Wallstrait

​​​​​​​​We pay $25 per piece. It's always free to submit. We do have a Tip Jar category. Every penny we make from that category goes toward paying writers.

 

We're pretty laid-back, but please at least skim our guidelines before you submit. Like most journals, we appreciate 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 Original, unpublished work only.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 work. 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, CNF, 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. 

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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: 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 and CNF, but we also love easy-to-read fonts. All work should be double-spaced and formatted somewhat traditionally. Basically, just make it readable and we're happy.

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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 Original, unpublished stories only.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 work.

• 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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Feedback:

We occasionally offer a line or two of feedback. If you're not interested, please let us know in the submission form (there is a handy checkbox), 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, as well as Continuing, Nonexclusive Print and Electronic Rights. All other rights revert back to the author upon publication. 

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For first-time writers, here's what that means: Upon acceptance, we'll email you a legal but straightforward agreement that says Wallstrait gets to be the first place your story appears. "First" means you haven't published this story anywhere else—not on a blog, Reddit, Facebook, etc. "Continuing, nonexclusive" lets us include your story in an yearly anthology (in print and/or ebook format) if we ever end up doing one. "Nonexclusive" means we that we totally get that you can do other stuff with your story after we publish it. After publication, all remaining rights are yours. You can sell it again to a journal that accepts reprints, you can publish it in your own collection with heavy edits, etc. To put it simply, we are paying you to a) be the first to publish this story, and b) the right to republish that same story later in a Wallstrait yearly anthology—if we ever end up doing one.

 

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 story in a collection, we kindly ask that you give us a shoutout as the publication in which your story originally appeared.​​