It won't hurt.
Send us your:
- Poems and flash fiction
- Visual art (in digital form)
- Octavia E. Butler theme issue
General Guidelines
We accept submissions at uppagus@gmail.com. Before you send anything, be sure to read and follow the guidelines for your medium. If we can't open your submission (or if it in some way throws a wrench in our operations), we can't use it.
In the body of your email, tell us your name and the title of each piece you are submitting.
Leave out your bio, prior publications, and other credentials. You'll have the opportunity to include this information if we publish you. We want to consider your work only.
We will respond as soon as we can. Sometimes we linger over a submission to consider it on a few separate occasions. Feel free to query us if you haven't heard back after 90 days.
Uppagus does not publish reprints. We accept simultaneous submissions, but expect contributors to practice good lit-mag etiquette. In the case of simultaneous submissions, this means informing us as soon as a piece submitted here is accepted somewhere else.
Uppagus claims first-time electronic publishing rights, and then the rights revert back to you. Past issues live on in our Archive section.
We can't pay you, but we hope to provide a nice setting for your work.
Poems and Flash Fiction
Send previously unpublished work. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if your piece is accepted somewhere else. Members of online writing forums like Fictionaut are welcome.
Attach your work to an email as a .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .txt file. Don't forget to include your name and email address in the files.
Send up to four poems or one flash fiction piece. We prefer flash fiction that is shorter than 750 words. If you are submitting multiple poems, put them all in one attachment. One attachment, one email.
Visual Art
Send up to six .jpg or .png files. Attach all of them to one email if you can. Zip files are okay. Keep in mind that we are not going to need huge, high-resolution images.
At least one of the images should be scalable to 490 pixels wide by 327 pixels high. Or at least close enough that we can make it fit without cropping your original.
When you list the titles of your images, list them in the same order as you have attached them. Nobody wants confusion.
We can't guarantee that your images won't be copied by Internet users, and are a little paranoid on your behalf. (But it's even easier to copy and paste text, after all.) This is why, so far, we have lowered the quality of images before posting them. As the artist, you can decide whether you want us to take this step with your work.
Octavia E. Butler Issue
Send us your best Octavia E. Butler-related/-inspired work. Could be poetry, prose, visual art. For this issue we will even open to nonfiction essays. Butler wrote and had much to say about science fiction, but your work does not need to fall under that category. Main criteria: relevant, thoughtful, and well-executed.
Important notes: Designate your submission by adding "Octavia E. Butler" to the subject line of your email. And don't forget to follow our submission guidelines for your chosen medium (see the rest of this page).
We have not scheduled a publication date for this issue yet. We are aiming for early 2027. Butler is not as universally well-known as we think she should be; with that in mind, we are keeping the reading period for this issue open until further notice.
