These waters are eclectic, baby, sometimes irreverent and odd, but mom loves it anyway—Mother Nature, that is. And we love her. That’s why everything we publish at Skipjack Review has within its radar a reeling concern for the world around us.
Skipjack Review accepts fiction, poetry, nonfiction, interviews, and graphic narrative submissions on a rolling basis. Annually, we publish three digital editions, one print anthology, and a variety of online, featured content.
Submission Guidelines
- Email your submission to skipjackreview@gmail.com
- In the subject line of your email, include the genre of your submission and thematic concerns example: Poetry Submission_Bugs Issue / Fiction Submission_Online Feature
- Include a short, third-person author bio in the body of the email.
- All attached files should be a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file, in 12 pt. Arial or Times New Roman font
- Our response time ranges from four minutes to four months. If you haven’t heard from us after six months, feel free to send a follow-up email
- Please only submit once per reading period
We do not charge a submission fee but appreciate anything you’d like to toss in our tip jar. Our Substack is free to everyone, though paid subscribers are greatly appreciated!
Works we do not consider:
- Congrats! But we do not accept previously published work at this time. This includes blogs, social media, etc.
- Please do not submit book-length works at this time.
- Nature is scary, but we will only entertain a specific brand of spooky: getting lost on a hike through Mark Twain National Forest, poetry or prose detailing animal calls at night, the terrors of climate change, etc. Skipjack does not publish outright horror.
- Nature is beautiful and fun, but we do not accept erotica or fan fiction either.
Genre Guidelines
Prose
Fiction and creative nonfiction should be limited to one standalone short story, double-spaced, featuring no more than 5,000 words. Skipjack Review primarily publishes literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, but we love breaking this rule for cli-fi and slipstream stories that blur the line between worlds.
Poetry
Writers are encouraged to submit up to 5 poems per submission. Poetry submissions should be no more than 10 pages of a single document. While we prefer modern poetry forms, we love lots of things, even, on occasion, eccentric limericks, sonnets, and haikus.
Graphic Narrative
All graphic narratives and comics should stand alone as a complete story or poem. Submit comics as a PDF of any size. You may submit any combination of black and white or full color. We may ask for a higher resolution upon acceptance.
Flash Fiction/Flash Memoir
We accept flash fiction and flash memoir up to 1,000 words. Please do not send excerpts from larger works. You may submit up to 2 flash pieces per reading period. Attach each piece as a separate document.
Simultaneous/Multiple Submissions
We accept and encourage simultaneous submissions but ask that you promptly inform us if your work is accepted elsewhere. We won’t be mad. We’ll be glad for you. However, please only submit once per reading period and wait at least four months before submitting again.
Acceptances
Accepted works will appear in Skipjack Review and/or on the Skipjack Review website. Payment is one print copy of our annual anthology. Unfortunately, we are not currently a paying market in the traditional sense. We do, however, award The Dead Herring Prize to one or more works published during the calendar year. Our thought is that it’s better to provide a professional payment where we can instead of giving everybody pennies on the dollar. Also, we nominate contributors for The Pushcart Prize, Best-of Net, and Best Spiritual Literature.
The Fine Print
Skipjack Review obtains exclusive first serial rights in English to publish your work in our literary magazine in print, online, and/or electronic versions, as well as promotional, nonexclusive anthology and archival rights. All applicable rights revert back to you following publication, and at all times you retain the copyright to your work. Skipjack Review reserves the right to remove content from issues following publication.
Skipjack’s Purpose
We are a journal about environment in every sense of the word. Beginning at birth, each of us is bound to our environment. From pollution of the earth to pollution of the mind to server farm statistics to gardening on Mars… We’d publish a modernized rendition of War and Peace, follow that up with a pretty haiku about flowers, and the next minute release some weird sci-fi in the vein of Flowers for Algernon—so long as at the heart of each is a deep concern for the world around us.
Send us your truths. Send us your untruths. Send us tales of victory. Send us tales of whoa—like that time you got poison ivy on your crotch. (Whoa!) Send us stories about those tiny creatures running for their lives while you were cutting the grass the other day. Or true stories about smoking grass beforehand and forgetting to turn the blades on during your first pass. Submitted work doesn’t need to be nature writing, but there should at minimum be an inherent fascination with the chance to be alive and breathing at a certain time and at a certain place.
the water and the gills 