Guidelines for Submissions

The Fictional Café, entering its tenth year, seeks new boundary-breaking short stories, flash fiction, novel excerpts, poetry, creative nonfiction, visual art, audio dramas and audiobooks. A thousand Coffee Club members in 70 countries read our highly original ‘zine. We welcome all genres. Your work must be tasteful, original and well written. We look for engaging characters and the thought-provoking, avant-garde, or unconventional approach. Bold, sophisticated poetry collections and artist exhibits are welcome. Your work will be reviewed by our baristas.

Your submission must be original material, submitted exclusively to us. We do not accept simultaneous submissions or requests to review books. Work we accept becomes eligible for publication in our print anthology and considered for our annual Pushcart Prize nominations. 

Important things to note:

One: Please become a member of our Coffee Club when submitting your work.

Two: Your submission must be an exclusive submission to The Fictional Café.

Three: When you fill out your Coffee Club membership, please tell us how you heard about FC.

Four: Please note that The Fictional Café is a non-profit labor of love, so we are unable to provide an honorarium for accepted submissions. All your baristas work for free; we don’t accept advertising; and we never charge you for publishing with us.

Submit your work by email, click here or send to: submissions@fictionalcafe.com

We respect the time and effort it takes you to create a stimulating and challenging work of prose, poetry, art or audio. Thank you for your interest in publishing with us. We look forward to reviewing your work.

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