SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We accept short stories, essays, and author interviews. 

Currently closed for submissions.

General Principles

Simultaneous submissions: Yes
Please let us know immediately if your story 
is accepted elsewhere

Previously published works: No

Multiple submissions: No

Response time: 6 months
We appreciate your patience

Author rights: By submitting to Write or Die Magazine, you agree to grant us First North American Serial Rights, should your work be accepted. Upon publication, rights immediately revert back to the author. You’re free to republish your work elsewhere, but we ask that you credit Write or Die Magazine as the place of first publication.

Fees

Essays and Fiction

  • 1st week of the month – no fee

  • 2-4 weeks – $3 fee per submission

Author Interviews

  • no fee

This fee helps us cover operational costs and allows us to pay writers and our editors.

Preparing your submission

Formatting: William Shunn's specifications

Cover letter: Welcome but not necessary

Bio: Under 100 words

Genres

  • Max words: 4000 | Pay: approx. $50 (taken from our $600 monthly contributor’s fund)

    Writers whose work is accepted will receive payment for published fiction pieces as well as a special interview feature with our fiction editor, Tamar. Published pieces will be accompanied by original artwork, and writers will receive a media kit to display their work across social media.

    What we're looking for

    Tamar Mekredijian, Fiction editor

    Tamar is looking for character-driven stories with a strong central emotion. Don’t be afraid to break her heart. She is drawn to characters who make mistakes. She wants to read stories that make her look at life closely and see beauty in the shadows. She is looking for attention to details that are usually overlooked, and she isn’t afraid of surprises.

    Suzanne Grove, Fiction editor

    Suzanne is most often drawn to character-driven fiction with a focus on interiority and a penchant for highlighting the surreal elements in everyday life. She most appreciates characters who are haunted in some way—by their pasts, by the hope and uncertainty of the future, by their own conflicting desires, and by the space between what they need and the achievement of those needs. Her favorite stories don’t necessarily adhere to traditional ideas about plot structure, but rather propel themselves forward via constant micro-tensions and questions raised on the page. She is looking for stories that allow us to step into the unknown while simultaneously holding up a mirror and pushing us to go deeper within ourselves. More than anything, she’s seeking stories driven by unique and diverse narrative voices and a strong sense of style at the line level.

  • Max words: 3000 | Pays: approx. $50 (taken from our $600 monthly contributor’s fund)

    We are interested in essays that focus on the writing life and especially love work where the personal intersects with the critical. We love essays that examine how publishing, reading, teaching, spirituality, sexuality, identity, obsession, labor, and family shape writing.Unconventional book reviews, insights on niche literary topics, lyric essays on craft ,and stories about writing that are also about something seemingly unrelated really excite us. More than anything, we like to be surprised, so if you think you have something that speaks to writing or literature in some way, send it to us!

  • Pays: approx. $50 (taken from our $600 monthly contributor’s fund)

    We accept pitches from interviewers interested in covering authors with a forthcoming or recently published book. We are especially interested in featuring books by debut authors and/or books published by indie presses.

Submit