SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES
We are currently CLOSED for submissions. Please come back on January 1, 2023.
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED WORK, MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS, AND SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS
We do not accept previously published work unless the online publication went under or the literary magazine is out of print. Otherwise, submissions must not be published anywhere on the internet or in print (including zines, blogs, social media, etc.).
We allow simultaneous submissions as long as we are notified at our email (milkdromedareview@gmail.com) immediately after the piece's acceptance in another publication. Allow us to extend our congratulations!
Multiple submissions across genres (such as 1 prose and 1 poetry submission packet each) are acceptable. Multiple submissions within genres are not accepted unless we explicitly request to see more of your work within the submission period.
RIGHTS
We ask for first North American publishing rights and archival rights for all accepted work. We also ask for the right to print your work in an anthologizing zine sometime in the future. All rights revert back to the author upon publication, however, we ask that you mention Milkdromeda Review in future publications as where your work was originally published.
DO YOU PAY?
We aim to uplift our contributors by promoting their work and other publications. We believe that this work is part of being a good literary citizen. Once we are eligible, we aim to nominate our contributors for awards and anthologies such as Best of the Net and Pushcart.
We pay a $5 honorarium per accepted piece. We regret we cannot pay more at this time. If our rates increase in the future, we will pay our prior contributors the difference. Writers will be asked for a method of payment such as Venmo, Paypal, or Zelle upon acceptance. If you would like to increase this payment for our contributors, please consider donating to our Ko-Fi. We will also ask contributors if they would like to have their PayPal, Ko-Fi, Venmo, etc. published alongside their contributor bio.
WHERE DO I SUBMIT?
Please read our submissions guidelines and email your submissions to milkdromedareview@gmail.com with the subject heading, "Genre_Submission_Submission Cycle Month Year." For example, prose pieces would be submitted with the heading "Prose_Submission_October 2022." You may submit in multiple genres with different emails.
Submissions that disregard the guidelines are liable to be automatically rejected.
COVER LETTERS
Please address cover letters to the appropriate Editor(s) or to Milkdromeda Review or Milkdromeda Review Editors or something similar. Do not use Dear Sirs as a salutation. Please don’t feel the need to include an explanation/summary of your piece(s) in the body of the email. Please do include a brief 50-100 word, third-person biography. We appreciate your previous publication credits and welcome the addition of some personality to the bio.
FORMATTING
Submit your work as a .doc or.docx unless you have special formatting, in which case a .pdf is fine. Do not include the writer’s name anywhere on the document. We read all submissions name-blind. All submissions must be in English. If you include words or phrases in another language, please include their English translations at the bottom of your submission. If you are submitting more than one piece, please submit them as separate documents with the title “Genre_Title.”
Prose: 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced, no more than 1,500 words per submission, with a new story starting on a new page. Please number your pages and remove any and all identifying information other than the title. Please include a word count.
Poetry: 12-point Times New Roman, single-spaced, no more than six pages per submission, with a new poem starting on a new page. Please number your pages and remove any and all identifying information other than the title. Please include a line count.
Photography and Visual Art: Photography and visual art must be in at least 300 DPI. Visual art must be at least 8' by 8' digitally. Please do not submit fan art. Visual art must be original and a complete work of art. Please do not send us anything with excessive gore and/or sex. Some nudity is okay. Work in progress pictures are highly recommended and submissions with WIP pictures will be prioritized over those without.
CONTENT
Plagiarism is not allowed. Please provide Content Warnings (CWs) at the beginning of your piece and in the cover letter.
Pieces promoting racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, ableism, audism, and all other -isms and -phobias will result in your email being deleted and your address blocked. Suggested sexual content is acceptable, but please do not send us gratuitous depictions of sex, genitalia, or sexual assault.
We do not accept pure erotica, explicitly sexual content, or works where sex acts are the primary focus of the piece. Gratuitous descriptions of injury, abuse, or attack are discouraged. Do not, under any circumstances, submit graphic depictions of rape or sexual violence. We accept pieces where explicit language is used judiciously and to the story’s advantage. We do not accept submissions that include slurs or hate speech in such a way that the character saying those hurtful words is portrayed as a morally good person.