Huge thanks for your interest in MacQueen’s Quinterly! (Aka MacQ.) This arts and literary journal is published online only, with five separate issues each year, and freely available to anyone with internet access. No subscriptions necessary.

MacQ’s publisher, curator, and founding editor Clare MacQueen takes to heart the advice from Poet’s Market: “Submission Guidelines are pure gold for the specific information they provide.” Thus, this page offers a vault-full of details that she hopes you will find helpful.

This information is updated periodically.

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Timeline for Submissions, 2025

Although MacQueen’s Quinterly continues to publish five issues per year, submissions will be considered during three primary reading periods each year.

The first reading period in 2025, for Issues 27 and 28 combined, will open in two stages:

Stage One: 1-7 February
(for “Folks New-to-MacQ”*)

Stage Two: 11-17 February
(for Solicited Mss. by invitation)

MacQ-27 will launch in late March, and MacQ-28 in late April.

The second reading period, for Issues 29 and 30 combined, will open in three stages:

Stage One: 1-7 June
(for “Folks New-to-MacQ”*)

Stage Two: 11-17 June
(for Solicited Mss. by invitation)

Stage Three: 21-27 June
(for a Writing Challenge yet to be created)

MacQ-29 will launch in early August, and MacQ-30 in early September.

The third reading period in 2025, for Issue 31, will open in two stages:

Stage One: 21-27 October
(for “Folks New-to-MacQ”*)

Stage Two: 1-7 November
(for Solicited Mss. by invitation)

MacQ-31 will launch on New Year’s Day, 2026.

 

For historical data about MacQ’s timeline, see Submissions Calendar.

For details about submission categories, see Item 4 below.

* “Folks New-to-MacQ” are those whose work has not yet been published in MacQueen’s Quinterly nor in the predecessor journal, KYSO Flash (2014 thru 2019).

 

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Please scroll down for detailed guidelines....

Items 7 and 8 below list genres and forms that Clare typically publishes, and Item 12 (Restrictions) describes what she’s not looking for.

See also Ongoing Call for Cheribun, Haibun, and Tanka Tales.

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1. Electronic Submissions via Submittable Only: This is because MacQueen’s Quinterly has no staff to process paper submissions, and emailed submissions have gotten lost in Clare’s hopelessly back-logged inbox.
   
   (The link to MacQ’s Submittable portal appears at the bottom of this page.)
   
   
2. With the exception of writing for Challenges (which should be original and unpublished anywhere), please submit previously uncurated works. That is, those which have not appeared in any curated collection, whether in print or online—such as anthologies, books, chapbooks, journals, magazines, newspapers, etc.
   
   This “leaves open the ability to self-publish on social media or blogs or message boards. It allows the work to be shared on podcasts and open mics,” as Rattle editor and curator Timothy Green writes in Uncurated: The Case for a New Term of Art. “Tweet your poems and flash fiction. Tag the person it was written for on Facebook. Workshop stories online. Blog chapters from your novel-in-progress. This is how a literary culture thrives” (Lit Mag News, 16 March 2023).
   
   Reprints: Clare MacQueen solicits republication of previously curated works by contacting authors and artists directly.
   
   
3. Note re AI-generated written works and digital art: Unless specifically identified as satire by the author or artist (and/or used in critical essays), all portions of works submitted to MacQ should be created by humans, generated by human intellect, emotions, and talent—and not by Artificial Intelligence technology such as ChatGPT and/or image-synthesis generators such as Stable Diffusion, Dall-E2, MidJourney, and others.
   
   AI technology includes the use of databases of millions of works, as well as related metadata, that have been harvested online, typically without the permission of the original writers, artists, and copyright holders. In other words: plagiarism on a mind-boggling scale.
   
   [See “Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin among thousands of British artists used to train AI software, Midjourney” (US lawyers approached about class action against Midjourney and other AI firms accused of ‘copyright laundering’) by James Tapper in The Guardian (21 January 2024). See also “Have AI image generators assimilated your art? New tool lets you check” by Benj Edwards in Ars Technica (15 September 2022).]
   
