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MacQueen’s Quinterly: Knock-your-socks-off Art and Literature
Updated: 1 Dec. 2025

Submission Guidelines


Huge thanks for your interest in MacQueen’s Quinterly! (Aka MacQ, informally.) This arts and literary journal is published online only, with five separate issues each year, and freely available to anyone with internet access. No subscriptions necessary.

MacQ’s publisher, curator, and founding editor, Clare MacQueen, takes to heart the advice from Poet’s Market: “Submission Guidelines are pure gold for the specific information they provide.” Thus, this page offers a vault-full of details that she hopes you will find helpful.

This information is updated periodically.


Timeline for Submissions:

Although MacQueen’s Quinterly continues to publish five issues per year, submissions are considered during three primary reading periods each year. In 2025, those reading periods occurred in February, June, and October:

In February, submissions for Issues 27 and 28 combined were considered in two stages: 1-7 February for “Folks New-to-MacQ”* and 11-17 February for Solicited Manuscripts. MacQ-27 was launched on 23 March and MacQ-28 on 21 April.
In June, submissions for Issues 29 and 30 combined were considered in three stages: 1-7 June for “Folks New-to-MacQ”*; 11-17 June for Solicited Manuscripts; and 21-27 June for MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #3. MacQ-29 was launched on 30 August and MacQ-30 on 14 September.
In October, submissions for Issues 30X and 31 combined were considered in one stage: 21-27 October for Solicited Mss. only. MacQ-30X was published on 1 December, and MacQ-31 is scheduled to launch no later than 7 January 2026.

The next reading period is scheduled for June 2026, and tentatively includes plans for another Cheribun Challenge—which may culminate in the publication of an anthology selected from cheribun published in MacQ since January 2022.

In the meantime, from January through May 2026, Clare plans to take a sabbatical from publishing MacQueen’s Quinterly online, to focus on getting caught up with other commitments.

For historical data about MacQ’s timeline, see Submissions Calendar.


* Note: “Folks New-to-MacQ” are those whose work has not yet been published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (2020 to the present) nor in her predecessor journal, KYSO Flash (2014 thru 2019).

 

Please scroll down for detailed guidelines....

Items 7 and 8 below list genres and forms that Clare MacQueen likes to publish, and Item 12 (Restrictions) describes what she’s not looking for.

See also MacQ Needs Cheribun, Haibun, and Tanka Tales!


  1. Electronic Submissions via Submittable Only: This is because MacQueen’s Quinterly has no staff to process paper submissions, and emailed submissions have gotten lost in Clare’s hopelessly back-logged inbox.

    (The link to MacQ’s Submittable portal appears at the bottom of this page.)

  2. With the exception of writing for Challenges—which should be original and unpublished anywhere—please submit previously uncurated works. That is, those which have not appeared in any curated collection, whether in print or online—such as anthologies, books, chapbooks, journals, magazines, newspapers, etc.

    This “leaves open the ability to self-publish on social media or blogs or message boards. It allows the work to be shared on podcasts and open mics,” as Rattle editor and curator Timothy Green writes in Uncurated: The Case for a New Term of Art. “Tweet your poems and flash fiction. Tag the person it was written for on Facebook. Workshop stories online. Blog chapters from your novel-in-progress. This is how a literary culture thrives” (Lit Mag News, 16 March 2023).

    Reprints: Clare solicits republication of previously curated works by contacting authors and artists directly.

  3. No AI-generated work! Writing submitted to MacQueen’s Quinterly should be created by humans, generated by human intellect, emotions, and talents—not by Artificial Intelligence technology such as ChatGPT, Grammarly, Sudowrite, and others.

    The same is true for visual art: Clare MacQueen will not intentionally publish artworks created by Artifical Intelligence technology, including image-synthesis generators such as Stable Diffusion, DreamStudio, MidJourney, DreamUp, Photoshop with AI features, etc. This is because AI technology includes the use of databases of millions of works, as well as related metadata, that have been harvested online, typically without the permission of the original writers, artists, and copyright holders. In other words, plagiarized.

