SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
More contest details:
Poetry: Send up to 3 individual poems, no line or word limits.
Fiction: Send a single short story or up to 3 flash or micro pieces (fewer than 1,000 words each) in a single document. We have no upper word limits, and aren’t opposed to publishing stories upwards of 5,000 words that justify their real estate.
Creative non-fiction: Send a single short work or up to 3 flash or micro pieces (fewer than 1,000 words each) in a single document. We are specifically looking for creative non-fiction for this issue, not scholarly essays about literary genres or subgenres (though if you’re using the tropes of scholarly essays within the context of a narrative or lyric piece, that we do want to see).
Suites: Send up to 5 linked works that will be considered as a set. Individual works within a suite can be poems or flash or micro-length prose (under 1,000 words each).
Hybrid/Cross-Genre: Yes, please. Follow whichever of the above guidelines makes the most sense.
Can I include images?
This is a soft no. We can’t accept color images, photos, or full-spread comics and graphic narratives since it’s a print issue (we want to give money to authors, not spend it on fancy printing). If your work includes black-and-white sketches or other small visual aspects we can consider those, but in general we’re focusing on the words in this issue.
Prize Info:
The winners and honorable mentions for this contest will receive a percentage of the total entry fees paid (including purchases of After Happy Hour print issues):
· Up to 3 “ranked winners” will split 30%.
· Up to 3 honorable mentions will split 15%
How this will look in practice will depend on the work we receive. Possible scenarios:
3 first-place winners, one each in fiction, poetry, and CNF, who each receive 10%
2 first-place winners, one each in poetry and prose, who each receive 15%
Overall 1st and 2nd place, who get 20% and 10% respectively
A single Grand Prize winner who walks away with the whole 30%
All submitted works will also be considered for publication in the issue. If we publish your work and you don’t win a prize, you’ll be paid at the standard contributor rate ($2.50 per printed page, with a minimum of $15 and maximum of $50).
What happens with the rest of the entry fees?
Submittable takes $1.49 for each entry, so roughly 15%. The remaining 40% will go to printing the issue and paying other contributors.
Why percents instead of a flat prize?
It gives the editors more flexibility to give the prize money to the most deserving entries. If the best works we receive all happen to be from the same genre, it doesn’t seem fair to kick one out in place of a piece we feel is weaker. This also makes it easier to give prizes to hybrid and cross-genre works that might not easily fit into a pre-defined category.
How much will I win, though?
In the first 3 years, the prize ranged between $103-$320 for winners, and from $56-$160 for honorable mentions. We’ll post periodic updates on the Submittable page as the reading period moves along so you can get a sense for what you stand to win.
Please include a brief (100 word max) 3rd-person bio in your cover letter.
To limit editor and reader bias, we read all submissions anonymously. To this end, we ask submitters to remove their name and contact information from the document itself.
We are not opposed to sex, violence, or profanity when they are necessary to the story—we’re fans of all three, in fact. Having said that, we will not accept any work that contains hateful or discriminatory content, including racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Gratuitous sex and violence will probably get you rejected, too.
Use standard manuscript format (12-point Serif font, standard margins and spacing). It’s not like we’ll reject you for a bad font (probably) but it makes it easier to read, and that makes us happy. The exception is poetry that uses non-standard formatting for stylistic reasons. Prose writers have no excuse.
We accept submissions only through Submittable. If the Submittable platform presents an accessibility barrier, please email us at AfterHappyHour@gmail.com and we'll find a workaround.
We accept and encourage simultaneous submissions. All we ask is that you be a good literary citizen and withdraw your submission through Submittable if it’s accepted elsewhere (if you’re withdrawing part of a submission, you can send us an e-mail). It is also expected that you’ll withdraw your submission from consideration by other journals if After Happy Hour accepts it.
Please send only one submission per category at a time. We’ll happily consider submissions in multiple categories from the same author (e.g. a poem and a story).
If you work in mixed genres (hybrid poetry/fiction, illustrated stories, etc.) submit the work in the category that seems to fit the best, and we'll figure it out.
We do not accept translations or scholarly essays.
Our response time is generally less than 6 weeks, but we are humans (mostly) and have been known to fall behind. If you haven’t heard from us in 3 months or more, you can send an e-mail and give us a nudge. You can also check on the status of your submission at any time by logging into your Submittable account.
Accepted submissions may be edited for grammar. All changes are sent to the author for approval before publication.
We acquire first publishing rights and electronic archive rights. All rights revert to the author following the work's publication in After Happy Hour you can re-publish and anthologize your work at will. Content can be removed from the website on request, but cannot be removed from the the issue in which it was published.
Theme submissions open Nov 1st (rolling)
Even an excellent literary magazine doesn't necessarily last forever. There are quite a few journals the After Happy Hour editors used to read (or were published in) that now no longer exist--and that's a shame, because they published great stuff that people should still be able to read.
We'd like to help fix that with a special online issue dedicated solely to work that was published in now-closed markets. What we specifically mean by that:
-For print publications: They are no longer publishing new content in any format and past issues are no longer available for purchase directly from the publisher (or will be unavailable by May 2025, for print journals that just announced their closure).
-For online publications: Either a) the website is inactive, or b) the journal has shown no signs of activity on their website and social media accounts for 3+ years
Any creative work that was published in a journal that meets one of those qualifications is eligible for this call. This includes stories, poems, personal essays, graphic narratives, and works of art, along with hybrids and mixes of the above. We're interested in works from any and all genres, and especially in ones that blend, blur, or fall between genres.
Send up to 3 poems/flash prose (up to 1,000 words) or 1 short story. Can submit multiple times, but please wait for a response before submitting again.
All work selected for this issue will be paid a flat rate of $10 per piece. The reading period will be open concurrent with this year's contest, from November 1st, 2024 through January 31st, 2025.
Contest submissions open Nov 1st - Jan 31
We're putting together a feast of words for our 4th contest issue. For this call, we're looking for stories, essays, and poems that feature food. That could be as a central image, an aspect of the plot (cooking it, eating it, growing it, etc.), a defining trait of the characters (cooks, servers, baking show contestants, etc.), or a key detail of the setting (restaurant, farm, canning factory, etc.). However it's used, food should feel necessary for and integrated into the work--we're looking for more than just a passing mention of breakfast on the character's way out the door.
Food isn't just limited to Earth/human fare, either. Anything that a being consumes for sustenance counts as "food" for the purposes of this theme: predators hunting prey, plant-based lifeforms that "eat" sunlight, synthetic protein pastes, or any other means of gaining nutrients a lifeform could use. Beverages can also count, though we're not interested in the typical "bunch of people in a bar" stories (unless you're doing something very new, cool, and different with it).
The contest will be judged by the After Happy Hour editors. We read submissions anonymously, so please remove your name and other identifying information from your file before sending it. Further details below.
