Magazine Submissions – Nightingale & Sparrow

For open press submissions, see here.

Submissions for issue no. XX, enchanted, open 14-28 September 2023

Amidst the whispered secrets of ancient forests or the hushed gatherings under a starry sky, there’s a certain enchantment that transcends the ordinary. Send us your work that conjures the mystical allure of enchanted realms, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, where whispers in the wind hold ancient wisdom, and where the world is bathed in a surreal, otherworldly light.

Upcoming themes:

2024 TBA

All submissions (excepting micropoems) should be sent via our submissions form and follow the guidelines below.

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

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 (ie if you appeared in issue XIX, please wait until issue XXI to submit again). If you weren’t included this time, don’t hesitate to submit for our next issue!

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

We do not consider previously published pieces (including on websites or social media), except in cases of previously published then unpublished work (i.e. another online press closes its doors, leaving its former pieces without homes).

We do consider simultaneous submissions, but please alert us via email ([email protected]) as soon as possible if your piece(s) are accepted elsewhere.

Please allow up to one month from the closing of submissions for us to respond. In cases of backup or other delays, we will share updates on our social media profiles. Nightingale & Sparrow will respond to all submissions that meet our guidelines, whether or not the piece is accepted.

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 or mental ability, socioeconomic class, etc.) will not be considered.

Please note 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. And, 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, sent through a separate form entry.

Micropoem submissions will open 7 – 21 October 2023, through our micropoem submission form.

Prose:

Send us your best fiction or creative nonfiction work (just one!), up to 7 pages (at 12 pt. standard font [we like Garamond], double-spaced).

Visual:

Send us up to 20 photos or 5 other forms of visual art as a link to a Google Drive or Dropbox folder via our submissions form. All submissions will be considered for both cover imagery and use within the magazine, to be announced at the end of the response period. Please do not attach files to the form directly—the “Document” portion of the form is reserved for written submissions.

For any questions or difficulties, please contact us at [email protected]. N&S asks that you do not contact staff members on personal platforms with queries related to the press or its imprints.