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On Hiatus

6 February 2019: Story of the Month is “on hiatus” until further notice. We hope to return to publishing new short stories, perhaps later this year. Thank you for interest and support to date.

Previously

Announcing a new magazine-style feature, “Story of the Month” for short fiction. There will be a rolling submissions process, with one short story selected monthly and published on this website.

All the details and the submission form are on our Submittable page. For your convenience, the terms are also reproduced below. Please read carefully.

What You Need to Know

We’re seeking literary fiction. Please see our back issues for examples of what we like.
Language: English. Previously unpublished. Entirely your own original work.
Word range: 1500 to 4500. Only one submission at a time please.
Please do not include quotes for which copyright permission would have to be obtained, e.g. song lyrics or other excerpts, including epigraphs, unless the quoted text is in the public domain.
Times New Roman, 12 point font, double-spaced is good but it’s not the be all and end all.
Document formats accepted: .doc, .docx, or .RTF. Unfortunately we cannot accept PDF format. If you don’t know what any of that means, don’t worry. It’s the file you upload, and it should be fine.
Consideration: Each Story of the Month author will receive one of our back catalogue books. There are ten anthologies of short stories and two of poetry, as listed on our anthologies page.
Simultaneous submissions are okay but please withdraw your story if accepted elsewhere by selecting “Withdraw” beside your entry in the Submittable system.
Response time: Submissions are read in sequence by date received. We decide on the next month’s featured story no later than the second-last Friday of each month. At that stage, we try to “release” prior submissions. If you have not heard back it means your story is still under consideration for the following month.
We can’t provide feedback on stories, or enter into discussion about selection criteria, technical issues etc.
Permissions: Except for permission to display your submitted story online on our website and possibly, in some cases, an audio reading of the story to accompany it, all copyright reverts to you, the author.
Back issues: Back issues will remain online as formatted PDF documents, unless removed later on request from the author, or at the discretion of the editor.
Data Protection: We wish to communicate entirely through Submittable.com’s message system, not collecting any of your data outside of that. We won’t pass your information to anyone else, unless compelled to do so by law.
Submission shall be taken as acceptance of these terms.