Submissions Are Closed

IMPORTANT NOTICE: If we’ve published your work, please wait one year from the publication date before you submit your writing to us again, and, of course, only when submissions are open.

We accept submissions of poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Work from women and marginalized groups is especially welcome, and we are happy to receive contributions from anywhere in the world. Work must be primarily in English. 

Submission Guidelines

We do not consider multiple submissions, so please send manuscripts in only one genre at a time. Simultaneous submissions to other journals are acceptable as long as they are identified as such, and we are notified immediately upon acceptance elsewhere.

All submissions must be previously unpublished, in print or online. If we want to feature your previously published work, we will contact you directly. Please do not submit such work to us without being invited to do so.

In the subject line of your submission email, kindly provide Your Name as You Want It Published, Genre of Submission, Title, or Titles (in the case of poetry).

Examples of Suitable Subject Lines:

Sylvia Plath, Poetry, ‘Ariel’, ‘Daddy’, ‘Poppies in October’

Anton Chekov, Short Story, ‘The Chameleon’

Chulu Ngesi, Creative Nonfiction, ‘My Mothering Needs Feminism Now More Than Ever’

The body of your email should include a third-person biographical statement of no more than 60 words. Submit your work as an attachment and as a .doc, .rtf, or .docx file only. Do paste your work in the body of the email. We will not read .pdf files, and we will not read work on Google Docs; work sent in these formats will be deleted.

DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME OR ANY OTHER IDENTIFYING INFORMATION ON YOUR MANUSCRIPT.

Manuscript Guidelines

• Times New Roman, point 12, double-spaced for fiction and single-spaced for poetry.
• Numbered pages.
• Fiction and creative nonfiction: Submit only one story or one creative nonfiction piece of fewer than 5000 words. Excerpts of novels are acceptable if self-standing as a complete short story. Flash fiction and flash creative nonfiction are acceptable. Fiction must be in Shunn modern manuscript format (follow the link for an explanation: https://www.shunn.net/format/story/); use similar formatting for creative nonfiction.
• Poetry: Submit one to three poems at a time, with each poem beginning on a new page. Poems should be no longer than 30 lines. Prose poetry and experimental poetry are welcome.

Translations are welcome if all the necessary permissions have been granted. We accept no responsibility for copyright infringement by our contributors. 

Please do not send us AI-generated texts. Keep it real, please.

Unsolicited book reviews and criticism are not considered.

Unsolicited artwork is not considered.

We cannot accommodate revisions after submissions have been made unless the revisions have been requested by the editors.

Expect three to five months for a decision. We accept queries after five months have passed. Queries, as well as withdrawal notifications, should be sent via email. They should include:

• Your name.
• The date of submission, along with the genre and title.

Rights

Hotazel Review requests first serial rights, except in the rare instances of our publishing previously published work. All rights revert back to the author upon publication, although we will curate your work online in our archives for the lifespan of the magazine. If you need your work to be removed from our archive, contact us, and we will oblige. If your work is republished after it has appeared in our journal, we request that you acknowledge its initial publication in Hotazel Review. 

No Payment
We are a non-profit organization, so we do not offer payment. We nominate for Best of the Net, however.

Make sure that you have followed our guidelines before emailing your work to us. Not following the guidelines will result in the deletion of your work without further reading.

Submit your work, queries, and withdrawal notices to editorhotazel@gmail.com