become a contributor:

volumes submissions

We aim to publish art and words for the future by artists and writers who believe they're carrying, on their hunched-over-computer shoulders, a pretty heavy yet very pretty burden—to offer us all a way into ourselves so that we may come back out with the wisdom required for positive change as individuals, and as a society. for more info on what we’re about, view our BASIC TENETS. All accepted work for our volumes will appear both online and in print.

Words, art, & MUSIC

Poems: You can submit up to ten poems in each submission, single-spaced. Please don’t send more than ten at a time, and wait for us to respond to one submission before sending another.

Nonfiction* & Fiction: We accept prose submissions up to about 20 pages (ish). We don’t hold to this limit super hard, so if you’re a little over, send it our way anyway, but know that we typically don’t publish over this limit. We aren’t able to accept full-length works at this time, except through our annual contest, the Beautiful Pause Prize.

*For Non-Fiction: Please don’t send us academic essays!

Art: Yeah! Send us pretty things!

Music: Yep! Our most recent volumes include many musical experiences, and we hope to do more in the audio realm in the future.

For more info on what we publish, browse our volumes, and/or email info@presspausepress.org.

18 & Under

We love publishing young artists! Every volume includes at least one writer or artist under 18. Dolly Parton said in Steel Magnolias, “If you can achieve puberty, you can achieve a past.” We know y’all have plenty to say, so say it here. Any genre, any word count, anything goes, long as you’re under 18.

Please note: All contributors 18 and under will need to have a guardian sign a permission form. Let us know in your cover letter if you are under 18.

Publication schedule

2024-2025

Fine Print

  • We accept rolling submissions, which means our submissions don’t close (except for sometimes in the overwhelming August heat) and you can submit year-round for free. We’ll read as fast as we can, fill one issue, and then another and another and another. We try to respond within twelve weeks, so if you haven’t heard back from us in three months, feel free to query about the status of your submission.

  • You can submit in two categories at once, but please let us respond to those submissions before sending additional work. You can send up to ten poems at a time in a single document or up to three flashes in the same submission. Please do not send multiple submissions for multiple categories in one document. For example, if you’d like to submit to both The Family Room and our regular volumes submissions, please send two separate submissions.

  • You keep the rights to your stuffs, always, but we’re glad to have had it here first, and we would love it if you mention us in your collection.

  • Many contributors publish with us more than once in multiple locations, so if your work is accepted for The Family Room, other work could still be accepted for one of our print volumes in the future. Likewise, if you publish in one of our print volumes you could be published online in the future. This is all to say: keep on submitting!

The Family Room

A badass room on our website full of features and departments:

  • Currently,: We read a lot of newspapers. We’ve tried to stop reading our own social media feeds. We’ve deleted some personal social media. We’ve watched a lot of talk shows and news reports about what’s going on in the world. We’re tired of secondhand accounts. We want yours—firsthand. Tell us what’s going on in the world, according to you.

  • The Great Pause Online: In 2020, the year of our Lord, things got—weird. Some things are getting better. Some things are getting worse. Some things are standing still. In this department, we hear from writers and artists from around the globe talk about their experiences in quarantine/isolation/social distancing/civil unrest/revolution/ et cetera. Some of the work featured in this space was compiled into an (anti-fascist, humanist, fun, awe-inspiring, breathtaking, breath of fresh air) emergency coffee table edition, for sale in our store now.

    We will continue to use The Great Pause online indefinitely for artistic work that pauses on the heartbeat of present global circumstances. And who knows, maybe we will create another coffee table book in the future out of this space!!!

  • PauseCards: Address people places or things in the form of one of our online postcards designed in house! (I.e. Dear Australians, Dear Hulu, Dear White Person, Dear Firefly Fans, Dear Baby on the Airplane Sitting Across from Me).

