raise our payment rates. We're not in this to make money from writers.​​​​