CLOSED: Blue Monday Review

Blue Monday Review is a quarterly publication that draws inspiration from the works of Kurt Vonnegut. He was a man who knew how to craft great stories that celebrated truth and beauty while maintaining a sardonic wit that makes our hearts swell with bitterness and joy.     If your work can stir up even a sliver of that feeling, we want to see it.

* Please note, we tend away from political satire and any work that is misogynistic, racist, homophobic, etc.

We like get-up-and-go in our prose. We want a complete story, not a premise; rounded characters, not caricatures. Past that, what trips our trigger is the peculiar and off-center. We love anything that’s absurd, experimental, quirky, satirical or surreal while still retaining its humanity. We want to lose track of ourselves in the beauty or horror or wildness of your story.

By all means, experiment with form and genre, but first make sure your story engages. If your story wanders off into the corner to mumble to itself, be damned sure you’ve made us want to follow and listen in.

All of the above applies to nonfiction, too. Your work should extend past personal experience to seek a deeper truth. Finally, keep it literary in tone. Right now, we don’t do book reviews, academic essays, travelogues, etc.

Your poetry should send our minds reeling, but make sure you give us substance to sink our teeth into. Make us want to climb into your poem and live there for a while. Your poetry should highlight the peculiar and the off-center and pull us in.

We love prose poetry but are open to all styles. We will freely admit to a bias against purely pastoral/nature poetry and poetry that rhymes. That said, we also like being proven wrong. Please send no more than 3 poems in a single document.

ETC.

FICTION & CREATIVE NONFICTION

POETRY

Got something that’s not really poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or artwork? We want to see it! We’re talking one-acts, comics, screenplays, photo essays, fake advertisements, whatever. Just keep it literary in tone and make sure it fits in with our general style guidelines.
3500 words max, please query if longer.

WORDS

• Keep it under 3500 words. Above that, query us.

• No more than 3 poems or 3 flashes (1500 words apiece). Submit these as a single document. For Express Lane submissions, each individual piece must be submitted separately.

• Edit your stuff! We hate to see typos and sloppiness. Also, ensure your fancy stuff (accent marks, special formatting) makes it through on your final document.

• Use Times New Roman, 12 point font. Double space your prose and single space your poetry. We prefer .doc or .docx.

• Leave your name and other personal info off your work. That information belongs in your cover letter. Your submission may be immediately rejected if you fail to follow this.

VISUAL ART

• No more than 5 pieces, please. Submit them in a .zip folder.

• Put your last name in the file title.

• The higher the resolution, the better. 300 dpi and 1500 pixels on the shortest edge is an optimal minimum.

• Cover art should be colorful, with a peculiarity that captures attention and stirs the imagination.

• Interior art should be in black and white. We like pen & ink, brush & ink, B&W photos, stuff like that. We especially like work in a series, so send us multiple samples, especially if you do cartoon art.

• No clowns.

• From our Art Director: “The tragicomic human condition is what moves us, rather than opinion, polemic, or social commentary. We gravitate towards artwork that is edgy. Nature-centric art and pictures of your cat rarely fulfill this deep internal need of ours.”

One submission at a time, people! If we decline you, go ahead and re-submit whenever; we just really hate seeing 15 pieces in a row by the same person. We try our best to get back to you within 3 months or less, but feel free to contact us if we’re running behind on your submission.

Feel free to send your work to other publications, but please let us know if your submission becomes unavailable to us for any reason. To withdraw only one piece of several or if you want to change your status from “unpublished” to “previously published,” just leave a note in the Submittable system or shoot us an email.

One last thing: Please don’t plagiarize or violate someone else’s copyright. We won’t print your fanfiction or anything that utilizes characters/universes you didn’t create. We also don’t dig work that features public personalities because we hate getting sued.

Failure to strictly adhere to our stated guidelines may result in a submission being immediately declined. If you have any questions about this, please query us first.

COMPENSATION

We believe in paying contributors for their work. It is work, after all. Contributors whose work is selected will receive the following compensation along with one free contributor’s print copy.

We reserve one-time and anthology rights, all other rights revert back to the author upon publication.

• Fiction, creative nonfiction, and ETC. work is compensated at a rate of .02/word with a $20 minimum for previously unpublished work.

  • For reprints, we pay a flat amount of $10 per piece.

• Poetry is compensated at $10 for previously unpublished work, $5 for reprints.

• Art is compensated at a flat rate of $20 per accepted piece.

Anything we forgot to mention? Feel free to contact us.

Check out the Senior Editorial Staff’s take on reaching our consideration table.

QUESTIONS?

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