    Trial is scheduled for 5 April 2027 in the litigation case of Andersen v. Stability AI: “Visual artist plaintiffs allege direct and induced copyright infringement, DMCA violations, false endorsement and trade dress claims based on the creation and functionality of Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and DreamStudio, Midjourney Inc.’s eponymous generative AI tool, and DeviantArt’s DreamUp” (from Case Tracker: Artificial Intelligence, Copyrights and Class Actions edited by Theresa M. Weisenberger at BakerHostetler law firm, which monitors copyright issues related to generative AI technology).

    See also “AI and Copyright in 2023: In the Courts” by Rachel Kim at Copyright Alliance (4 January 2024):

    “Last year, there were thirteen new copyright-related lawsuits alone filed against AI companies—the majority of which were filed as class-action lawsuits. At the heart of these complaints, visual artists, book authors, songwriters, and other creators and copyright owners are alleging infringement of their copyrights resulting from the ingestion of protected works to train AI models. The sheer number of these lawsuits and the pace at which they were filed are not surprising. This is in part because the capabilities of AI technologies have exploded, and AI companies have failed to meaningfully address or remedy the harms to creators and copyright owners related to the mass scraping and unauthorized use of expressive works to train commercial AI models.”

    Until these issues are legally resolved in the United States, Clare cannot in good conscience include AI-generated artworks in MacQueen’s Quinterly—even though she may think they look amazing.

  4. Only one submission file per person will be considered—but that single file may contain multiple short-form pieces and genres. In fact, Clare prefers to consider multiples!

    A single submission file may contain up to a dozen micro-works, i.e., those that are no longer than 500 words each. Or the file may contain up to five flash-length works, i.e., those that are no longer than one thousand words each. Word counts include titles and any epigraphs and/or footnotes. Total word count of the single submission file must be no more than five thousand.

    And a third scenario: The submission file may contain one or more nonfiction works such as interviews, essays on craft and/or process, and book reviews, but again, the total word count of the file must be no more than five thousand.

    The limitation of one submission file is designed to give other authors and artists the opportunity to submit their works, too, especially those who have not yet published with MacQ.

    This is more important since Clare began placing caps on the number of submission files received. Submission caps help keep the overall volume more manageable so that Clare can, during an intensely focused 13-week production cycle for two issues combined, give each submission file the careful consideration it deserves, hand code 200 (or more) accepted pieces for the MacQ website, and still have time to respond, Yay or Nay, to each Author or Artist within 60 days from their submission date. 😊

  5. Response time for submissions will vary, from a few hours up to eight weeks (aka 60 days)—the latter, especially when Clare’s gathering content for two issues at once.

    Even if a friend or colleague has already received a decision about their submission, please be patient and bear with Clare. Please allow up to 60 days before sending her a note via Submittable asking for a status update. You can rest assured that she’s committed to responding sooner than the majority of literary venues, whose standard response time is 3-6 months or longer.

  6. Simultaneous general submissions will be considered, with the exception of works entered in MacQ Writing Challenges—such works should not be under consideration anywhere else, nor should they be previously curated, or published (including on author websites, social media, etcetera).

    These days, it’s safe to assume that the majority of general submissions are simultaneous. Which is understandable, of course. Still, MacQ’s publisher asks that writers be professional and send her a message right away via Submittable when work from their submission gets accepted by another venue.

    Please do not withdraw your submission of multiple pieces when only one or two have been accepted elsewhere. If you choose the “Withdraw” category in Submittable, then any other pieces in your original submission are no longer available for consideration.

  7. Visual Arts:

    • ⚡   MacQueen’s Quinterly is open to general submissions of color and/or black-and-white artworks in a range of forms; for example: drawings, paintings, photographs, quilts and textile arts, sculpture, and hybrid forms such as haiga, chaiga, taiga, and photo-poems (aka, shahai).

      No AI-generated visual artworks! Clare MacQueen will not intentionally publish art created by Artifical Intelligence technology, including image-synthesis generators such as Stable Diffusion, DreamStudio, MidJourney, DreamUp, Photoshop with AI features, etc. This is because AI technology includes the use of databases of millions of works, as well as related metadata, that have been harvested online, typically without the permission of the original writers, artists, and copyright holders. In other words, plagiarized.