   “Last year, there were thirteen new copyright-related lawsuits alone filed against AI companies—the majority of which were filed as class-action lawsuits. At the heart of these complaints, visual artists, book authors, songwriters, and other creators and copyright owners are alleging infringement of their copyrights resulting from the ingestion of protected works to train AI models. The sheer number of these lawsuits and the pace at which they were filed are not surprising. This is in part because the capabilities of AI technologies have exploded, and AI companies have failed to meaningfully address or remedy the harms to creators and copyright owners related to the mass scraping and unauthorized use of expressive works to train commercial AI models.” [From “AI and Copyright in 2023: In the Courts” by Rachel Kim at Copyright Alliance (4 January 2024).]
   
   Until these issues are legally resolved in the United States, Clare cannot in good conscience include AI-generated writing or artworks in MacQueen’s Quinterly—even though she may think they look amazing.
   
   
4. One submission category will be available during each stage of the reading period for Issues 27 and 28 of MacQ. Fees below are in USD, and submission caps appear in brackets.
   
   Stage One (1-7 February 2025): “Folks New-to-MacQ: Up to 10 Works for $4” [submission cap: 30 files, representing up to 300 pieces total; max word count allowed within each person’s submission file is five thousand]. See category guidelines for specific details.
   
   Proceeds from fees are applied toward MacQ’s annual operating costs of ~$800 USD, including domain registration, web hosting and security, and a no-frills Submittable subscription. For Clare MacQueen, the latter is simply indispensable as the most efficient way to keep submissions organized, which in turn helps her respond more quickly to folks with results, both acceptances and declines.
   
   Only one submission file per person will be considered—but that single file may contain multiple pieces and genres.
   
   This limitation of one submission file is designed to give other authors and artists the opportunity to submit their works, too, especially those who have not yet published with MacQ.
   
   This is more important since Clare began placing caps on the number of submission files received. Submission caps help keep the overall volume more manageable so that Clare can, during an intensely focused ten-week reading and production cycle for two issues combined, give each submission file the careful consideration it deserves, hand code 200 (or more) accepted pieces for the MacQ website, and still have time to respond, Yay or Nay, to each Author or Artist before the second issue is actually published. 😊
   
   Stage Two (11-17 February): The week before this category opens, Clare plans to email about 30 folks, inviting them to send Solicited Manuscripts to her via Submittable, gratis. As above, only one submission file, which may contain multiple pieces, will be considered per person.
   
   
5. Response time for submissions will vary, from a few hours up to eight weeks (aka 60 days)—the latter, especially when Clare’s gathering content for two issues at once.
   
   Even if a friend or colleague has already received a decision about their submission to MacQ, please be patient and bear with Clare. Please allow up to 60 days before sending her a note via Submittable asking for a status update. You can rest assured that she’s committed to responding sooner than the majority of literary venues, whose standard response time is 3-6 months or longer.
   
   
6. Simultaneous general submissions will be considered. However, works entered in MacQ Writing Challenges should not be under consideration anywhere else, nor should they be previously published.
   
   These days, it’s safe to assume that the majority of general submissions are simultaneous. Which is understandable, of course. Still, MacQ’s publisher asks that writers be professional and send her a message right away via Submittable when work from their submission gets accepted by another venue.
   
   Please do not withdraw your submission of multiple pieces when only one or two have been accepted elsewhere. If you choose the “Withdraw” category in Submittable, then any other pieces in your original submission are no longer available for consideration.
   
   
7. Visual Arts:
   
   
   • ⚡   MacQueen’s Quinterly is open to general submissions of color and/or black-and-white artworks in a range of forms; for example: drawings, paintings, photographs, quilts and textile arts, sculpture, and hybrid forms such as haiga, chaiga, taiga, and photo-poems (aka, shahai).
     
     Note re AI-generated digital art: Unless the artwork is specifically identified as satire by the artist, and/or used in a critical essay, Clare MacQueen will not intentionally publish digital art created by Artifical Intelligence technology, including image-synthesis generators such as Stable Diffusion, Dall-E 2, MidJourney, Photoshop with AI features, and others. AI technology includes the use of databases of millions of works, as well as related metadata, that have been harvested online, typically without the permission of the original writers, artists, and copyright holders. In other words: plagiarized.
     
     [See “Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin among thousands of British artists used to train AI software, Midjourney” (US lawyers approached about class action against Midjourney and other AI firms accused of ‘copyright laundering’) by James Tapper in The Guardian (21 January 2024). See also “Have AI image generators assimilated your art? New tool lets you check” by Benj Edwards in Ars Technica (15 September 2022).]
     
     “Last year, there were thirteen new copyright-related lawsuits alone filed against AI companies—the majority of which were filed as class-action lawsuits. At the heart of these complaints, visual artists, book authors, songwriters, and other creators and copyright owners are alleging infringement of their copyrights resulting from the ingestion of protected works to train AI models. The sheer number of these lawsuits and the pace at which they were filed are not surprising. This is in part because the capabilities of AI technologies have exploded, and AI companies have failed to meaningfully address or remedy the harms to creators and copyright owners related to the mass scraping and unauthorized use of expressive works to train commercial AI models.” [From “AI and Copyright in 2023: In the Courts” by Rachel Kim at Copyright Alliance (4 January 2024).]
     
     Until these issues are legally resolved in the United States, Clare cannot in good conscience include AI-generated artworks in MacQueen’s Quinterly—even though she may think they look amazing.
     
     
   • ⚡   Images may be low- to mid-resolution. Recommended file type is jpeg, and no more than 150 KB in size. Huge image files are strongly discouraged, as they consume too much bandwidth. No TIFF files, please.
     
     
   • ⚡   Images up to 440 pixels wide will fit the space available within the “content column” at the MacQ website.
     
     While Clare is happy to consider artworks of various shapes, orientations, and aspect ratios, she also must keep MacQ’s limitations in mind.
     
     
   • ⚡   Please embed hybrid artworks such as haiga within a single Word document, or within a PDF, uploaded via the MacQ Submittable portal. If that process doesn’t work for you, then feel free to query Clare about emailing individual jpeg files to her.
     
     Below each artwork, please include its title (if any), its date or year of creation, and the media used. Also very helpful: inclusion of links to any online galleries you have, such as your own website, Facebook, or Artfinder, etc. A world of thanks for your time!
     
     
8. The Kind of Writing MacQ Needs: Polished, evocative, literary works that balance “music and meaning” (to borrow from poet Richard Hugo) within a thousand words max, including the title and any footnotes or epigraphs (see higher word-count allowance under “Book reviews, interviews...” below), and using forms such as these:
   
   
   • ⚡  Prose poems
     
     
   • ⚡  Micro-fiction (up to 500 words each)
     
     
   • ⚡  Flash fiction (501–1,000 words each)
     
     
   • ⚡  CNF, personal essays, memoir, etc.
     
     
   • ⚡  Book reviews, interviews, critical essays, and NaB essays (i.e., Nuts and Bolts essays on the process of writing or the creation of visual art such as haiga) may be no longer than 5,000 words each, including title, quotations, author-provided footnotes, and any epigraphs.
     
     
   • ⚡  Fables, allegories, and parables, whether light or dark, written for adults
     
     
   • ⚡  Literary hybrids such as cheribun, cheribun stories, haibun, haibun stories, haiga, taiga, chaiga, tanka prose, and tanka tales; for specific guidelines and tips, please see: Ongoing Call for Cheribun, Haibun, and Tanka Tales
     
     
   • ⚡  Poetry, both free verse and formal, that travels the middle way between transparency and obscurity (i.e., accessible but with a measure of mystery)
     
     
   • ⚡  Ekphrastic works, in every genre and form that MacQ publishes: fiction, nonfiction, lineated and prose poetry, hybrids such as cheribun, haibun, and tanka forms, AND visual arts (such as haiga, etc.).
     
     For specific tips on what MacQ is looking for, please see this essay by Jack Cooper and Clare MacQueen: Ephective Ekphrastics: A Guide to Verbalizing Art.
     
     Robert L. Dean, Jr. also offers excellent recommendations on ekphrastic writing, in his essay on craft published in MacQ-13 (May 2022): Finding the Door: One Writer’s Approach to Ekphrasis.
     
