Submissions
The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts is looking for, as you might guess, “compressed creative arts.” We accept fiction and creative nonfiction, as long 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 1-5 days. Also, our acceptance rate is currently about 2% of submissions. We pay writers $50 per accepted piece and signed contract.
Submissions are now closed. They will open again on April 1, 2023 and close again on June 15, 2023.
If you’ve been previously published by the press, please wait a year until submitting again. Thanks.
The reader for your submission is, during this 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:
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Please do not include a cover letter as part of the manuscript document.
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Please include, as part of your cover letter on Submittable, a brief bio. Also, in the cover letter, let us know why you feel this piece works for a journal obsessed with “compression.”
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Please no more than one submission of a single piece in each genre at a time. Please feel free to submit again after receiving a response, but please no more than 3 submissions per genre per reading period.
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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.
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Please format prose to be singled-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, in a Microsoft Word document, with an extra space between each paragraph.
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If you’ve been previously published by The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, please wait a year before submitting again.
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.
Upcoming:
02/06 • Maria Elena Gigante
02/13 • Sarah Dunphy-Lelii
02/20 • Lauren Fath
02/27 • Sudha Balagopal
03/06 • Susan Leary
03/13 • Amy Goldmacher
03/20 • Claire Polders
03/27 • Beth Cleary
04/03 • Gargi Mehra
04/10 • Tina Zhu
04/17 • Juliana Rappaport
04/24 • TBD