SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Pearl is a 96–160 page, perfect-bound magazine featuring poetry, short fiction, and black & white artwork. We also sponsor the Pearl Poetry Prize, an annual contest for a full-length book, as well as the Pearl Short Story Prize, an annual fiction contest. Our annual poetry issue contains a 12–15 page section featuring the work of a single poet, and our annual fiction issue features the winner of our short story contest, as well prose poems, "short-shorts," and some of the longer stories submitted to our contest. Please send poems and short fiction separately. Submissions are accepted January through June only. Manuscripts received between July and December will be returned unread. We report back in 6-8 weeks. Work accepted for publication appears 6-12 months from date of acceptance. Please send submissions and correspondence to:

 

Pearl
3030 E. Second Street
Long Beach, CA 90803

No email submissions allowed within the U.S. Submissions from other countries may be sent in the body of an email. Do not send attached files.

POETRY
Send 3-5 previously unpublished poems with cover letter and SASE. Simultaneous submissions must be acknowledged as such. We prefer poems no longer than 40 lines, though we occasionally consider longer ones. Our format and page size, however, will not accommodate lines of more than 10-12 words. So unless you're Walt Whitman or Allen Ginsberg, please consider your line breaks.

FICTION

Send previously unpublished stories with cover letter and SASE. We only consider short-short stories up to 1200 words (about 5 manuscript pages). Longer stories (up to 4000 words) may be submitted to our short story contest only. All contest entries are considered for publication.

ARTWORK

We only consider camera-ready, black & white spot-art (no shades of gray) that can be reduced without loss of definition or detail. We do not use photographs. Send clean, high-quality photocopies or originals with SASE. Accepted artwork is kept on file and used as needed.

BOOK-LENGTH MANUSCRIPTS

We do not consider unsolicited book and chapbook manuscripts for publication.

PAYMENT

Contributors receive a copy of the magazine as payment. Additional copies may be purchased at a 50% discount.

SAMPLES

We recommend reading our magazine before submitting. For a sample copy, send $8 check or money order payable to: Pearl, 3030 E. Second St., Long Beach, CA 90803. If you wish to receive a copy of the all-fiction issue, please specify.

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Although we have no taboos stylistically or subject-wise, we are not interested in sentimental, obscure, predictable, abstract, or cliché-ridden poetry or fiction . . .
"Go in fear of abstractions . . . Don't be 'viewy'—leave that to the writer of pretty little philosophical essays . . . " —Ezra Pound

We are interested in accessible, humanistic poetry & fiction that communicates and is related to real life . . .
"Be electric, lusty . . . express the full-sized body, male and female . . . beautiful, lasting, commensurate with America . . . with the inimitable sympathies of having been boys and girls together." —Walt Whitman

Along with the ironic, serious, and intense, humor & wit are welcome. Just remember . . .
"There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers." —H.L. Mencken

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." —Robert Frost

"And let's not forget we're women. So the writing better make us weep, or at least curl our hair." —Joan Jobe Smith, Founding Editor

 

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