Cleaver Magazine accepts submissions year-round. View our general guidelines below. We are an all-volunteer organization staffed by artists and writers who work together as promoters and stewards of literary and visual arts.
We receive over 3000 submissions a year with an acceptance rate of slightly 7.25%. Submissions are read by our editorial team in chronological order as we make our way through the queue. The wait time for an answer will vary from a few days to several months, but be assured that we read every submission. We try to pass on editorial comments to submitters whenever possible.
From 2013 through 2019 we offered free submissions to all writers. As of January 1, 2020, to help defray the steeply rising costs of the Submittable platform (which now costs us over $1000 per year) and our web hosting platform, we are instituting a $5 submission fee. (Submittable takes a portion of each submission fee, so we receive only $3.76 from every $5.) If the $5 fee presents a hardship, please do not hesitate to email us at:
editor@cleavermagazine.com
and we will send you a no-fee submission link.
If you have a submission still in the queue and have not heard back from us, assume it has been held over for consideration for another issue. For inquiries, thwack us an email:
editor@cleavermagazine.com.
A few general notes:
- We are currently not accepting art submissions.
- For visual narrative submissions, contact editor Emily Steinberg:
- Please don’t email submissions of poetry, fiction, flash, or creative nonfiction unless you have been specifically requested to do so by an editor. Unsolicited emailed submissions are deleted unread. Submissions mailed to our US Post Office box are recycled, unopened.
- We have a separate category for solicited submissions. Please use this category only when requested by an editor.
- Cleaver welcomes diverse human voices, but we do not consider AI-generated or AI-assisted work.
- Cleaver accepts simultaneous submissions, with immediate notification if work is accepted elsewhere. Previously published work is generally not accepted but we will occasionally consider work shared on personal blogs/websites or work previously published in a limited print-only edition.
- Include your name and full contact information with each submission.
- We'd like to get to know you, so include a brief bio.
- Prose submissions should be single-spaced. We'll still read double-spaced mss, but it's harder for us to read double-spaced mss. through the Submittable interface, so please be nice to our eyes!
- Please include the word count for your submission at the top of the document. Fiction submissions word limit: 4000. Nonfiction word limit: 3000.
- Please wait to hear back from us before submitting a new unsolicited manuscript.
- We operate on a butterknife budget and are unable to pay authors for work at this time. In return for your literary labors, we offer respectful and thwackingly stylish curation.
- If you forget to single-space your submission or include the word count, no worries, we won't hold that against you. We're pretty nice.
- If you would like editorial feedback, check the box and we'll include comments if they are available.
- Our response time is generally 2-4 months for fiction, flash, and essays and 2-12 months for poetry. Occasionally we will respond much faster. We have an all-volunteer staff and many submissions, so please be patient. But if you feel that your piece has been languishing in the cue too long, just email us. Sometimes a submission gets lost in the filters.
- All rights revert to the author upon publication. If you republish your work in a print or other journal, please credit Cleaver for the first publication.
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