Submissions are OPEN! Subs will close at midnight on the 30th April 2024.

The General Guidelines

So, what do we want?

What we want is flash fiction, flash creative non-fiction, poetry, & art.

We want you to give us a little bit of divvlement. Feed us the trifle of your life, the custard tart of your imagination. Bend the night warpways & pull your bootstraps through the holes in our teeth. Buy our brains from us, sell them back at twice the price, & laugh yourself all the way to the bloodbank. Or, y'know, just show us what's inside your shopping bags, in the way that only you can.

If that makes any sense to you — & even if it doesn’t — send us your very best!

  • Please submit only one entry, per genre, at a time. (Excl. ‘Art’: see below).

  • Responses will only be sent once the submissions window closes.

    • For our full publication schedule, click here.

  • Simultaneous submissions are cool, just let us know if your stuff has been accepted elsewhere.

  • Got questions? Sling ‘em over to themerseyreview@gmail.com with the subject line: ‘Question’

& how do we want it?

  • We want it in the following document formats: .doc / .docx / .pdf / .odt

  • We want it in 12pt Times New Roman

  • We want it with double-spaced (or 1.5-spaced) lines

  • We want it previously unpublished anywhere, in any format

  • We want it with a brief cover letter, in the email — a little hi, hello will do

  • We want it with an author bio of <50 words, in the document

  • We want it sent to themerseyreview@gmail.com & we want the subject like this:

    • ‘GENRE -- Title of Your Work’

Technical Stuff:                                                      

If your work is accepted by The Mersey Review, we ask for First Electronic Publication Rights, along with non-exclusive Electronic Archival Rights (this is to showcase your work indefinitely on our site). These rights revert back to the author upon publication, and the author always retains the ownership of their work. If you republish the work elsewhere, all we ask is that you please credit The Mersey Review as the first publisher!

The Specfic Guidelines

Flash Fiction & Flash CNF

Feel free to be as traditional or as experimental as you like here. The main thing we’re after is engaging writing that makes us feel.

To get an idea of what we like, some of our favourite writers are: Roberto Bolaño, Lydia Davis, Mia Couto, Donald Barthelme, Amy Hempel, Jorge Luis Borges, Maggie Nelson, Clarice Lispector, Ryszard Kapuściński.

For both genres: Please send, as an attachment, one flash story of no more than 750 words. (This is a hard limit, submissions longer than this will not be considered — there is no minimum).

In the document, please include the title, your name, & the word count, along with your story. In the email subject, please use ‘Flash Fiction’ or ‘Flash CNF’ as the genre.

Poetry

We welcome all forms of poetry; blank verse, traditional, experimental, prose poetry, rhyming, etc., & so on. Surprise us!

To get an idea of what we like, some of our favourite poets are: Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Pablo Neruda, Anne Carson, Sylvia Plath, Jack Spicer, Claudia Rankine, Gunnar Ekelöf, Nicanor Parra.

Please send, as an attachment, one poem. We don’t have a hard limit on the number of lines, but please keep poems to a single page or less. (There is no minimum line count either).

In the document, please include the title & your name, along with the poem. In the email subject, please use ‘Poetry’ as the genre.

Art

Send us any kind of art — interpret that how you will! — the only thing we’re not looking for is photography.

We like most art styles, so there’s no favourite artists ideas here, but we do have a fondness for asemic art.

Please send, as .jpg / .png, up to five images. For each file, please name it only the title of the artwork. & in the email subject, please use ‘Art’ as the genre, followed by your name as you would want it displayed if published.