Submission Policies

Submissions are open year-round and always free. We do not believe you should pay (in the form of submission fees) to have your work read.

Rabid Oak does not accept work that has been previously published, in print or online.

Simultaneous submissions are encouraged. If the work is accepted elsewhere, just email to let us know.

What We Want

We’re looking for poetry and flash fiction or nonfiction (under 1,000 words) that use voice, image, and form to leave us stunned.

Send up to five poems or two works of fiction or nonfiction in one Word document to rabidoak@gmail.com.

We are also looking for art to feature as each issue’s “cover” image, so if you have work that fits with the words we publish, send images our way.

Required Information

Please include this information with each submission:

  1. Brief 3rd-Person Bio as you’d like it to appear in the journal. These bios should be true to you, so if you want to emphasize a few places in which your work has been published or your place of employment, go for it.  If, instead, you would like to emphasize your dog’s name or your favorite album, we’re cool with that, too. You be you!
  2. One poem, essay, or story from one of our previous issues that made you want to submit your work to us. (This lets us know that you know what you’re getting into).

Payment

We would love to pay our authors.  However, as we neither seek nor accept advertising or charge submission fees, we operate outside the realms of monetary transactions where poets and editors both are paid in literary karma. When we become capitalists and begin monetizing this site, we will begin paying our writers.  Until then, everything is free, your labor as well as ours. However, we will nominate work for both the Pushcart and Best of the Net, so we will shout your work from the rooftops (well, virtual rooftops, at least).

Rights & Rules

All rights revert to the authors upon publication. Technically, we require First Rights, meaning we want to be the first venue to present the poems to the public. This means that we won’t consider poems that have been self-published, published online, or have been posted to blogs, except when posted to closed groups or message boards.

Response Time

We strive to respond to your work in under three months.  If more than ninety days have gone by without a response, please e-mail us: rabidoak@gmail.com