     
   TIP: While considering submissions to MacQueen’s Quinterly, awards such as the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best Spiritual Literature (formerly the Orison Anthology), the Red Moon Anthologies, and The Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun influence the decisions that Clare makes. She continues to be guided by the philosophy described so beautifully by poet Jack Cooper, who was her co-editor at KYSO Flash:
   
   “We look for works that knock our socks off, that is, prize-worthy material. Regardless of the genre, we cherish a unique voice, fresh language, and the sly use of literary devices such as metaphor and irony. We hope to be side-swiped, poked in the ribs, and otherwise smitten by an arresting idea, a compelling narrative, an exquisite lyric, or a moving account, all of which thread the perfect line between the personal and the universal.”
   
   
9. Word counts do not include author’s bio and other identifying information, but are limited to text and title of each piece, along with any epigraphs, quotations, and/or author footnotes.
   
   Word counts also apply to all forms of poetry. There are no line limits at MacQ, since Clare counts only words, not lines.
   
   
   • ⚡   Reference notes provided by authors in reviews, interviews, and critical and NaB essays (i.e., Nuts-and-Bolts essays on the process of writing or the creation of visual art such as haiga) may appear in MacQ with separate word counts.
     
     Separate word counts of any publisher footnotes added by Clare may occasionally be included below the stats for each work, at the upper-right corner of the white content column of the webpage.
     
     
   • ⚡   Titles Do Matter! Once in the proverbial blue moon, MacQ receives submissions with a word count of “about a thousand,” only to discover that the author did not factor in, say, an eight-word title. Please be aware that such works may be declined, in large part because Clare is a one-person production army and often too overwhelmed to correspond with folks about which words to trim.
     
     By the way, one-word titles are okay.
     
     
   • ⚡   Works must be no longer than a thousand words each for all genres except critical essays, NaB (Nuts and Bolts) essays (aka, essays on process), reviews, and interviews—each of these four nonfiction genres may run up to 5,000 words in length.
     
     For all genres except tiny poems like haiku, cherita, and tanka, which traditionally do not have titles, the word count must include the title as well; because (1) the title is part of the work, and (2) Clare may want to nominate the work for competitions that have strict guidelines about word counts.
     
     
10. Subject Matter May Be Eclectic:
    
    
    • ⚡  The mundane and the marvelous...
    • ⚡  The ordinary and the extraordinary.
    • ⚡  Verisimilar fiction, as well as the surreal in moderate measure.
    • ⚡  And think outside the catacomb now and then—surprise readers with a little sunshine, and even some humor! 😊
      
      Yes, Clare appreciates quirky humor. Here are just half-a-dozen examples of funny pieces she was tickled to publish:
      
      Quite [prose poem] by Guy Biederman (Winner of MacQ’s “Triple-Q” Writing Challenge)
      
      Finnegan’s (Fiancée Goes McArthur Park on His Birthday) Cake [fiction] by John Brantingham (selected for reprinting in The Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology)
      
      Beepbop [fiction] by Christopher Candice
      
      Another Bad Year for Florida Man [poem] by Gary Glauber
      
      Kids Deserve Decent Names [CNF] by Lana Hendershott
      
      Things I Wish I Had Asked the Wizard of Wazoo [CNF] by
      Linda Petrucelli
      
      * And for 40 more, see the results of Clare’s special call for humorous works in Issue 18 of MacQ.
    
    
11. More Examples of What MacQueen’s Quinterly Needs:
    
    
    • ⚡   For a kajillion—well, if not that many, then at least twenty-five hundred!—see MacQ’s first 26 issues.
      
      
    • ⚡  Twelve issues of MacQ’s retired sister-journal KYSO Flash are also freely available online, no subscription necessary. And perusing the final two issues especially, KF-11 and KF-12, will give you a good idea of the range of forms, styles, and themes that Clare’s looking to publish here in MacQ as well.
      
      (See also From the Archives: A Few of Clare’s Favorites, which lists contemporary works that she has enjoyed re-reading.)
      
      
    
    
12. Restrictions:
    
    
    • ⚡  No AI-generated writing, unless author specifically identifies such a piece as satire, or uses examples of AI-generated writing within a critical essay, etc. Works submitted to MacQ should be created by humans, generated by human intellect, emotions, and talents—not by Artificial Intelligence technology such as ChatGPT and others.
      
