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 get $10 (basically you’ll get your entry fee back).
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, with a portion to be donated to our current donation partner, the Western PA Fund for Choice.
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?
Our first contest last year had 91 entries and winners received $103 ($56 for honorable mentions). In a normal free submission period we get around 500-600 submissions. The total entries for this contest will probably be somewhere between those two figures. 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. Submissions sent to our e-mail will be deleted unread.
We accept and encourage simultaneous submissions. All we ask is that you be a good literary citizen. Tell us it’s a sim sub in the cover letter, and withdraw your submission through Submittable if it’s accepted elsewhere (if you’re withdrawing part of a submission, you can use the note feature or 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 reprints, 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.
Contest submissions now open!
Work is a nearly universal part of people’s lives, but it’s something that often gets overlooked in creative writing. That’s why we’re excited to bring it into the foreground with this contest issue! As usual with our themes, you can feel free to get creative in your interpretation, but work and/or labor need to be integral elements of the piece. It’s not enough for a character to mention where they work off-hand in dialogue–work/labor should be important enough within the work that it would not be the same piece if that aspect were removed. We’d love to see some stories, essays, and poems set in workplaces, and we’re definitely interested in seeing pieces that focus on the more political side of labor. We’re also open to broad interpretations of what “labor” means, from the emotional and unpaid labor of caretakers and stay-at-home parents, to crewmembers on space stations or high-fantasy serfdoms, to visions of what “work” might look like in future dystopian (or collectivist utopian) versions of Earth.
We're also very proud to announce a boost to our already respectable chill levels in a new partnership this year with CHILL SUBS sponsoring us as part of their contest transparency efforts. In addition to our own prizes, you will also receive or win:
-1 month free of Chill Subs Best ($20 value) just for submitting
-Finalists receive 1 year of free access ($200 value)
-The winner gets 5 years of free access to our platform ($1000 value)
If you're not already familiar with CHILL SUBS make sure to stop by and sign up. Not just a great listing service for finding publishers, but they're hard at work constantly improving and expanding their writing resources, with the writiers always at the front of mind.
**note: if our submission fee is financially prohibitive, please send a query for a waiver to afterhappyhourreview[at]gmail.com **
Normal fee-free submissions will return in the spring.**