      Trial is scheduled for 5 April 2027 in the litigation case of Andersen v. Stability AI: “Visual artist plaintiffs allege direct and induced copyright infringement, DMCA violations, false endorsement and trade dress claims based on the creation and functionality of Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and DreamStudio, Midjourney Inc.’s eponymous generative AI tool, and DeviantArt’s DreamUp” (from Case Tracker: Artificial Intelligence, Copyrights and Class Actions edited by Theresa M. Weisenberger at BakerHostetler law firm, which monitors copyright issues related to generative AI technology).

      See also “AI and Copyright in 2023: In the Courts” by Rachel Kim at Copyright Alliance (4 January 2024):

      “Last year, there were thirteen new copyright-related lawsuits alone filed against AI companies—the majority of which were filed as class-action lawsuits. At the heart of these complaints, visual artists, book authors, songwriters, and other creators and copyright owners are alleging infringement of their copyrights resulting from the ingestion of protected works to train AI models. The sheer number of these lawsuits and the pace at which they were filed are not surprising. This is in part because the capabilities of AI technologies have exploded, and AI companies have failed to meaningfully address or remedy the harms to creators and copyright owners related to the mass scraping and unauthorized use of expressive works to train commercial AI models.”

      Until these issues are legally resolved in the United States, Clare cannot in good conscience include AI-generated artworks in MacQueen’s Quinterly—even though she may think they look amazing.

    • ⚡   Images may be low- to mid-resolution. Recommended file type is jpeg, and no more than 150 KB in size. Huge image files are strongly discouraged, as they consume too much bandwidth. No TIFF files, please.

    • ⚡   Images up to 440 pixels wide will fit the space available within the “content column” at the MacQ website.

      While Clare is happy to consider artworks of various shapes, orientations, and aspect ratios, she also must keep her website’s limitations in mind.

    • ⚡   Please embed hybrid artworks such as haiga within a single Word document, or within a PDF, uploaded via the MacQ Submittable portal. If that process doesn’t work for you, then feel free to query Clare about emailing individual jpeg files to her.

      Below each artwork, please include its title (if any), the date or year of creation, and the media used. Also very helpful: inclusion of links to any online galleries you have, such as your own website, Facebook, Artfinder, Saatchi Art, etc. A world of thanks for your time!

  8. The Kind of Writing MacQ Needs: Polished, evocative, literary works that balance “music and meaning” (to borrow from poet Richard Hugo) within a thousand words max, including the title and any footnotes or epigraphs (see higher word-count allowance under “Book reviews, interviews...” below), and using forms such as these:

    • ⚡  Prose poems

    • ⚡  Micro-fiction (up to 500 words each)

    • ⚡  Flash fiction (501–1,000 words each)

    • ⚡  CNF, personal essays, memoir, etc.

    • ⚡  Book reviews, interviews, critical essays, and NaB essays (i.e., Nuts and Bolts essays on the process of writing or the creation of visual art such as haiga) may be no longer than 5,000 words each, including title, quotations, author-provided footnotes, and any epigraphs.

    • ⚡  Fables, allegories, and parables, whether light or dark, written for adults

    • ⚡  Literary hybrids such as cheribun, cheribun stories, haibun, haibun stories, haiga, taiga, chaiga, tanka prose, and tanka tales; for specific guidelines and tips, please see: MacQ Needs Cheribun, Haibun, and Tanka Tales!

    • ⚡  Poetry that travels the middle way between transparency and obscurity (i.e., accessible but with a measure of mystery)

    • ⚡  Ekphrastic works, flash-length (i.e., no longer than a thousand words each, including title and any epigraphs and/or author footnotes) and preferably fiction, nonfiction, prose poetry, and poetic hybrids such as cheribun, haibun, and tanka forms. Also, visual arts such as haiga, etc.

      For specific tips on what MacQ is looking for, please see this essay by Jack Cooper and Clare MacQueen: Ephective Ekphrastics: A Guide to Verbalizing Art.

      Robert L. Dean, Jr. also offers excellent recommendations on ekphrastic writing, in his essay on craft published in MacQ-13 (May 2022): Finding the Door: One Writer’s Approach to Ekphrasis.

