The Whistling Fire accepts poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, and excerpts from longer works. We also welcome experimental pieces. We only ask that your writing is limited in length to 3000 words.
Pieces that you wish to share should be sent to whistlingfire@gmail.com.
Please include your name and the type of piece you are submitting in the subject line. Attachments are permitted. Submit no more than TWO pieces per month. Authors previously published on The Whistling Fire, please wait SIX months after publication before sending new submissions (this does not apply to those published during contests or under our Guest Editors).
The Whistling Fire acquires one time rights to publish work shared, and the rights are immediately reverted to the artist thereafter. All writing that appears on this site remains the property of the writer.
does the whistling fire accepted previously published work?
Hi Steve. Yes, The Whistling Fire accepts previously published works with permission of the author and credit given to the previous publication.
Do you compensate?
Hi Karla. At this time TWF is completely nonprofit. No money is made off the site and all operation cost is funded from our editors pockets, therefore there is no money to give contributors. However all writing seen on this site remains property of the author and therefore is still eligible for publication in paying media forms.
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Do you accept simultaneous submissions?
Rachel,
We do accept simultaneous submissions with the understanding if it is published elsewhere the author lets us know. We also have posted previously published work by a number of authors if the author owns the right to their work. This is rare though. All rights are reverted to the author so The Whistling Fire does not own any of the work on this site, therefore our authors can publish their work anywhere they like afterward. Also if a piece is accepted for publication somewhere else and the author wishes their piece to be taken down from The Whistling Fire, we will accommodate them.
In general, what is your response time to submissions?
Hello Amanda,
Our response time is ever changing as this journal grows. We used to have a very quick response time of a few days or a week. As this journal has grown and now that we receive new submissions on a daily basis this is no longer usual. We try to respond in about a month, two at the most unless we are having a special theme or contest where we have an influx of new submissions. Compared to many journals this is fairly quick. It should be kept in mind though that our editors live throughout the west coast and are all students, who as it turns out are all graduating this summer and very busy. The Whistling Fire is a labor of love requiring all of our editors to have day jobs. In other words: we do our best!
Thanks.
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Hi!
I’m into creative writing and I would love to send you my few short stories. Could I send you 2 stories at the same time? And if they get/or don’t published do you contact me or anything?
thanks,
jos
Jos,
For prose pieces we do accept two submissions per month. So you may send us two pieces at one time and we prefer them in the same email. Like most literary journals we send out letters of acceptance and rejection, though it can take some time to before you get a reply. We get many submissions and all our editors have day jobs, etc. Accepted pieces generally have to wait their turn in a line-up before publication.
TWF
When you say submit no more than two pieces a month, does that mean you only want two poems at a time too? Thanks.
Yes Kyle only two poems per submission per month. But we thank you for actually paying attention to our submission guidelines, very few people do.
TWF
What a great blog…sort of stumbled on this and so pleased I did..Eliza Keating
What of everything you have is > 3000 words? Segments?
Joe,
We ask for no more than 3000 words per piece, because we really can only publish under 3000 words per post. So if all your pieces are meant to go together and are less than 3000 words, that is fine. If they are a bunch of separate short stories, they will be considered separately and we would ask you only send two. We do not publish multiple short stories in one post.
TWF
Maybe we are using the word “piece” differently. I consider a piece a completed work but it sounds like you consider it a single post. So a 5000 word story would be fine if broken into 2 posts? And “War and Peace” would be OK if, well… Let’s see, 3000 word segments, 2 at a time. 1443 pages, say 40 lines a page, about 12 words a line… Roughly 692,640 words, at 6000 a week… Almost 116 weeks, throw in some vacation time and we’re looking at 2.5 years. Never been so glad I didn’t write that book.
Joe,
We do not publish novels or novellas, that is the kind of piece you are referring to. We are a literary journal. We publish short contained works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We also publish excerpts but once again they must stand on their own. This is pretty standard practice of literary journals. We would never publish things back to back, in fact once an author is published they cannot even be considered for publication again until at least six months. You can send us two short stories that are both 3000 words, you can send us two excerpts that are both 3000 words, you can send us a series of shorts that make up a whole story if they are under 3000 words…all will be considered… it just has to be good and a make sense as a stand alone story. We’re sorry if our submissions guidelines are not clear.
TWF
I was a little confused by his question—it seemed he was asking what of all that’s in your pile of submissions has more than 3000 words. Right?
The answer would be nothing, because anything over 3000 words is rejected. One would know this automatically because it is in the first paragraph at the top of this page. Also mentioned up there is the word “excerpt,” which most writers understand is not a “segment,” per se, but a contained piece that gives the reader an idea of what the complete work is about.
Now, if one reads Joe’s question intuitively, one may discern that he perhaps meant to write ‘if’ instead of ‘of. While the underlying question is the same, there’s an underlying assumption here as well. Joe apparently has a novel, and he wants the editor to bend the 3000 word rule rather than take the time to create an excerpt himself.
This is not promising.
What is also troubling is that Joe chose to snipe at the editor rather than accept that The Whistling Fire does not accept works that go over 3000 words.
Perhaps if Joe were not to think of it as a segment but as a microcosm of his novel as a whole he could submit an excerpt the editor could accept.
Yikes. No sniping, no novel. The War and Peace stuff was just a joke. Once I got started I couldn’t stop. Maybe it was because I was a math major. But no offense was intended. I mean, did you know how many words were in War and Peace? Aren’t you interested to learn it’s nearly 700,000?
Also, no novel. Hah, I wish. And yes, I did see the 3000 limit and yes, I did see the word “excerpt”. My question was simply, could I break a 3000+ word story into 3000 word segments? And if I understand the editor correctly the answer would be yes, if each segment could stand alone. Which it can’t. So this is me bidding you all adieu.
TWF,
I am a morning show host in NY and am wondering if you accept interviews with various celebrities or writers (transcripts/write ups).
Gary
Gary,
As started we only accept works of fiction, poetry and nonfiction (memoirs, personal essays, etc). We do not publish interviews or reviews.
TWF
do we need to submit a cover letter with the piece that we’re submitting?
Jane,
We do not require a cover letter. Though we do prefer authors send a short third person bio with their submission, this saves us time if your piece is accepted so we do not have to ask you for it at that time. However, all that is important is the work. Bios and cover letters really have no barring on what is accepted and what is not, and long cover letters just make more work for us. We would encourage authors to at least put something in the body of their email even if it is “here is my submission” which will help prevent it from accidentally being sorted into our spam folder but also lets us know this is coming form a person who took the time to email us.
TWF
TWF,
do you send out acknowledgement emails upon receiving submissions?
Jane,
We do not send out acknowledgements upon receiving submissions, we receive far too many submissions for our unpaid and part time staff to do this. And since we do get emails that are not submissions we cannot set up an automated response. Every submission we receive is read and you will get response once our editors have come to a decision.
TWF
Do you accept children’s poetry?
Linda,
While we’re not sure what you mean by children’s poetry (poetry written by children? For children?). The Whistling Fire accepts all genres within the scope of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; as long as it meets those basic requirements of length and quantity. It is always good when submitting to a journal to read their previous published work to see if you feel your work might be comparable though.
TWF