Submissions

Nightingale & Sparrow will be open for submissions of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and photography for our third issue, heat, 1-30 June (EST times). Nightingale & Sparrow reserves the right to close submissions prior to this date if a significantly large amount of submissions are received, but we will give notice as soon as possible should this be the case.

For open press submissions, see here.

Micropoem submissions will be open 12-26 July, here.

For heat:

Send us your sunshine and bonfires. Give us fireworks and rendezvous, beach scenes and bedrooms. Lead us into the heat of the moment, the height of summertime, and the steam from your tea kettle. Take us into the centre of the earth and the depths of a hellscape. Make us feel your crushes and your sunburns. Bring us heat, literally and figuratively.

Coming themes:

nevermore (AP October 2019)

All submissions (excepting micropoems) should be sent to [email protected] and follow the guidelines below.

Nightingale & Sparrow reserves the right to not respond to any submission that has ignored these submission guidelines.

For all submissions, ensure that your name and other identifying information does not appear on your piece(s) themselves. Please include:

name (or pen name, if preferred) and pronouns
any relevant links (author website, social media)
a brief third-person author bio (approx. 75 words)
- please do not include your website or social media handles in your bio–we include those separately!
author photo/headshot

Submit to no more than one genre per reading period. If your piece is accepted, please wait at least one reading period before submitting again in that genre (but feel free to submit to another!). If you weren’t included this time, don’t hesitate to submit for our next issue!

We do not accept previously published pieces (including on websites or social media), except in cases of previously published then unpublished (i.e. another online press closes its doors, leaving its former pieces without homes). We do consider simultaneous submissions, but please alert us as soon as possible if your piece(s) are accepted elsewhere.

When submitting, please use “[Genre] Submission” as your subject line (genre being replaced with poetry, fiction, non-fiction, or photography).

In the body of your email, include a brief cover letter giving us some insight into your pieces and you as a writer.

Please allow up to two weeks from the closing of submissions for us to respond to submissions. In cases of backup or other delays, we will share updates on this page and on our social media profiles. Nightingale & Sparrow will respond to all submissions that meet our guidelines.

Any works promoting violence or other harmful topics (at editors’ discretion; included, but not limited to, discrimination based on gender, race, sexual preference, weight, physical ability, socioeconomic class, etc.) will not be considered.

Please include any relevant trigger/content warnings where appropriate.

If submitting a piece “after” another artist, please credit that person and link to/attach a copy of the original piece. See our “About Us” page for more on our plagiarism policy.

At this time, Nightingale & Sparrow is unfortunately not a paying market (yet–we’re working on it!). Though we cannot offer monetary compensation, we will gladly support you and your writing endeavours however we can! See our “Contributors” page for more information.

While we cannot pay you directly, we’re happy to add a donation link (Patreon, Ko-fi, etc.) to your contributor page!

Additionally, we are not able to offer complimentary print copies of Nightingale & Sparrow–even at print cost, it would take hundreds of dollars we simply don’t have to provide each contributor with their own print copy, no matter how much we’d like to.

Poetry:

Send us 1-3 poems of any length, with each poem in a separate document.

Micropoem submissions will open 12-26 July, through our micropoem submission form.

Prose:

Send us your best fiction or creative non-fiction work (just one!), up to 7 pages (at 12 pt. standard font, double-spaced).

Photography:

Send us up to 20 photos as a link to Google Drive or Dropbox. All photography submissions will be considered for both cover imagery and use within the magazine, to be announced at the end of the response period.