$10 for poems we publish

Please submit only one story or one poem for consideration at a time. Do not submit more than one story or poem until after you receive a final response to any prior submission. Once you receive either an acceptance or rejection, you are welcome to submit a different work to us.

Your manuscript length must be 2,000 words or fewer (not including the title, author name, or contact information).

What we are seeking:

For Prose (as described by editor Jerry McFadden)

We are an “old fashioned” editorial crew: we love stories. We admire great writing; we swoon at beautifully worded sentences and lovely descriptions, and chuckle at clever metaphors–but we always choose a great story over all of that. We constantly receive great character sketches, serious mood pieces, wonderfully written scenes that in the end are just wonderful scenes or elegant reminiscences.… And we judge all of this by one simple standard–where is the story?

What’s a story? A character (or characters) that we care for (or hate) in a conflict (plot) that leads to a plausible resolution that has an emotional effect on the character and on the readers. For us, a terrific story trumps even superior writing. The writing quality may be less outstanding than in the character sketches, mood pieces, scenes, or reminiscences, if the story pulls us in and makes us root for the character as he/she wrestles through a conflict.

This does not disqualify memoirs or reminiscences, as long as they are told as a story–a real-life story. You are the character fighting through a conflict which changed you somehow. If this hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be trying to tell us about it.

So send us a story, real or imagined. Give us great writing, but more important, give us a great story. We will love you for it.

For Poetry (as described by editor Paul Weidknecht)

We enjoy reading poetry at the Roundtable and are intrigued as to how poets translate their work from the various themes we offer. We understand the nature of much poetry is personal, often highly so, making the process of what goes into accepting or rejecting a poem difficult to define. Poets might rightfully ask, “What makes a good (publishable) poem?” To which editors might deliver the easy answer, “We know it when we read it.”  Of course, that answer is too slippery to be of any value, so here are some observations about poetry and how poets might refine their work:

While prose can stand a degree of dilution, poetry is concentrated. From speaking with poets at writer’s conferences, I’ve heard that word—concentrated—come up time and again. In a poem, possibly due to its brevity compared to a short story, readers roll around the ‘flavor’ of words in their minds, sort of like a literary sommelier. Word number and choice are important, as poetry readers (read: editors) don’t skim.

Poems addressing emotional issues, i.e., the tragedy of losing a loved one, are most effective when they reach out, causing the reader to reflect in a similar way, and hopefully, compelling multiple readings. A silent nod by a reader might be one of the best compliments a poet can receive.

Other items of which poetry is fine; its originality is refreshing—as long as you keep the interest of someone reading that abstractness. When a poem becomes too much of a puzzle, reading it becomes a chore. A poem is not a piece of flash fiction with line breaks; short stories do that better. Read the poem out loud. How does it sound? Does it stumble along under the leaden awkwardness of worn phrases or does it ascend in the inspiration of inventive language and imagery?

Perhaps the two most important rules regarding the creation of poetry, or any other piece of creative writing, are the most obvious to understand and simplest to do: keep rewriting your own work; keep reading others’ work.