WE ARE CLOSED TO MOST SUBMISSIONS UNTIL 1/20, SO WE CAN ADDRESS THE CURRENT QUEUE. 

The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Founded in 2009 and independent from the start, The Rumpus is a home for excellent, incisive writing that stands the test of time. We welcome work from both emerging and established writers. 

  • All work must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs and social media. 
  • I wish this didn't have to be said, but it has to be said. We don't accept or even consider work that was written with assistance from or by AI. 
  • We are an all volunteer publication and hope to respond to your submission within three (3) months. Please do not query before three months have elapsed. 
  • Please only send one submission to a given section at a time; when we've responded with a decision, you are welcome to submit to that section again.
  • We accept simultaneous submissions. Please promptly withdraw your submission if your work is accepted at another publication
  • Please note if you are an annual Rumpus member you should've received a link to a "magic" portal via a Member welcome email that ensures a 6 week initial response time. Please use that link to submit to any of the open calls below OR to submit to specific genres (poetry, fiction, essays) outside of our usual open reading periods. 
  • We accept submissions of fiction, poetry, essays, comics, criticism, and interviews. Accepted work will be published on The Rumpus website and/or in The Rumpus newsletter. More specific guidelines for a given genre can be found at the relevant submission link. 
  • We pay $100 for prose submissions and comics, and $50 for poetry. When we can increase these payments, we will.
SUBMIT to Essays

We welcome essay submissions up to 5,000 words in length. In addition to personal voice-driven essays we are interested in non-traditional forms of nonfiction. Essays should explore issues and ideas with depth and breadth, illuminating a larger cultural context or human struggle. Regardless of topic, we are looking for well-crafted sentences, a distinct narrative voice, compelling scenes, and thoughtful reflection. Surprise us! Intrigue us! Delight us! We want work we cannot put down or soon forget after reading. 

Please submit work that is evergreen because, given our publication schedule, we cannot respond, explicitly, to the news cycle. That said, we are very interested in work that engages with the current sociopolitical climate. 

Essays must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs and social media. Please submit only one essay for consideration at a time; we ask that you wait until a decision has been made on that essay to submit again.

A cover letter is also welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself,  where your work has appeared if you're previously published, or anything else you think might be important for us to know. You do not need to explain your work as we trust it will speak for itself. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but do withdraw your submission if your essay is picked up elsewhere and congratulations on that placement.

Thank you for taking the time to proofread your submission. If you have not heard a decision from us after 3 months, feel free to check in. Please submit your work as a Microsoft Word file.

SUBMIT to Comics

The comics section at The Rumpus welcomes a wide range of artistic and narrative styles of varying lengths. Currently, we are only considering standalone, complete comics submissions. This means we are not currently accepting pitches for comics (although we hope to in the future!), scripts with incomplete artwork, or chapters/sections of larger works. While we’re interested in what short-form comics can accomplish artistically, we do not typically accept single-panel “New Yorker-style” cartoons or cartoon strips you’d find in the newspaper. The best way to get a sense of what we love is to look through what we've previously published: therumpus.net/sections/comics. 

While we’ll accept submissions in whatever legible file you can upload to Submittable, we’ll expect the final file to be 72dpi and 1,000 pixels wide.

We can only consider work that is previously unpublished—this includes personal blogs, websites, and social media. Please only submit once to any given category of the magazine. When you've received a decision, you are welcome to submit again.

We receive a tremendous amount of Comics submissions, and we appreciate your patience in waiting to hear from us. If you haven't received a decision within eight months of submitting, please feel welcome to query regarding submission status.

We do allow simultaneous submissions; please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere by withdrawing your submission through Submittable.

SUBMIT to The Sunday Scaries

The first scary story I remember obsessing over was from the Bible (or maybe the Book of Mormon). I was probably seven years old and at Sunday School our teacher taught us about the signs and prophesies that would let us know the second coming of Christ was imminent. These signs include bangers like the moon turning to blood, the earth being cast into darkness, wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, secret combinations, and the separating of the wheat and the tares. For a young kid who always identified more with the sinners than the saints, my dad’s assurances that I had nothing to fear if I obeyed God’s commandments did little to ease my anxiety.

 

I dealt with a lot of that fear and anxiety by seeking out stories that made me scared. In elementary school it was Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? In middle school I got hooked on all of Lois Duncan’s books (author of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Killing Mr. Griffin, Down a Dark Hall, etc.) and watching horror movies with my friends like it was some kind of endurance test. The rush I would feel from purposely scaring myself, and the relief of knowing I was not in any real danger, kept me enthralled.

 

As an adult, I still gravitate toward the sinister and macabre. Even though I left my spiritual fears behind, stories that made me feel unsettled or addressed current anxieties still seemed to soothe and entertain. In college I wrote my capstone paper for my English major about how the concept of eternal existence is horrific, and used stories from Poe and Borges to analyze and explain that fear of mine.

 

The current literary horror landscape is robust and more popular than ever. Have you been sitting on your own scary stories? We’re looking for original, unpublished work (this includes personal blogs and social media) that uses the genre to confront some of our biggest or most secret fears. Please submit your work (5,000 words max) via Submittable. 

 

–Kaitlyn Adams, Sunday Scaries editor