Our Guidelines

We are interested in work that defies the cookie cutter way we were taught in grade school. We’re interested in YOUR voice, not the way you think you should sound. There are a lot of great writers out there, the best part about you is that you’re none of them. We want pieces that make us think, make us question why the hell we ever picked it up, but writing that is too good to put down.

We’re for everyone, and we’re proud to be inclusive and communal. We’re a company consisting of femme, BIPOC, LGBTQIA and all around amazing people.

We’re always open for submissions.

We currently have three segments you can submit to:

Open Book: This is our biweekly series where we choose 3 (and sometimes 6) featured writing submissions from all genres to host on our homepage for two weeks.

No Payment Required

Open Book (PLUS): Same thing as Open Book but we provide tailored feedback within 1-2 weeks of your submission.

Payment of $5

Great Big Fiction Contest (ON PAUSE): Send us your flash, short stories, excerpts and all in our first fiction writing contest. Prize $200.

Payment of $5

Upon Acceptance

Authors retain all rights to their works/publications.

Every Open Book submission will include a photo alongside the post. If you want to submit your own image, you must do so 48 hours after you received your accepted email.

Papers has the right to deny any photos the writer submits if we feel it fails to compliment the other selections, and does not meet the theme of the overall publication.

Once a submission has been published, it can not be taken down.

We encourage you to submit a photo!

We have the right to refuse any work we deem morally substandard, but please don’t give us a reason to dislike you - we dislike that.

You can submit up to 4 poems at a time.

You can submit up to 2 prose at a time (each must be 3000 words or less).

You can submit work you submitted to other places, but we can’t publish work that’s already been published.

You can submit work that’s been checked for errors and bugs.

You can submit again once you hear back from us regarding your first submission.