MAYDAY Magazine is an online journal of literature, art, and commentary based in the United States and interested in speaking to an international audience. We read all year and there is currently is no submission fee. Please read some of the magazine prior to submitting.
Rights revert to author upon publication. Please credit MAYDAY Magazine with first publication if the work is republished elsewhere.
GENERAL GUIDELINES
MAYDAY Magazine is interested in exploring and engaging a wide spectrum of ideas and perspectives. We’re interested in culture and history, politics regional and global, the past, present, and future. We’re literary and at the same time recognize that great literature has often been a genre literature since the beginning—we’re fans of sci-fi and fantasy, comedy, crime writing, mysteries noir and otherwise. We’re also interested particularly in writers who have been marginalized historically, including writers of color, queer and trans writers, disabled writers, and others who have suffered systemic discrimination.
We do not consider previously published work. Simultaneous submissions are accepted and encouraged. Please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
We aim to respond much sooner than six months from date of submission. If you have not received a response after six months, please check on the status of your submission in Submittable. If you have further questions, email managingeditor@maydaymagazine.com.
Please single-space poems and double-space prose. See below for other specific genre guidelines.
When you’re ready to submit, please head over to our handy and convenient online submission manager.
FICTION
There’s no minimum size, but we’re most interested in fiction under 5,000 words. Please only send us one short story at a time. You may send up to three flash fiction/short-short submissions. Flash fiction tends to be under 2,000 words.
POETRY
Please submit up to 5 poems in a single Word file. Please single-space poems.
NONFICTION
In addition to personal essays, we’re also interested in critical work and cultural commentary. There’s no minimum size, but we prefer submissions of fewer than 5,000 words. Please only send one submission at a time.
TRANSLATIONS
The translator must have secured rights for the translations submitted, or the work must be in the public domain. Please include both the original and the translated text in Word files. If the source text contains characters difficult for Word to present correctly, a PDF scan is fine.
BOOK REVIEWS
We publish book reviews (750-1,250 words) for works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scholarship, and translation published in the past three years. We also accept review essays (1,500-5,000 words) that place a book within a tradition, compare the book to others written by the author or other authors, or use the book to form another self-contained argument. Please send only one submission at a time.
INTERVIEWS & GRAPHIC ART
Please use the form below for Interviews and Graphic Art inquiries.
