Shadow Road Quaterly Journal - Submissions Deadline May 15th

» Submissions Shadow Road

Guidelines:

Please send all original fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction to shadow.road.submissions@gmail.com. In the subject line, please use this format: “Submission Type – Penname.” Please try to avoid PDFs unless necessary for spacing/formatting reasons.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed but not previously published work. Please notify the editorial staff if your work is published while we are in the process of reading it.

We accept one fiction piece, one nonfiction piece, or up to three poems per submitter.

Our response time is four weeks. Please do not query about your submission status before then.

The deadline for the Summer 2013 issue is May 15, 2013.

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Poetry:

• Up to 50 lines
• We believe good poetry engages all the senses.
• If your poetry is meditative or confessional (and less imagistic) the form should show internal thoughts that are original and not clichéd.
• While sometimes it is necessary to use modifiers to describe colors or other sensory information, we believe strong action verbs and concrete nouns can be a more direct route to a poem’s meaning.
• Good structured free verse uses efficient line breaks. And simply because it is free verse does not exempt it from a rhythm and sound that supports the theme.
• Devices such as metaphor and simile, alliteration, or assonance help serve the poem’s message, however it is obvious when devices are used simply to appear clever. The best poems, the reader is unaware of the poet’s presence.
• Formal verse is appreciated. However, be careful not to force word choices or twist syntax to fit a rhyme scheme.

Fiction:

• Up to 5,000 words.
• Strong fiction develops characters we can identify with, who are engaged in believable struggles. (Even within fantasy or genres that feature made up worlds, we want to sympathize with a character’s strengths and weaknesses.)
• Dialog should sound natural and reside somewhere between the extremes of being mundane, or advancing plot and sounding unnatural.
• Narrative that walks the line between poetic description and clean prose, that makes us feel the world with all the senses is preferred.
• Transition and Plot. We should not reach the end of the story and wonder how we got from point A to point B. That is not to say every question should be spoon fed, many times ambiguity provides a sense of realism, but a story should be without holes and an ending should not feel tacked on.

Creative Non-fiction:

• Up to 5,000 words
• Again, if seeking to write about trendy or hot political topics, a good essay should show us how that issue personally affects the narrator, or the reader. 1000 words of “War is bad” – not desired. 1000 words of failures, casualties, rehabilitation or a life-affirming story that defies the news articles – preferable.
• If you are unsure of what this means please check out the essays of Joan Didion, John McPhee, Studs Terkel or George Orwell. We are not asking everyone to exceed the fine quality of those writers but to use their approach to writing about the world as a general guide.