Submissions

The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts is looking for, as you might guess, “compressed creative arts.” We accept fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, mixed media, visual arts, and even kitchen sinks, if they are compressed in some way. Work is published weekly, without labels, and the labels here only exist to help us determine its best readers.

Our response time is generally 1-3 days. Also, our acceptance rate is currently about 1% of submissions. We pay writers $50 per accepted piece and signed contract.

We are open for compressed poetry, compressed prose fiction (including prose poetry), and compressed creative nonfiction during two reading periods: September 15 – December 15 & March 15 – June 15.

For the current reading period, we are looking for work from writers previously unpublished by Matter Press and its JOURNAL OF COMPRESSED CREATIVE ARTS. If you’ve been published by the journal previously, please wait until the next reading period (March 15, 2021) to submit.

The reader for your submission is, during this current round of submissions, the managing editor.

Please be sure to submit in the correct category; we’ve been receiving several fiction submissions in the creative nonfiction category.

For all submitters, we aren’t as concerned with labels—hint fiction, prose poetry, micro fiction, flash fiction, and so on—as we are with what compression means to you. In other words, what form “compression” takes in each artist’s work will be up to each individual. However, we don’t publish erotica or work with strong, graphic sexual content.

In short, we want to fall in love with your work. That might happen in the way we’ve fallen in love with work we’ve previously published, or it might happen in a way we have yet to experience. Maybe reading that other work will help in knowing whether you should send your work to us, but in truth, such a thing might not be discoverable.

Here are things that matter:

1. Please do not include any contact information, including your name, in the manuscript. Do not include a cover letter as part of the manuscript document.
2. Please include, as part of your cover letter, a brief bio.
3. Please no more than one submission of a single piece in each genre per reading period.
4. Simultaneous submissions are fine with us, but please let us know if the submission has been accepted elsewhere. Failure to do will result in some facsimile of your face being put on the Matter dart board. And no one wants that.
5. Please format prose to be double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, in a Microsoft Word document. Poetry can be single-spaced.

Please submit your work here.

Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.

Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.