We are always open for submissions!
For general inquiries send email to katie@downdirtyword.com.
**Simultaneous Submissions will no longer be accepted. It's simply causing too many communication blunders and hitches in getting out each issue on time. In return, to thank you for your support, we are vowing to allow no more than a two week period of time between when you send your submission and when you receive our answer. Please keep those submissions coming, and know that you won't have to wait long!**
We prefer all copy to be both pasted in the body of the e-mail and sent as an attachment in .doc format.
E-mail all submissions to submit@downdirtyword.com with the word 'submission,' your name, and either 'poetry,' 'fiction,' or 'non-fic,' in the subject line. [ex: Submission, Your Name, Fiction]
We publish established writers as well as the new and nervous. We would love to be your very first publication if you rock our socks off.
Submissions should be short, sweet, to the point - with a beginning, middle and end. Take us along for the ride. Make us feel it, see it, smell it, experience the jarring bumps in the road and bumps on the head, the streaming sunlight of morning and the glowing orange of evening. We want to get close enough to the characters to smell the perfume, the garlic, the gin and whiskey and beer sweating out of their pores. We want to hear their voices and see the expressions on their faces. Between all that, we demand to know not so much why they do the things they do; after all, we're grown-ups. We demand to know what they did and how they did it.
There is no length limit, but the piece must be easily read in one sitting. For the moment we do accept previously published material if it wows us. When sending previously published material, please include the Title and Date of the first publication.
We accept:
· short stories
· creative non-fiction
· blatantly fake memoirs
· poetry (between two and four pieces, please)
· post genre madness
· and anything else you can do with words. If you believe in it, send it along.
Treat your notebook as if it's an artist's sketch pad. Go to your composing posture and give us a quick blast of thoughtful observation - short or long - about the way things are, the way they taste, smell, feel or just the quality of light, the atmosphere, the play of shadows and shade in an otherwise a brilliant day. Believe me, we will read you five by five in stereo, technicolor, cinescope, panavision and surround sound. Sock it to us. Non-fiction fiction is made of this.
Include a short, or at least entertaining, bio with your submission. Really. Include it. We wouldn't ask if we didn't want it.
The Legendary retains First Time Internet rights for all published works. All other rights revert to the author. In the event that we decide to further burden ourselves with the production of literary brilliance and expand to print, we will then retain First Time Print rights for all published works.
We do not currently pay our authors, because...quite simply, we're broke. One day, fingers crossed!
We look forward to reading your work, loving your work, and printing your work.
-Jim and Katie