Submission Guidelines
Thank you for your interest in submitting to us.
We are looking for creative work that discusses the many different or strange things people do to make money keep the lights on, whether it be mundane and slow or unusual and hectic.
Please read carefully before sending your work. We appreciate that.
Fiction and Nonfiction / Essay
Please submit work up to 3,000 words in length. Flash submissions accepted.
Please submit only one piece at a time, though if you are sending flash you may send up to three.
Double spaced, Times New Roman or a similar font preferred.
Hybrid / Multimedia
Feel free to send any sort of creative work you have, whether it be a photo essay, a short documentary, comics, etc. If it doesn’t fall under one of the categories above, you can probably share it here.
Poetry
In a single document, please send up to five poems, no more than ten pages.
Single spaced, Times New Roman or a similar font preferred.
While we will still accept poetry of any format, note that unusual spacing can be difficult to perfect on our platform, so keep that in mind when submitting.
In the body of your email, please include:
1. A short (100 words or less, please) cover letter; simply introduce yourself and let us know what you’re submitting
2. A third person bio, also short (50 words; include your full name or whatever you would like to be addressed as on our site)
3. Your submission as a .docx or .pdf file attachment
4. Your Twitter, Instagram, website, etc. (anything that applies)
Additional Information
We have rolling submissions!
A new issue is published quarterly, during the last weeks of March, June, September, and December. To assure that your submission is considered for the next issue, be sure to have your submission in by the beginning of that month. For more accurate and specific dates, follow us on Twitter.
Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere.
If we choose to publish your work, we ask to reserve first time publication rights, and upon publication the rights then revert back to you. If you republish something you’ve published with us, we’d love it if you mentioned that the piece first appeared here. Additionally, if we accept work from you, please consider waiting at least six months before submitting again.
While we do not usually accept previously published work, if you are coming from Violet & the Bird or feel in any way scammed by other publications, please include that in your subject line and we will happily make an exception.
Make sure to clarify what you are submitting in the subject line (e.g. Fiction Submission - “Title of Work”) and email us at whateverkeepsthelightson@gmail.com. You can also email us with any questions, comments, and concerns, or cool and important things, like compliments.
Unfortunately, we are not currently a paying market, but hope to be in the future.
PATREON
We are hoping to expand WKTLO into a paying market, as well as offer print copies of our issues both past and future. If you’d like to donate to our Patreon, you can donate here.