You have reached us during our nonreading period,
which extends from April 15 through December 31.

We do not consider submissions of any kind during this period. The online submissions system is closed. If you mail us your article, poem, or story through the post, it will simply be discarded unread. And, as always, we will not consider any emailed submissions, now or at any other time.

Please wait until January 1 before submitting your work to us through either the regular mail or our online submissions system. And please read the important guidelines given below before submitting work to us; in fact, we strongly recommend that you read them now, so as to be fully informed about our procedures when the system reopens.

Writers’ Guidelines

1. At present The Threepenny Review is paying $400 per story or article, $200 per poem or Table Talk piece. This payment buys serial rights in our print and digital editions, and the copyright then reverts to the author immediately upon publication.

2. All mailed manuscripts must include a stamped, self-addressed envelope for our reply. Submissions should be mailed to:

The Editors
The Threepenny Review
PO Box 9131
Berkeley, CA 94709

3. All online submissions must consist of a single document in Word format (.doc or .docx). If you are submitting prose, the document should consist of a single article or a single story. If you are submitting poetry, please group your poems into one document containing no more than 5 poems, because the online system will not accept more than a single document from each person. Please include your name and address somewhere on the document as well as in our submission form.

4. We do not print material that has previously been published elsewhere, and we emphatically do not consider simultaneous submissions. We do our best to offer a quick turnaround time, so please allow us the privilege of sole consideration during that relatively brief period; writers who do not honor this request will not be published in the magazine.

5. Response time for submissions ranges from two days to two weeks for online submissions. (It can take up to two months for mailed submissions, and only those that come with SASE will get a reply.) If you submit online and have not heard from us within two weeks, you should assume that we did not take your work and that it is free to go out elsewhere; we do our best to respond to everyone, but some emails inevitably go astray. If your submission is accepted, you will know, so please do not contact us if you do not hear from us.

6. We strongly recommend that you stay within our length limits. As a rule, critical articles should be about 1200 to 2500 words, Table Talk items 1000 words or less, stories and memoirs 4000 words or less, and poetry 100 lines or less. (Exceptions are occasionally possible, but longer pieces will have a much harder time getting accepted.) We prefer to read prose submissions that are double-spaced; poetry can be single-spaced or double-spaced.

7. Critical articles that deal with books, movies, theater performances, art exhibits, etc. should cite these occasions at the front of the article, using the following format:

Theater Piece
by Playwright Name,
directed by Director Name.
Theater, City,
Season 20__.

Art Exhibition Title,
Gallery or Museum, City,
Start Date-End Date.

Book Title
by Author Name.
Publisher, Year Published,
Price (cloth) (paper).

Remember that The Threepenny Review is quarterly and national (and in some respects international); therefore each review should actually be an essay, broader than the event it covers and of interest to people who cannot see the event.

8. Writers will be consulted on any noticeable editing done on their articles, and will have the opportunity to proofread galleys for typographical errors.

9. It is recommended that those submitting work to The Threepenny Review take a look at a sample copy beforehand. (Print copies are available from the publisher for $12.00; digital copies can be downloaded instantly for $7.00.)

10. We do not read submissions from mid-April through December, so please do not submit work then. Any material sent to us during that period will be discarded unread.

11. Emailed submissions will be discarded unread. The only two ways to submit work to us are through the mail and via our online system.