Here, you can submit writing for HFR online features or print issues. Online features are open year-round, and print issues are open during select reading periods. While work is regularly featured online, HFR debuts one print issue a year. Please use your judgement when submitting written work; the archives contain many years of material we have previously published. At this time, we do NOT accept full-length manuscripts.
Print submissions are currently closed. However, online features are OPEN. Read more about these categories below. Review and interview inquires go to Books Editor Jeff Chon. Please do not submit these via Submittable.
For us, “feature” is a loose term/form, and the topics and form are open to interpretation. The final product can be a traditional essay, poem, short story, list, definition, collage, or whatever you can think up:
The Last Word
Writers getting the last word. HFR is invested in elevating art by marginalized groups with this blog feature.
Side A
The rule: send ONE standalone poem, essay, story, comic, manifesto, anomaly to “Side A.” Published works appear alongside short-form interviews and, if possible, YouTube audio.
Haunted Passages
An ominous wind circles you in the middle of an isolated woods. Your friends wander into an empty factory, under the cover of dusk, never to be seen again. These are “Haunted Passages,” new features of unearthly delights.
Bad Survivalist
The couple that camps together gets mauled together. Never ask for directions but plead for outdoor sex? Every pool is safe for swimming. You are a bad survivalist; blaze your trail for HFR.
The Future
Posing utopic, apocalyptic, dystopic, or superhero solutions to “The Future.” Writers depict futuristic alternative worlds in politics, environment, gender, religion, sexuality, or ethnography.
Flavor Town USA
Calling all gluttons, picky eaters, fry cooks, servers: get on the grill with the burnt edges for HFR. Welcome to “Flavor Town USA,” where food writing takes on a whole new spin.
HFR accepts poems, short stories, flash fictions, nonfictions, hybrid works, visual art, etc. For the magazine, we read packets of 3-6 pieces and short-story length work. There are no print guidelines, but we can only print black-and-white art images in our books. JPEG and PNG image files are preferred. Save poetry and prose submissions as one document (doc, docx, pdf). Translations welcome. Questions? Review inquires go to Books Editor Jeff Chon. General correspondence is handled by Jason Teal, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief.
Cover letters are encouraged, but not required. Allow 30 days for a response, inquire after 60, although we pride ourselves in responding much sooner. Simultaneous submissions are allowed; notify us immediately if your submitted work has been accepted for publication elsewhere. HFR accepts original work that has not been published elsewhere. Upon acceptance, HFR takes first serial rights to the work. After publication, all rights revert back to the author. Should the accepted work appear elsewhere after its publication in HFR, kindly list HFR as its original publisher. HFR is unable to pay contributors; however, print contributors receive a copy of the issue in which they are published.
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Submit writing for online features or print issues with no fee assessed. We do not distinguish between tip-jar and no fee submissions. Thank you for your work!
There is a small fee suggested for this category which we use to offset operating costs. We do not distinguish between tip-jar and no fee submissions. Many thanks for your support!