    TIP: While considering submissions to MacQueen’s Quinterly, awards such as the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best Spiritual Literature (formerly the Orison Anthology), the Red Moon Anthologies, and The Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun influence the decisions that Clare makes. She continues to be guided by the philosophy described so beautifully by poet Jack Cooper, who was her co-editor at KYSO Flash:

    “We look for works that knock our socks off, that is, prize-worthy material. Regardless of the genre, we cherish a unique voice, fresh language, and the sly use of literary devices such as metaphor and irony. We hope to be side-swiped, poked in the ribs, and otherwise smitten by an arresting idea, a compelling narrative, an exquisite lyric, or a moving account, all of which thread the perfect line between the personal and the universal.”

  9. Word counts do not include author’s bio and other identifying information, but are limited to text and title of each piece, along with any epigraphs, quotations, and/or author footnotes.

    Word counts also apply to all forms of poetry. There are no line limits at MacQ, since Clare counts only words.

    • ⚡   Reference notes provided by authors in reviews, interviews, and critical and NaB essays (i.e., Nuts-and-Bolts essays on the process of writing or the creation of visual art such as haiga) may appear in MacQ with separate word counts.

      Separate word counts of any publisher footnotes added by Clare may occasionally be included below the stats for each work, at the upper-right corner of the white content column of the webpage.

    • ⚡   Titles Do Matter! Once in the proverbial blue moon, Clare receives submissions with a word count of “about a thousand,” only to discover that the author did not factor in, say, an eight-word title. Please be aware that such works may be declined, in large part because Clare is a one-person production army and often too overwhelmed to correspond with folks about which words to trim.

      By the way, one-word titles are okay.

    • ⚡   Works must be no longer than a thousand words each for all genres except critical essays, NaB (Nuts and Bolts) essays (aka, essays on process), reviews, and interviews—each of these four nonfiction genres may run up to 5,000 words in length.

      For all works except tiny poems like haiku, cherita, and tanka, which traditionally do not have titles, the word count must include the title as well; because (1) the title is part of the work, and (2) Clare may want to nominate the work for competitions that have strict guidelines about word counts.

  10. Subject Matter May Be Eclectic:


  11. More Examples of What MacQueen’s Quinterly Needs:

    • ⚡   For a kajillion—well, if not that many, then at least three thousand!—see MacQ’s archive of thirty issues (representing six years of publishing).

    • ⚡  Twelve issues of MacQ’s retired sister-journal KYSO Flash are also freely available online, no subscription necessary. And perusing the final two issues especially, KF-11 and KF-12, will give you a good idea of the range of forms, styles, and themes that Clare’s looking to publish here in MacQueen’s Quinterly as well.

      (See also From the Archives: A Few of Clare’s Favorites, which lists contemporary works that she has enjoyed re-reading.)


  12. Restrictions:

    • ⚡  No AI-generated work: Writing submitted to MacQueen’s Quinterly should be created by humans, generated by human intellect, emotions, and talents—not by Artificial Intelligence technology such as ChatGPT, Grammarly, Sudowrite, and others. The same is true for visual artworks. Please see details under Visual Art above.

    • ⚡  No limericks, unless integral to a larger work.

    • ⚡  No gratuitous violence: remember, less is more.

    • ⚡  No “hate lit” (such as racial & gender-based rants).

    • ⚡  No children’s stories, but fables or fairy tales for adults will be happily considered.

    • ⚡  No short stories—fiction pieces must be flash length, i.e., no longer than one thousand words each, including title and any epigraphs or author footnotes.

    • ⚡  No hard-core fantasy, horror, romance, or sci-fi, though we happily consider fabulism and surrealist works in moderation.

    • ⚡  Clare rarely publishes individual tanshi (i.e., micro-poems of six lines or fewer, such as haiku, senryu, tanka, kyoka, and cherita)—unless they’re ekphrastic, and preferably accompanied by the artwork which inspired them. Multiple tiny poems, and those which appear within longer forms such as cheribun, haibun, and tanka prose, or those within haiga, chaiga, taiga, photo-poems, etc., have a much better chance of getting published here. Also, linked poems, sequences, and split sequences of the aforementioned forms of micro-poetry will be happily considered.

