Hump Day Submission Carousel 12

#12: 4/14/21

It's Wednesday, so you know what that means! HUMP DAY SUBMISSIONS! Because it's easy to fall off the submission train during the week I'm presenting you with 3 cool and very different small journals currently open for submissions to save you research time! Pick one of the three journals presented and read some of the pieces in your genre. If you're not digging them, check the next journal. Don't agonize over it, if you're not enjoying the writing or you don't feel your writing would fit in there move along to the next journal. If none of them seem to fit... maybe next week? 

Journal 1: El Portal. El Portal is the student-run literary journal from Eastern New Mexico University. As always read their newest issue. Or, they also have a recent long prose Web Feature "Boundary Bound" to check out. Click here for their submission guidelines. They read no fee submissions via email. Here is their editor's interview with Duotrope.

"Our mission is in our name: El Portal is the door. We open our doors to poetry and fiction, photography and art, non-fiction and flash works as we strive to share works that transgress boundaries, straddle borders, and most importantly, move us."

Journal 2: Rising Phoenix Review. Rising Phoenix Review is an online monthly (well, they publish a piece a day and organize them via month on their sidebar, but they call themselves a monthly) that publishes poetry "focused on the working class and other marginalized groups". Read the poems they published in April here, and if you really want to do your due diligence, also read the pieces published in March. They read poetry for no fee all year via email.

From their website: "Our team is deeply committed to curating a diverse publication. We encourage writers from marginalized communities to submit to Rising Phoenix Review. Our team earnestly desires to breakdown barriers for writers and readers in marginalized communities.  We strive to make our platform a safe space for all."

Journal 3: The Pinch. The Pinch is a bi-annual literary journal produced entirely by the students of the University of Memphis MFA Program and English Department. Check out their submission guidelines here. And of course, as usual, read the most recent bunch of pieces published in your genre to get a good idea of what they're looking for, hint: "We gravitate mostly toward magical realism and the surreal/slipstream. This is not the place for slice of life fiction, unless your language is experimental."

From their Duotrope page: "The Pinch is a national literary journal that publishes fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and art. Run out of the University of Memphis, The Pinch has published the work of many fine contemporary writers including: Bobbie Ann Mason, Lee Sharkey, Dinty W. Moore, Floyd Skloot, Ander Monson and many others."

Get your writing out there! You got this! I know it's mid-week, but spending just a little bit of time with reading well-crafted creative writing in the middle of the week it can keep your creativity a little fresher when the weekend comes around. I think, at least.

Also a gentle reminder that Sparked is reading submissions of writing from Notebooking Daily prompts, so send them work now! And if you thought this post was helpful, consider shooting me a buck or two for my own future submissions or to help pay writers for Sparked (which comes out of my pocket). No pressure though. I'm just trying to get better with the begging for pennies, submission fees in 2020 are pretty monumental and 2021 is shaping up to be just as bad!