Chatterbox! is open for submissions on a rolling basis.

For now, we aim to publish one story per month. The story is accompanied by an interview between the author and a Chatterbox! editor. Interviews explore the author’s process and the lifespan of the story prior to publication. 

All of our content can be accessed online at no cost, though we do have a tip jar if you’d like to support us. In addition to online publication, Chatterbox! nominates selected works for award consideration, including (but not limited to): Pushcart, Best of Net, and Best American Short Stories.

general guidelines

We consider unpublished pieces of fiction between 4,000 and 10,000 words; between 5,000 and 8,000 is our proverbial “sweet spot.”

  • We’re happy to consider novel excerpts so long as they’re self-contained. 

Our goal is to respond to all submissions within 90 days, though we will try our best to get back to you sooner. Feel free to query us if you haven’t heard from us within this time frame.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome and encouraged. Let us know if the piece is accepted elsewhere by sending us an email withdrawing your work from consideration (please reply on the original chain). 

In order to give submissions the care they deserve, please only send one submission at a time. Once you’ve heard back from us, feel free to submit again right away. We do ask previous contributors to wait at least one year before submitting again so we may platform new voices.

We consider and publish works written primarily in English, though we welcome the inclusion of non-English languages in submissions.

We do not consider work generated or inspired by AI to any degree.  

ethics

DEI is alive and well at Chatterbox! We enthusiastically encourage, and seek, work by underrepresented and/or marginalized writers of all identities. We believe all knowledge is situated, and we’re always curious to know where you stand, especially if it’s pertinent to your work.

Any work deemed hateful—whether that be racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, and so on—will be immediately rejected. We will include a note in our response that makes clear that the piece violates our guidelines, and will ask you not to submit in the future.

formatting

Double space and paginate your work, please. Our eyes aren’t great.

  • We prefer .doc and .docx files but will consider pdfs.

To submit, please send your fiction piece as an attachment to chatterboxliterary@gmail.com. Please format the subject line as: SUBMISSION: TITLE OF PIECE_ NAME, or something close to that. Feel free to put your bio in the body of the email, but we will always reach out to author’s for updated bios upon acceptance. 

If your piece mentions graphic subject matter, we always appreciate a content warning. 

*If your piece has a specific form that violates these guidelines, don’t sweat it. We would rather you maintain the integrity of the form than adjust it for our convenience. 

rights & payment

Chatterbox! asks for First North American Serial Rights, the long and short of it being: we retain the right to publish your story/excerpt first. Upon publication, all rights revert to you. If your piece gets published in a book somewhere down the line, we’d be grateful if you could note that it appeared in Chatterbox first.

Chatterbox! retains the right to the accompanying author interview, though we highly encourage you share and promote the interview on your personal channels as applicable. We only ask that if you quote the interview, you cite Chatterbox! in whatever format makes the most sense for you.

We pay all accepted contributors $20 upon publication. As of now, we’re entirely self-funded; if you’d like to support the magazine, you can tip us here. (We’re working on opening a PayPal business account and registering for 501(c)3 status; bureaucracy is slow!)