Important!!

We will not acknowledge submissions that do not adhere to the following guidelines!

Megaera accepts submissions of short fiction, poetry, and art. Writers grant us the right to publish their work online and in print. They retain full rights to their own work. The editors will occasionally make minor changes to submitted text to correct spelling or grammar, or to improve the flow of the text. However, if your submission is full of typoes and mispellings, it will not be published. We will not make any major changes without consulting the originator of the text. Previously published work is no longer acceptable. All submissions should contain "Submission" in the subject line and be e-mailed to:

Real name, e-mail address, and title of work should be included in the message body. Also provide us with a current mailing address so we can send a copy of the magazine to you if you get published. Work may be put in body of message, or added as an attachment. You may also include a short bio and a picture of your eye if you want one to appear on our web site. The e-mail address will be displayed on our contributor page unless you tell us otherwise. It may take us several weeks to respond to submissions.

Bulk submissions will be considered spam and will not be read. Due to virus concerns, we will not open any attachment in .zip, .exe or any executable format.

Fiction:

Fiction must be short (up to 5000 words) and be able to stand on its own. We prefer experimental pieces, but traditional stories are also welcome. Fiction should be in .txt, .rtf, .html, or .doc format and put in attachment or in the body of the e-mail. If the story requires special formatting (italics, bold text, special characters with accent marks, etc.) please include an attachment in .doc format or the formatting will be lost. Only one story may be submitted per issue. If you send more than one we won't read any of them.

Poetry:

Poetry may be any length and in any style. You may submit up to five poems per issue. Again, experimental is preferred, but traditional poems are also accepted. Poems may be put in body of e-mail message or added as an attachment in .txt, .rtf, .html, or .doc format. Please include all poems in a single attachment!

Art:

The only part of the print edition that will be in color is the cover, so if you're submitting artwork for the interior, please make sure it is in grayscale. We are more likely to use a piece of art for the cover that features eyes or our mascot Clovenhoof. Art should be sent as an attachment to e-mail in a standard file format.

Biographical Information:

We will include a page with a short bio of all Megaera authors and artists. Please include some information about yourself such as places you've lived, jobs you've had, schools you've attended, your webpage address, other publications you've appeared in, past writing experience, and anything else you want to tell us about yourself. This information is optional and will not affect our decision to publish.

Send Us Your Eyes:

If you would like to send us a picture of one of your eyes (in .jpg format roughly 100 X 100 pixels), please do so. We will place the picture of your eye next to your bio entry. Just send the picture to us as an attachment to an email.

Plagiarism Policy:

Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Submission to Megaera will be taken as an acknowledgement that a work is wholly and exclusively the work of its submittor(s). If it is discovered that a work is plagiarized, the work will be removed, and no further submissions will be accepted from that person.

Payment:

Contributors will not receive any payment except for a copy of the magazine in the mail. For this reason, please include an up-to-date postal address with your submission, so we can mail your copy out to you as soon as possible.

Additional Legal Disclaimer

By sending a story, poem, or piece of art work to Megaera, you give us permission to publish that piece in our magazine both online and in print. If another magazine wishes to publish your piece, simply send an email to Megaera informing us of your desire to withdraw the piece from our consideration. If we receive no notification to the contrary, we will assume you want to be published in our magazine. Also, a piece may not be removed if the magazine has already been published.

Additional Pointers:

A story or poem with excessive typoes and grammatical errors will be rejected. If you don't respect us enough to proof-read your story, how can we respect you enough to publish it?

Stories which are excessively silly most likely won't make the cut. Also, for us to consider a story, it should have a beginning, middle, and end. That's not to say you can't leave some loose ends, but you can't just introduce an idea and stop there. Stories that are extremely short are generally not as satisfying and are therefor less likely to get in. Likewise, long winded stories that go on and on better have a satisfactory conclusion and not seem like a waste of time. Comedic, romantic, horror, and other genre stories are acceptable as long as they are original.

Poetry is harder to judge. Often a poem gets in based on uniqueness, surprising and beautiful lines. A poem riddled with cliches doesn't make the cut, either does a poem too engulfed in the abstract. Some pointers: concrete examples are better than abstract ideas, poetry that shows is better than poetry that tells, original sayings are better than cliches, poems that actually mean something trump poems that seem to be written in code. Poems that rhyme and have meter are appreciated, but when they get too sing-songy, they have to go.

We don't pretend that there's very much objective criteria involved here, though. The two editors read the story or poem and we either like it or we don't. Pieces are often judged based on our own personal preferences and nothing more. To get an idea of what we like, you can read past issues, although our tastes do tend to change over time. A good idea would be to pick up the printed Megaera Anthology (available at www.cafepress.com/megaera) to get a good idea of what we're looking for.

To give you an idea of your chances of getting published by us, here are the last several issues of the magazine with how many submissions we recieved and how many we actually published:

Summer '06
39 out of 158 poems
4 out of 19 stories

Fall '05
38 out of 103 poems
7 out of 24 stories

Summer '05
33 out of 117 poems
6 out of 24 stories

Spring '05
37 out of 113 poems
5 out of 18 stories

Winter '05
29 out of 106 poems
12 out of 20 stories

Fall '04
37 out of 115 poems
14 out of 37 stories

Spring '04
15 out of 84 poems
10 out of 23 stories

Summer '04
19 out of 110 poems
5 out of 22 stories

The Megaera Award:

The Megaera Award has been dicontinued, but may return some time in the future. The award is NOT rewarded in a given catagory if fewer than 5 people enter that catagory. Friends, family, and casual acquaintances of the editors are ineligible.

Any additional questions may be addressed to: