Submissions

Submissions

SUBMISSIONS FOR OUR FALL 2022 ISSUE Are Now Closed.

As of Winter 2022/2023 we will be on a long hiatus, as we search for a new brick and mortar home for Mason Street Review. The journal is undergoing structural and administrative changes, as our founding editor steps down, after a great launch and 3.5 year run! We hope to bring you more great poetry, essays, short stories, art and interviews soon!

As of October 10th we will no longer be accepting work at our old email address. Work submitted will unfortunately remain unread. When we are resituated, we’ll update our contact information.

Please stay tuned, and thanks very much for your interest!

Thank you for your interest in Mason Street. We publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry of less than a page, spoken word videos, artwork and photography. We’ll showcase both known and excellent emerging authors in our featured sections.

As a community-oriented space we’ll also do our best to include lots of neat additional writing and art we’ve received on our Community Room blog page, including youth authors (ages 12-17.)

General Submission Guidelines

  • We’ve traditionally published three issues per year: Fall, Winter and Spring. This year (due to Covid, staffing constraints, etc.) our next issue will appear in Fall 2022/Winter2023, and henceforward we’ll be on hiatus until further notice.
  • PRIOR GUIDELINES:
    We always accept general submissions for each issue, and sometimes offer additional themes to consider.
  • Send original, unpublished work. In rare cases we’ll accept a reprint of work which has appeared elsewhere, but please let us know that up front (where, when, etc. By submitting this work you agree that all legal responsibility is yours and that Newark Library/Mason Street Literary Magazine is in no way liable.)
  • No fee.
  • Simultaneous submissions are okay. Email us promptly if your work has been accepted elsewhere.
  • Response time can take up to 3.5 months. If you haven’t heard from us in that time, you can email us.
  • We will respond to you by email with acceptance, decline or request.
  • We will do our best to send out a group Gmail informing submitters that the magazine issue has launched, but this isn’t always possible. Please like our Facebook page and check it frequently for the most recent updates!

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We encourage submissions from veterans, women, indigenous writers and writers of color, LGBTQA+ writers, members of the disability community, and writers from otherwise marginalized or underrepresented groups in mainstream publishing.


How to send your submission:

We only accept electronic submissions sent as attachments by email to the editor at MasonStreet@newarklibrary.org.

Subject line of email:

Use a subject line following this format:

Smith, Jane, 3 poems submission, Fall, 2021.

Body of email:

In the body of the email, please briefly tell us about your submission: (example, “enclosed please find three poems.”)  In the second paragraph share a brief third-person bio in the form of a paragraph. Bio’s may be shortened to fit our contributors page if they are too long (special guests for the ‘My Library Memories’ column are an exception.)

 Attachments:

  • Microsoft Word doc or docx only, as an email attachment. No submissions in the body of the email. No PDF’s, please. Also no complicated formatting, text boxes, embedded photographs, etc.
  • Name and contact info on top of first page only
  • 12 point font
  • One poem per page
  • Every accepted submission will receive a style review before publishing. For every published story, the first word will get a custom drop cap to fit the publication. We tend to accept shorter-lined poems. Poems with long Whitman-esque lines are welcome, but be advised that while your poem will appear as intended on desktop screens, on some specific cellphones WordPress will appear to “word-wrap” around to a new line of poetry (to read the long-lined poem, you may have to rotate the phone horizontally to landscape.)
  • In prose stories and essays, please indicate space breaks with a brief centered dash or three asterisks. ***
  • Book reviews should be written in a friendly “weekend magazine” tone. Please be accessible, conversational and avoid “academic voice.” We tend to like book reviews which are succinct, provide a few details but not lots, not a blow-by-blow of what happens; but rather just enough plot to provoke the reader’s interest and start to “paint the picture.” Let us know rather soon whether you give it a thumbs up or thumbs down and why!
  • Spoken word video can be sent as a linked video in the body of the email along with an attached Word Doc or Docx with the words. It’s easiest if you can provide a link we can copy/embed.
  • For art, basic file types for submissions are best.
  • For a single featured image, the minimum width is 900 pixels.
  • For two featured images, the minimum width for each is 450 pixels.
  • Please submit photographs/images as separate, large JPEGS.

Pay:

Alas, this is not a paying market. We do not send contracts. By submitting your work, upon acceptance, you agree to have the work published unless you withdraw it. All individual works are copyrighted by their authors; all rights reserved. Individual articles, photographs and other works in this publication have copyright protection; so may the publication as a whole. Some works are cited individually as coming from the public domain, from free image sharing sources or with creative commons. By submitting you are agreeing that we may use your work and in the specific current issue, as well as any archive of that back issue we create.

How many items may I submit?

For each issue, you may send up to two submissions (separate submissions, one per genre, per email)

Word Counts / length:

  • 2-5 poems (no fewer than 2, please) of less than a page, one poem per page. We are currently unable to format purely visual poetry with highly unique spacing.
  • up to 4 pieces of micro fiction, each fewer than 400 words.
  • up to three pieces of flash fiction, each fewer than 1,000 words
  • one piece of short fiction (<2400 words.) In extraordinary cases we’ll accept longer works.
  • one essay (<3000 words) In extraordinary cases we’ll accept longer works.
  • one book review (< 1000 words)
  • one author interview (< 2000 words)
  • up to 6 images. (last name in file name)

We accept translations so long as the translator has obtained permissions from the author. Our guidelines for translations are the same as those for other genres. Translations should include the original language in their submission.

 

Edits:

We reserve the right to discuss/ask for small, reasonable grammar edits with you for space and clarity.

 

Final thoughts:

Book reviews and author interviews have a much better chance at acceptance if they feature regionally/nationally known, established authors. The works by individual authors and artists featured in this journal reflect the opinions of those authors and artists exclusively, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Pioneer Library System or Newark Public Library. Please, no gratuitous sex, gratuitous violence, excessive profanity, slasher horror submissions or hate language. As a library and safe space we support inclusion rather than exclusion and avoid inflammatory bi-partisan rhetoric. We use the New York Times Style Manual.

Send us your best work. We look forward to seeing it!