1. ELIMINATE all thoughts of personal gain from your mind before even writing the poems or prose you will eventually send to us. You will either get rejected (bad) or accepted (worse). Review the editorials in the past few issues if this concept is difficult.
2. No, for reals, destroy all ambition before sending. We publish two percent of all submissions, which forces us to reject work we really like by people we truly admire. Sometimes we solicit work from people and then reject them, just to ruin our friendships. On a similar note, please decide if you hate/love us before submitting. If your opinion of us is based on what we think about your work it is hard to take you seriously as a person and casts a long shadow over all your other relationships.
3. Now you are ready: Send up to 8 poems or 15pp of prose. Any more & we will not read any of it. You do not have to supply the rough draft when you submit, though nobody’s stopping you. Visual artists should send digital files or high quality repros.
4. Include a cover letter. Explain why you want to be published by Lungfull! Doublecheck that your letter has our name on it, not another magazine’s. Be sure to indicate if you plan on going berserk if you get turned down. Similarly, let us know if we will immediately regret accepting your work.
5. A few don’ts with the cover letter: You know who cares about your MFA? Nobody cares about your MFA. Nobody cares about the other journals you’ve been published in. Even those editors have forgotten about you. In 1940, when there were three journals and nobody went to college, let alone grad school, maybe somebody cared, but probably not even then. If your books are so amazing, you wouldn’t have to mention them.
6. Include contact information on every page. Pages should be unscented. Also, not wet. Do not send the only existing copy of your work in the world.
7. Include a SASE. You will not hear from us otherwise. A blank self-addressed postcard that forces us to write a note is passiveaggressive and will delay response time, jerkface.
8. Be patient. Do not send a second mss before we respond to the first. Do not query before a year. A year? A year. Reading over 1,000 manuscripts for each issue takes time & our response may take over a year. To go any faster would be to cheat everyone of a considered decision. Return to step one and get some hobbies if this will be hard for you.
9.
Recheck our site. These guidelines are constantly being updated to
reflect the incredible measures people take to ensure their writing
gets dismissed unread, or read in all sorts of funny voices as it gets
passed around the editorial meeting. Dramatic falsetto readings are not
meanspirited as they are reserved only for submissions from putzes nice
people who ignore the guidelines. Please note: we prefer postal
submissions. LUNGFULL! magazine 316 23rd street brooklyn NY 11215 attn:
submissions. However, if you live abroad or are faced with some other
compelling reason to submit online send to
with “submission from yourname” in the subject. Include the submission
in the body of the email — our sever automatically deletes unsolicited
submissions with attachments. It’ll be as though they never existed. Of
course because even if they are accepted & published it is still
poetry in a poetry journal so again, it will be as though they never
existed. It’s like Sarte’s Being and Nothingness except without the
being part.
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