WALLSTRAIT | A Literary Journal

Wallstrait is an online literary journal featuring bold, innovative, and hard-to-define fiction. We publish biweekly and respond quickly.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-

ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-

nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr [...]

— Finnegans Wake

James Joyce

"Wallstrait" has been "defined" by scholars as an adjective referring to Wall Street or the Wall Street crash, or maybe Walkin Street in Boston. Or tall. No, straight. Well-straight? Straight as a wall? Or a Joycean portmanteau of wall (meaning wall) + strait (meaning difficulty, crisis; or narrow sea-passage)?

"Wallstrait" is hard to define. So is great fiction. Our mission is to publish great fiction. We're not overthinking it. We welcome all genres, respond quickly, and pay $25 upon publication.

— New Stories —

— Editor's Note —

Due to unexpectedly high submission volume, we've recently implemented reading periods. As much as we would love to read fiction year-round, it's not fair to writers if we start falling behind on our response times and scheduling accepted stories a year out. To avoid that, we've settled on the following reading periods:

Fall Reading Period

September 1 – December 1

—
Spring Reading Period

March 1 – June 1

We've updated our Submissions page and many of the resource sites listing us to reflect our adjusted reading times and slightly altered response window, which is now 1-14 days. We're still proud to be one of the fastest-responding journals out there, but our 10-day window has proved unrealistic after the humbling surge in submission we've seen over the past few months.

We're extremely grateful that our little journal has resonated with so many writers, and we're looking forward to getting back to our speedy, feedback-heavy ways with these new changes.

Thanks so much to everyone who's submitted to us or read the great stories we've been lucky enough to publish!

— Now Hiring —

We are currently looking for remote volunteer Readers to join our team.

If you're looking for money, we can tell you that we have none. But our hours are flexible, and who knows? You might enjoy it.

If you can spare 4 - 6 hours a week and have a passion for fiction, this gig might be right up your alley.

Our goal is to be one of the fastest-responding journals in the business, publish a crazy diverse range of fiction coming only from submissions, and give a line or two of constructive feedback as time permits. If this sounds like your kind of vibe, we might have a spot for you at Wallstrait.

If you're interested, just head over to our Submittable page and submit an application. Nothing formal. We don't have a list of demands. Just say hello, outline any experience and/or publication credits you think might be relevant, and maybe say something about your tastes in fiction. You totally don't need to include a resume/CV, but if you want, you can attach it as a PDF.

— What We Publish —

We publish a new piece every two weeks. We welcome flash fiction, longer stories, and hybrid experimental stuff you can't quite define. We encourage first-time authors to submit.

Wallstrait is a paying market. We pay $25 per story.

Everything we publish comes from unsolicited submissions. We don't reach out to established writers. We don't have a "Slush Pile." We have a Submissions Pool, and it's the lifeblood of our journal. We depend on your submissions to keep this thing going.

Like the name of our journal, what we publish is hard to define. We publish short fiction — we know that much, at least. Typically, 500 - 3000 words is our sweet spot, but we'll consider stories up to 5,000 words. See our Submissions page for more info RE: logistics, guidelines, and other assorted details and potentially interesting miscellanea.

As for genre, we'll consider almost* any type of fiction. If you're not sure how to classify it, that's even better.

Send us your best work. We'll read and publish short stories in the realm of action, adventure, coming-of-age, crime, detective, drama, dystopia, fairytale, fantasy (high/low/second-world/portal/Eldritch/magical realism/paranormal; just go for it), gothic, horror, humor literary, mystery, noir, philosophy, psychology, politics, realism, romance, satire, science fiction, steampunk, supernatural, thriller/suspense, tragedy, Western, etc. Send us your work. If your genre isn't on this list, just pretend it is and send it.

If you can't figure out what genre you're writing in, we're all about that! We want to read it now. Yesterday, if possible.

* Exceptions: We absolutely will NOT consider AI-generated fiction.