      
    • ⚡  Note re AI-generated digital art: Unless the artist identifies the work as satire, and/or includes it in a critical essay, Clare MacQueen will not intentionally publish digital art created by Artifical Intelligence technology, including image-synthesis generators such as Stable Diffusion, Dall-E 2, MidJourney, Photoshop with AI features, etc. AI technology includes the use of databases of millions of works, as well as related metadata, that have been harvested online, typically without the permission of the original writers, artists, and copyright holders. Also known as plagiarized. On a mind-boggling scale.
      
      [See “Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin among thousands of British artists used to train AI software, Midjourney” (US lawyers approached about class action against Midjourney and other AI firms accused of ‘copyright laundering’) by James Tapper in The Guardian (21 January 2024). See also “Have AI image generators assimilated your art? New tool lets you check” by Benj Edwards in Ars Technica (15 September 2022).]
      
      “Last year, there were thirteen new copyright-related lawsuits alone filed against AI companies—the majority of which were filed as class-action lawsuits. At the heart of these complaints, visual artists, book authors, songwriters, and other creators and copyright owners are alleging infringement of their copyrights resulting from the ingestion of protected works to train AI models. The sheer number of these lawsuits and the pace at which they were filed are not surprising. This is in part because the capabilities of AI technologies have exploded, and AI companies have failed to meaningfully address or remedy the harms to creators and copyright owners related to the mass scraping and unauthorized use of expressive works to train commercial AI models.” [From “AI and Copyright in 2023: In the Courts” by Rachel Kim at Copyright Alliance (4 January 2024).]
      
      Until these issues are legally resolved in the United States, Clare cannot in good conscience include AI-generated artworks in MacQueen’s Quinterly—even though she may think they look amazing.
      
      
    • ⚡  No limericks, unless integral to a larger work.
      
      
    • ⚡  No gratuitous violence: remember, less is more.
      
      
    • ⚡  No “hate lit” (such as racial & gender-based rants).
      
      
    • ⚡  No children’s stories, but fables or fairy tales for adults will be happily considered.
      
      
    • ⚡  No short stories—fiction pieces must be flash length, i.e., no longer than a thousand words each, including title and any epigraphs or author footnotes.
      
      
    • ⚡  No hard-core fantasy, horror, romance, or sci-fi, though we happily consider fabulism and surrealist works in moderation.
      
      
    • ⚡  MacQ rarely publishes individual tanshi (i.e., micro-poems of six lines or fewer, such as haiku, senryu, tanka, kyoka, and cherita)—unless they’re ekphrastic, and preferably accompanied by the artwork which inspired them. Multiple tiny poems, and those which appear within longer forms such as cheribun, haibun, and tanka prose, or those within haiga, chaiga, taiga, photo-poems, etc., have a much better chance of getting published here. Also, linked poems, sequences, and split sequences of the aforementioned forms of micro-poetry will be happily considered.
      
      
    • ⚡  No evangelism and religious proselytizing, and no spiritual intolerance, although spiritual themes are indeed encouraged at MacQ, and literary works from a range of spiritual traditions are welcomed.
      
      
    • ⚡  No works that contain copyrighted song lyrics created by third parties—unless the author has permission in writing from the copyright holder. This also refers to photographs of contemporary paintings and other artworks, etc. The author must have written permission from the copyright holder before third-party lyrics and artworks can appear in MacQ.
      
      Third-party quotations, with full and proper attribution, are acceptable and even expected in critical and NaB essays (aka essays on process and/or craft), reviews, and interviews. PLEASE, have mercy on MacQ’s over-committed publisher—Clare’s a production army of one, with limited time and energy for research—and include your sources. Plus links if at all possible. Huge thanks! ♥♥
      
      
    • ⚡  No gratuitous use of obscenities: Every word counts in short forms. Often, there’s little room for profanity. Of course, an occasional “fuck” can be quite useful and appropriate, in more ways than one. ☺ And “shit” has become all-purpose. But when such words are overused, they can weaken the work.
      
