Submission Guidelines for Poetry, Fiction, Essays, Book Reviews & Art

CALL

We invite submission for forthcoming issues of Able Muse.

WHAT

Able Muse predominantly publishes metrical poetry complemented by art and photography, fiction and non-fiction including essays, book reviews and interviews with a focus on metrical and formal poetry. We are looking for well-crafted poems of any length or subject that employ skillful and imaginative use of meter and rhyme, executed in a contemporary idiom, that reads as naturally as your free verse poems. All forms of formal poetry are welcome. We will also publish, occasionally, the exceptional free verse poem. For an example of what we're interested in, check the poetry of Philip Larkin, James Merrill, Elizabeth Bishop, Derek Walcott, Marilyn Hacker, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht....

Able Muse seeks to publish established as well as new voices. We read everything and publish only the best. Send your best!

Send only previously unpublished poems. No simultaneous submissions, please. Contributions that have already been published or are being considered for publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered for publication in Able Muse, unless a cross-publishing arrangement has previously been negotiated.

LIMITS

Send 1 to 5 poems and a brief bio. A cover letter would be nice but is not mandatory. E-mail is the preferred medium of submission, but we also welcome snail mail. When submitting mutliple poems via email, please we encourage sending us just one email containing all the poems for consideration as opposed to one email per poem. For long poems accepted by snail mail, we may expect a computer disk. Response time varies from 2 to 12 weeks.

Able Muse also welcomes humorous or light poetry. We also invite submission of short fiction (maximum of 2 stories per submission, 4000 words or less per story, but we will consider longer pieces of exceptional merit,) interviews, book reviews and essays on metrical poetry (maximum of 2 essays per submission, 4000 words or less per essay, but here also, we'll consider longer pieces of exceptional merit,) photography and artwork (black & white preferred, although we will also consider colored work. Submit in JPG or GIF format, or a URL with the images. When sending a URL, please indicate the specific images you are submitting, not just a link to your website or blog.)

WHEN

Able Muse now accepts submissions throughout the year, and we endeavor to publish new issues on a three times a year. Accepted work of poetry, fiction, nonfiction or art will be targeted to the appropriate forthcoming issue. After making a submission, please do not send us another of the same type until we have had a chance to respond to the previous one.

OTHERS

Able Muse acquires first-time electronic publication rights. We also reserve the right to republish it in a future electronic and/or print anthology. Back issues are archived indefinitely. Rights return to the author after publication: authors retain their copyright, however, so after their contribution has appeared in Able Muse, they may republish their text in any manner they wish—electronic or print—as long as they clearly acknowledge Able Muse as its original place of publication.

Able Muse is a not-for-profit publication. Sorry, we can't pay you until this ezine becomes self-sustaining. We are hoping it will be in the near future.

We offer exposure for your work and the right for you to claim a publishing credit.

TRACKING

Please, track your submissions and our response time on Duotrope.

ONLINE SUBMISSION

This is the preferred method of submission --
It's simple and even provides you a means of tracking the status of your submission online. Besides, we will be able to process and respond to your submission faster than with other methods!

Use our online submission system here .

ADDRESS

We describe here the email and snail mail submission methods.

(Note that the e-mail submission method is being phased out. We strongly encourage using the online submission method described earlier, which is the preferred method.)

If you still must submit by e-mail, then send your submissions as Word, WordPerfect, HTML, PDF, ASCII attachments (or simply copy 'n paste into the e-mail) to: