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submissions info

are we currently accepting submissions?

Please scroll down to see our upcoming schedule

Check out our chillsubs listing here!

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Our tentative upcoming publishing schedule looks something like this:

                    Schedule for 2025:

**visual art submissions are generally open year-round but please double-check our Submittable page

Issue 30 – the LOVE & ROMANCE issue (submission window Jan 25 – Mar 2, pub date end of March 2025) — it’s back to basics time! we want writing that explores love & romance in all its iterations and definitions. a good old-fashioned love story is our bread & butter, but we’re always looking for ruminations on non-romantic love as well: love for your pets, your family, your hobbies, your favorite places; if it’s about finding joy or heartache, we want to read it!

Issue 31 – the PRIDE issue (submission window Apr 4 – May 30, pub date June 2025) — we’re celebrating queer love in all its forms! this issue is especially for queer writers, so send your best writing our way! we’re especially interested in stories from our aro/ace pals, who we don’t hear enough from.

Issue 32 – the SPOOKY issue (submission window Jul 4 – Sep 14, pub date October 2025) — this is our annual love song to all things autumn/halloween/creepy/scary/supernatural. we’re always on the lookout for body horror & erotic horror, but we can fall just as hard for a romcom set at a costume party or a prayer-as-poem to the moon. basically, this is just an excuse to evoke a little atmosphere and infuse a little more magic than usual into our overarching theme of love.

Issue 33 – the MICRO issue (submission window Nov 1 – 30, pub date December 2025)- tiny little writings. whispers on a scrap of paper. pocket-sized longings. love confessions the size of a gasp. baby steps toward something world-changing. [poems fewer than 10 lines/100 words; prose under 600 words]

To stay posted on all our submissions calls & themes, follow us on Twitter!

the basics:

  • miniskirt is a destination for love & romance
  • we publish poetry, fiction, & creative nonfiction, including flash/micro
  • we feature a new visual artist (sometimes 2!) in most issues
  • starting in 2024, we will publish issues ~4 issues per year
    • we aim to publish ~10 poets and ~10 prose writers in each issue, so the number of pieces that we publish annually will remain roughly the same, but divvying them up between only 4 issues instead of 8-10 allows us more time to read and engage with submissions and eases some of the pressure on our fully-volunteer staff (hey, have you said something nice to an editor today? because you should).

the details:

what we’re looking for:

  • miniskirt is a destination for love & romance. we want your flirtations, your short & sweet confections, stories with fairy tale endings or disintegrations.
  • all love is equal here at miniskirt, so give us your queer devotions, your hetero hymns, your poems about poly life, your stories where being ace is celebrated; writing about familial love, love for your fur-babies, self-love, love for your hobbies, your favorite childhood memory, the best vacation you’ve ever taken; tell a story about winter being the best season, give us an essay about how your favorite sports team got you through a rough patch, or a poem about blueberry pancakes.
  • anything from clean to full-on erotica
  • all kinds of genre mashups! (thanks to our spooky issues, we’ve discovered that romantic body horror is a thing — and we love it)

the technical specs:

  • poetry
    • 1 to 5 poems
    • single-spaced in a single document
    • no more than 10 pp total
  • prose
    • 1 piece up to 4,000 words OR 1-3 pieces up to 1,200 words each
    • single-spaced in a single document
  • visual art
    • minimum 4 pieces (though ideally we’re looking for series of 8-12 images; check out our prior issues to see how visual art is utilized)
    • when it comes to visual art, mood is everything. send us figurative work or abstraction. we like it all: photography, painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, mixed media, digital design, even publication-quality photos of sculpture or installation. if it evokes luscious feelings, send it our way.

  • include a short cover letter (we are not formal, “yo, check out this poem” is fine but a full cover letter is also fine!); no need to include a bio; we’ll ask for this if we accept your work
  • of course simultaneous submissions are okay, but please let us know asap if another publication snatches it up first! (we’ll be sad but we’ll send congratulatory emoji balloons)
  • we’ll accept reprints if the original publication is more than three years old & the rights have reverted to you; just let us know in your cover letter.
    • we’ll accept submissions of any pieces that have been de-homed because the original publication has gone defunct/taken down their website/run a scam, with no waiting period.
  • we would love to see submissions from organic life-forms (this means NO AI) ages 16 to immortal.

DO NOT send:

  • no more than 1 submission at a time (you are welcome to resubmit new work if we decline your first piece(s) while the submission window is still open). this is per issue, not per category. that means please have only one active submission at any given time: poems OR fiction OR cnf.
  • absolutely no racist, queerphobic, xenophobic, ableist, or otherwise derogatory bullshit; no fetishization for fetishization’s sake
  • absolutely no work featuring sexual assault in any variety, even if the work is about a character surviving/overcoming it; while these stories are valid and need to be told, they just are not in miniskirt‘s aesthetic. there are plenty of journals out there who can and do take care of these stories; please submit there.
  • any work that needs a trigger warning but doesn’t have one — this is non-fucking-negotiable

what to expect:

  • we respond to every submission before the issue you’ve submitted to comes out
  • right now we’re just a baby lit mag getting our legs under us, so we can’t pay yet, but we are working toward that in the future (see: our new paid feedback submissions)
  • we nominate for Pushcart, Best of the Net, & Best Small Fictions
  • we promote the magazine and your work on Twitter & Instagram (and Threads when we remember it exists)
  • keep up with us on Twitter & Insta (& Threads, I guess): @miniskirtmag