      For an exception to that shitty rule (wink wink), see Bob Lucky’s poem Shit (an adjective; a noun; a verb), a Sonnet.
      
      And for a skillful example of balanced and appropriate usage of more “industrial-strength” profanity, please see Tara Laskowski’s microfiction Ladies Night, which won first prize in the KYSO Flash Triple-F Writing Challenge.
      
      
    • ⚡  And last but not at all least: No pornography, although MacQ does publish erotica and literary works that contain explicit sexual themes and language. For example, this ekphrastic microfiction in Issue 18 of MacQ, by Lorette C. Luzajic (after a painting by Antoine Wiertz, Nude Behind the Curtain): Virgin
      
      And from Triggered: A Pillow Book (release date: 7 November 2023), this steamy piece by Alexis Rhone Fancher, offered as a sneak peek in Issue 19 of MacQ: Tongue and Groove
      
      (Check out Jude Dillon’s micro-review of Triggered in Issue 20 of MacQ.)
      
      Then there’s this quartet of spicy and seductive poems by Ms. Rhone Fancher: Ode to My Husband’s Heart (in Issue 11 of MacQ, aka MacQ-11), Below our bedroom window (in MacQ-8), Morning Wood (in Issue 2 of KYSO Flash, aka KF-2), and I Prefer Pussy (in KF-6).
      
      
13. Manuscript Formatting:
    
    
    • ⚡  NOTE: All submission files should be “anonymous.” That is, author’s name, contact info, and bio should NOT appear within the file, but should be entered in the appropriate boxes provided by Submittable. And no worries: Submittable keeps track of everything nicely by assigning a number to each submission file received.
      
      
    • ⚡  For the most part, cover letters are discouraged—MacQ’s overwhelmed publisher has very little time and energy to read them, much less to reply. But if you do include one, please do not explain your work upfront or, worse, spoil any surprises in it by giving things away in your letter. Upfront explanations can create bias in the reader, which may or may not work in the writer’s favor.
      
      
    • ⚡  Prose manuscripts should include at least one-inch margins.
      
      
    • ⚡  Manuscript pages should be numbered sequentially.
      
      
    • ⚡  Please double space prose works that are longer than 500 words.
      
      
    • ⚡  Times New Roman, 12 point, is a standard font these days, and also acceptable at MacQ—for most submissions. See the note in the next bulleted item below, re poems with long lines.
      
      Previous contributors to KYSO Flash and MacQueen’s Quinterly are welcome to continue using the sans-serif font Verdana, 12 point, or switch to Times New Roman if preferred.
      
      In any case, please avoid script or fancy fonts. They fatigue the eyes and the brain, as confirmed by usability studies. If specific fonts are integral to your work (for example, to forms of concrete poetry), then please include a brief note with your submission.
      
      
    • ⚡  Note added on 10-24-24 re poems with long lines: MacQ’s content column online is fixed-width, and will accommodate lines of poetry that are no longer than 70 characters, including spaces, in 12-point Verdana font or in 15-point Times New Roman.
      
      Clare has regretfully turned away good poems simply because their lines were so long they would wrap when appearing in MacQ. Which would mean extra coding work for her, since she would need either to indent wrapped lines manually—or to reduce the font size of the poem overall to keep the lines from wrapping, which would then decrease legibility, leading in turn to further coding.
      
      She’s willing to go that extra mile now and then, especially for poems that she likes a lot. For instance, Girl Missing and A Centipede in Love. 😊
      
      Just a tip: To achieve a line length of 70 characters in MS Word and in Mac Pages, the left and right margins would be set at precisely 1.2 inches when using Verdana font, 12 point, and when using Times New Roman, 15 point.
      
      
    
    
14. Clare’s shameless ambition? For online visitors’ viewing and reading pleasure, she aims to showcase a few hundred memorable works each year in MacQueen’s Quinterly. To that end, she will gladly consider scads of submissions while searching for the editor’s Holy Grail, those gems that will make her weep and holler and laugh out loud, or even speak in tongues, all in admiration of their creators.

 

Hoping to see your writing and artworks soon. Thanks so much!

MacQ’s Submission Manager