    • ⚡  No evangelism and religious proselytizing, and no spiritual intolerance, although spiritual themes are indeed encouraged at MacQ, and literary works from a range of spiritual traditions are welcomed.

    • ⚡  No works that contain copyrighted song lyrics created by third parties—unless the author has permission in writing from the copyright holder. This also refers to photographs of contemporary paintings and other artworks, etc. The author must have written permission from the copyright holder before third-party lyrics and artworks can appear in MacQueen’s Quinterly.

      Third-party quotations, with full and proper attribution, are acceptable and even expected in critical and NaB essays (aka essays on process and/or craft), reviews, and interviews. PLEASE, have mercy on MacQ’s over-committed publisher—Clare’s a production army of one, with limited time and energy for research—and include your sources. Plus links if at all possible. Huge thanks! ♥♥

    • ⚡  No gratuitous use of obscenities: Every word counts in short forms. Often, there’s little room for profanity. Of course, an occasional “fuck” can be quite useful and appropriate, in more ways than one. ☺ And “shit” has become all-purpose. But when such words are overused, they can weaken the work.

      For an exception to that shitty rule (wink wink), see Bob Lucky’s poem Shit (an adjective; a noun; a verb), a Sonnet.

      And for a skillful example of balanced and appropriate usage of more “industrial-strength” profanity, please see Tara Laskowski’s microfiction Ladies Night, which won first prize in the KYSO Flash Triple-F Writing Challenge.

    • ⚡  And last but not at all least: No pornography, although Clare does publish erotica and literary works that contain explicit sexual themes and language. For example, this ekphrastic microfiction in Issue 18 of MacQueen’s Quinterly, by Lorette C. Luzajic (after a painting by Antoine Wiertz, Nude Behind the Curtain): Virgin

      And from Triggered: A Pillow Book (release date: 7 November 2023), this steamy piece by Alexis Rhone Fancher, offered as a sneak peek in Issue 19 of MacQ: Tongue and Groove

      (Check out Jude Dillon’s micro-review of Triggered in Issue 20 of MacQ.)

      Then there’s this quartet of spicy and seductive poems by Ms. Rhone Fancher: Ode to My Husband’s Heart (in Issue 11 of MacQ, aka MacQ-11), Below our bedroom window (in MacQ-8), Morning Wood (in Issue 2 of KYSO Flash, aka KF-2), and I Prefer Pussy (in KF-6).

  13. Manuscript Formatting:

    • ⚡  NOTE: All submission files should be “anonymous.” That is, author’s name, contact info, and bio should NOT appear within the file, but should be entered in the appropriate boxes provided by Submittable. And no worries: Submittable keeps track of everything nicely by assigning a number to each submission file received.

    • ⚡  For the most part, cover letters are discouraged—MacQ’s overwhelmed publisher has very little time and energy to read them, much less to reply. But if you do include one, please do not explain your work upfront or, worse, spoil any surprises in it by giving things away in your letter. Upfront explanations can create bias in the reader, which may or may not work in the writer’s favor.

    • ⚡  Prose manuscripts should include at least one-inch margins.

    • ⚡  Manuscript pages should be numbered sequentially.

    • ⚡  Please double space prose works that are longer than a thousand words.

    • ⚡  Times New Roman, 12 point, is a standard font these days, and also acceptable at MacQ. Previous contributors to KYSO Flash and MacQueen’s Quinterly are welcome to continue using the sans-serif font Verdana, 12 point, or switch to Times New Roman if preferred.

      In any case, please avoid script or fancy fonts. They fatigue the eyes and the brain, as confirmed by usability studies. If specific fonts are integral to your work (for example, to forms of concrete poetry), then please include a brief note with your submission.


  14. Clare’s shameless ambition? For online visitors’ viewing and reading pleasure, she aims to showcase a few hundred memorable works each year in MacQueen’s Quinterly. To that end, she will gladly consider scads of submissions while searching for the editor’s Holy Grail, those gems that will make her weep and holler and laugh out loud, or even speak in tongues, all in admiration of their creators.

 

Hoping to see your writing and artworks soon. Thanks so much!

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