We’re so excited about our new online submissions system that we can’t stop celebrating. Not with alcohol—that’s not our style—but with lots and lots of sugar. We’ve consumed rafts of Laffy Taffy, Bottle Caps, and those hard candies that resemble (sort of) strawberries, and we’ve taken to singing the Willy Wonka soundtrack and miming exaggerated falls into a turbulent chocolate river.
Lisa Ampleman has built a small popsicle-stick structure in one corner of the office that she refers to as her Shrine to Skittles, and Becky Adnot-Haynes is threatening to order a gross of those fluffy orange fake peanuts. Obviously a big distraction is in order so that we are not drawn still deeper into the cavity-filled maw of the god of sucrose. To bring us back from the brink, we have devised a new Game of the Month! Due to the new online submission system, we updated our guidelines, and we want to hear YOUR suggestions for appropriate submission guidelines for a lit mag. What do you think we should be asking for? “Desperately seeking epic poems about sea crustaceans”? “Only your best short-shorts about girls in short-shorts”? “Please affix three paper clips on each side of your manuscript to prevent unseemly paper flappage”?
The composer of the best guidelines submitted by next Monday, October 17, will receive a Cincinnati Review–branded thermos or slingpack (which we’ll send through the U.S. Postal Service and not through the inter-webs). To enter, simply post your comments on the blog by clicking the post title above. Happy submitting!
We welcome submissions of poetry or fiction written in the second or third person only.
Submissions must be copied and pasted into the text box found below so that our proprietary software may provide us with an accurate word count. Our text box is limited to 10,000 characters so please do not attempt to submit work longer than 10,000 characters as this will cause your submission to be rejected automatically. Please ensure that your submission is typed in a sans serif font, as serifs cause our software to malfunction.
Be aware that the editors suffer from a form of synesthesia which manifests itself selectively in the upper-case forms of the letters “i” and “t.” Both letters sound to the editors like a very irritating high pitched squeal. Please see that no sentence in your submission begins with either of these letters. For this reason we do not accept first person stories or personal essays.
We look forward to reading your work.
Submissions Guidelines
-Please set your story in a humid, tropical climate or an arctic tundra.
-Please compose your story on the inside of a chocolate bar wrapper.
-Please make your story about a guy named Mike.
-Please avoid any words beginning with g, k, or u.
-Please make sure your story is composed entirely in the pluperfect tense.
-Please make sure that your submission is exactly 4,531 words long.
-Please make sure your submission spontaneously combusts when it reaches our offices.
-We look forward to reading your submission.
Please do not send stories that contain characters with shingles or toenail fungus or excesses of earwax, as the editors of our journal are afflicted with these conditions and are therefore sensitive on these subjects. We enjoy limping characters, however, as well as ones that hack up funny colored blobs of gunk, and a one-eyed dog or three-legged cat always elicits a good laugh.
We refuse to read Alexander-Pope-like couplets but will gladly open any envelope with a haiku written over the flap. All poems should either be less than 15 lines or more than 400, and the narrative epic is one of our favorites.
Prose should be either partially true or entirely non-representational. An emphasis on the chores you did in childhood always grabs our attention, and a story composed of excerpts from other people’s stories is best. No dead raccoons.
Finally, we do not accept simultaneous equations.
This elite poetry journal only considers sestinas whose stanzas end with the words hairnet, spinney, lablab, homunculus, twofer, and plinth.
We will reply to your submission within two weeks if it is accompanied by an SGC (Starbucks Gift Card).
Make the font as small as you can. Then get rid of all the spaces between the lines. Right-justify it for some reason. Go to Kinko’s, if they still exist, or wherever — just get it done somehow — and blow the thing up to 950%, all-pixellated like. Then print it out on cardboard stock, and fold it into a box shape so that the text is on the inside. Now bake some really good-smelling chocolate chip cookies, and bring the box into the kitchen while you’re doing it. Let the pores of the box absorb the Tollhouse goodness. DON’T MAIL IT YET. Don’t do anything. Then, suddenly, take it to the P.O. and let it fly. Call us every day to see if we’ve gotten it. In between calls, send emails. In between emails, send mind waves. The mind waves should consist of something like, “I refuse to get my hopes up, but I also refuse not to.” That’s pretty much the spirit. We’re talking about the guidelines of this lit mag, but we’re also talking about the Guidelines of Life. And I mean talking about them CONSTANTLY.
In accordance with the 1954 Comics Code Authority Criteria,please make the topics of your submissions as follows:
1) Crimes must never be presented in such a way as to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice (even if the town is Ferguson, Missouri) nor must your submission inspire others to imitate criminals. If you already ARE a criminal, please do not submit at all.
2) If a crime is presented, make sure it is a sordid and/or unpleasant activity. As guidelines, refer to the least appetizing episodes of “The Walking Dead” or “The Strain.”
3) Policemen, judges, government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority, because we all know that these individuals and institutions are beyond reproach.
4) In every instance, good shall triumph over evil and criminals must be punished for their misdeeds. This presupposes that you can tell good from evil.
5) Criminals shall not be presete so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation. If they are Wall Street employees, you may, instead, identify them as sanitation employees, for their own protection.
6) Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife or gun play, physical agony, gory and gratuitous crime shall be eliminated, or such scenes/footage can be sent to the above-mentioned television seires, or to “The Bridge,” care of Patrick Somerville.
7) All scenes of excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall be vetted by the appropriate producers of the above-mentioned television programs. This is another way of saying, “Anything goes.”
8) Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue, and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
9) Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with the walking dead, torture, vampires, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolves are prohibited. If your description is in violation of this excessively, please send the treatments to Showtime, AMX, FX or HBO rather than to a high-toned literary journal like us.
10) Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden. This means that you must destroy your Bank of America credit card and notify Prince forthwith.
11) Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure. Descriptions of nudity, however, are acceptable, which means “send away,” since this is a literary journal.
12) Suggestive and salacious illustrations or suggestive posture is unacceptable. If you don’t know what is meant by “suggestive posture,” join the club.
13) Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities, unless your first name is Barbie.
14) Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Rape scenes, as well as sexual abnormalities, are unacceptable—unless you live in the Deep South and are married to your first cousin.
15) Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested. For clarification of what is or is not rape, consult the Republican Congress.
16) Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden—unless, of course, your ultimate goal is to write for television.
17) Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morale—whatever that is and whoever determines that.
(*The submission rules above are based closely on the actual 1954 Comics Code Authority Criteria as detailed on page 122, Chapter 18, of Jason V Brock’s book “Disorders of Magnitude: A Survey of Dark Fantasy.”)