Submission Guidelines & FAQ

We are on our summer hiatus and currently CLOSED for submissions. Check back in September.

Follow the guidelines below or we won't be reading your work (and that would be sad)

Who do you publish?

​The Weight Journal accepts new submissions from high school aged students from everywhere in the world. We're looking for writing that has something honest to say. Something that releases the weight. No topic is off-limits. This is not about being "school appropriate." We DO NOT accept submissions from teachers or parents on behalf of their children.

Do you accept previously published submissions?

No!

Do you accept simultaneous submissions?

YES! But you must let us know if they’ve been accepted elsewhere.

Do you accept multiple submissions?

No! Submit in only one (1) genre and wait to hear back before submitting more. If multiple submissions in different genres are sent will won’t read any of them.

What do you accept?

Poetry: 1-3 poems, up to 6 pages of poetry. Note we don't publish a lot of rhyming poetry. Also, don't send center-justified poems unless they are centered for a reason. 

Slam Poetry: 1 video, under 8 mins. Send the text of poem with your submission.

Flash Fiction: 1-2 pieces, up to 800 words each. Place both works in the same document.  

Short Fiction: 1 piece at a time, max 3000 words. 

Creative Nonfiction: 1 piece at a time, max 3000 words. We only publish narrative (story-based) nonfiction. Not analytical or expository essays.

 Hybrid: 1 piece 1 at a time, max 2000 words​​​.

What info do you need from me?

Include a short personal bio (100 words max) in the third person. This can Include who you are, where you are, any past publications, what you do, hopes and dreams, etc.

Example: Jane Doe is a future National Book Award winning writer who currently spends her days writing, playing frisbee golf, and drinking way too much coffee. Her publications include The Last Dance Lit Mag, the Are We There Yet? Review, and The Rainbow Farts Journal. Even though she is only a sophomore, Jane is ready to move out of her small town in Nevada.

If my submission is filled with grammar, syntax, spelling, or other errors, and/or reads like I’m only submitting it because my English teacher is forcing me to in order to pass a class or get extra credit, are you even going to read it?

Uhm, Yes (but we’ll be bitter about it). Please ONLY send us your BEST work.

Can you help me guilt the English teacher who made me submit my work into submitting their own writing into the world? Make them practice what they preach?

Yes we can! Tell them about Porcupine Literary Journal.

Publication Policies

  • By submitting you confirm that the work(s) submitted is original and of your composition. You grant The Weight Journal first English-language electronic rights to display your work on our website and through social media. All other rights remain with you upon publication. If the piece is reprinted elsewhere, please be sure to acknowledge The Weight Journal as its first publication.

  • ​​​​​​​The Weight Journal publishes talented writers at the beginning of their careers, and we recognize that in the future some might look back on their early writing with embarrassment, disdain, or other forms of angst. We (the editors) get it. We’ve been there. We live there now. We all have works we wish we could take back, rewrite, or scrub from an online or print publication. But we can’t. That’s the nature of all writing: once it is out of our hands, we lose control over it and must trust our audiences with it in theirs.
     
    All that to say, as stated in our submission policies, publishing with The Weight Journal means you are granting “first English-language electronic rights,” and as is standard practice across the industry, we will not remove accepted and published pieces from our archive except in the case of extreme circumstances as judged by the editors. Feel free to reach out if you feel your situation rises to that level of need. 
     
    If you are not growing as a writer, you’re not much of a writer. Change should be happening. So be kind to your younger writer self. When you’re famous, you can point back to these early works as examples of how far you've come while being interviewed about the literary prize you’ve just won . 

  • We shouldn't have to say this, but works that are focused on promoting racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, or other forms of hate-filled ideas will not be published; however, pieces that respond to or fight against these ideas are fair game.

  • The Weight Journal is not interested in publishing work generated by AI. If you submit something we later learn was generated using any AI system, we will immediately remove your work and not consider any of your future work.