  • The Midnight Snack: You can’t fool us. Just like you couldn’t fool your mom in sixth grade, sneaking into the kitchen at two a.m., pilfering a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch from the pantry to eat in front of the TV while you watched the Sham Wow! infomercial for the third school night in a row. We aren’t going to ground you though, and we won’t tell your mom. Why? Because we’re right alongside you as fully grown adults eating cold grocery store fried chicken at midnight while we pretend not to cry watching Steven Universe on our second-hand couches. We’re The Midnight Snack, and we eat our feelings just like everyone else. So open your pantries, raid your fridges, empty that one pillowcase full of candy from your kid’s last Trick-or-Treat sesh, and send us all the food writing our nutrient-deficient digestive systems can handle. Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Ingredient Lists, Recipes, Nutritional Information: we want it all. Just don’t use the microwave—you’ll wake up Dad.

  • Press Play: You ever drink a lot of wine and sit around sobbing at nineties classic rom-coms or yell at old black-and-whites when a Cary Grant type calls an Ingrid Bergman type a silly lady? …No? Just us? We pile onto our fading floral-print seventies couch—you know the one; your grandma has one just like it—watch movies, and write our thoughts. Sometimes they’re reviews or commentaries; sometimes they’re braided personal narratives. We’re watching everything from Get Out to 10 Things I Hate About You all the way back to A Philadelphia Story. What are you watching?

  • Craft-Splaining: A space for recorded craft talks by contributors. What can our readership learn from you and how you approach your art and writing? This is your space for exploring your craft. Craft videos can be in the form of interviews, demonstrations, presentations, one-act plays, stop-motion animation ;), et cetera. Anything goes! If you don’t have video editing experience, no worries. Record your vision and we’ll do the rest! We'll also accept personal craft essays in this space.

  • Throwbacks: We get nostalgic. We love old things (like VCRs and scrunchies and tape decks and remember that weird yo-yo trend in the 90s?). Browse past hits & weird old ditties. Check out new translations of classic works, read from the public domain, relive your childhood dreams. Send us your fave throwbacks, and we’ll feature them in The Family Room.

  • Reading Corner: Tell us what you're reading or send us a book review or interview. Or pitch something to info@presspausepress.org. Are you a past contributor/on our fight club roll call? Do you have a book that is out or coming out? Send us that too, so we can put it up on our contributor bookshelf.

  • The Cauldron: Tell us an old story in a new way: Vladimir Propp theorized there were 31 basic storytelling elements in every Russian fairy tale. Leo Tolstoy said only two stories existed: a hero goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Whether the roots are in Hans Christian Anderson, Ovid, Homer, or Greek myths, we want all your retellings. Choose a favorite villain and tell their side of the story. Reinterpret scenes from religious texts or write an ancient tale in a modern setting. Give new meaning to an old story. Think Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. Think Anna Maria Hong’s H&G, Gregory Maguire’s The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Malinda Lo’s Ash, or Sue Monk Kidd’s The Book of Longings. Rewind. Press pause. Revise. Rewrite. “There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” —Mark Twain

pitch us something

Want to set up shop in The Family Room? To pitch a column, feature, or department to The Family Room, fill out our pitch form. We’re open to any and all ideas you have.


Fine Print

  • Do not send multiple submissions in one document for The Family Room. Please submit separately to each department. You may submit to two departments at once, but please do so in separate submissions that indicate your intended department.

  • There is no publishing schedule for The Family Room. We publish online whenever we see great things in our Family Room submissions.


 
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A thing to know about us: We’re not trying to make money because we don’t know how and Google says contradictory things about how to do it and Jeeves isn’t really around anymore to be asked. This is our way of saying, we wish we could pay you, but we can’t guarantee pay at this time, but we hope that maybe, one day, maybe perhaps we could. Unfortunately, this includes both volumes and Family Room published work. We’ll see where this thing goes. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

If you want to help us reach our goal of being able to pay our amazing contributors, please consider donating to Press Pause or shopping in our store.