Submission Guidelines

• Poetry Submission: Please send up to three pages of poetry. This may be a combination of short poems, or one or two longer poems.
• Prose Submission: Please send up to 2,000 words of prose. We accept creative nonfiction as well as fiction.
• Art Submission: Please send up to three pieces of art. No limits on resolution, but our journal downgrades the aforementioned to 300 px / ~80-90% compression to save file space.
• Submission Format: [AR] uses OpenOffice Writer to edit files and build the journal. Its native filetype is .odt; it can read .doc(x) files but there may be a rare formatting change in the conversion. This is to say, we don't necessitate a certain filetype or types for the submission, but we hope this informs your formatting decisions for your piece(s). Lastly, if you feel like being nice to us, we end up converting all biographies to .txt files each titled "bio.txt" (they then go in their respective author/artist folders, which is how we identify them). What isn't compatible with our setup are PDF files. Lastly, art can be sent in whichever image format you like.
• Editorial Requests: If you have any details that need to be adhered to in the publication process for your piece(s), we are open to receiving them and will do our best to see them through.
• Submission Cost: Free of charge.
• Anonymous Reading: Please separate your bio from your submission (in separate files, for example) so as to facilitate more impartial judgment.
• Author & [AR] Rights: [AR] claims Creative Commons rights to the literary magazine which it publishes. Individual pieces are copyright the respective author(s) and/or artist(s).
• Third-person Biography: The--sorry, a--third person biography is totally up to you, but if you don't submit one, your bio spot on the website will be empty.
• Cover Letter(s): To be frank, we don't always... read?... your cover letters... in full. Having said that, we really appreciate them, and we appreciate when you understand that we understand that you understand that we all understand each other understandingly. (Viz. a cover letter is optional.)
• Semi-quota System: We operate on a semi-quota system, so once we have received enough quality submissions we will once again shut our doors for the period.
• Response Time: Expect a quick response time, but give us up to three months.
• Previously Published Work: We accept previously published work as long as we have the information and opportunity to acknowledge the prior publisher(s).
• Page Size: We use 5.5"x8.5" page size, so if your poems contain long lines on 8.5"x11.5" page size, they will definitely run over to the next line when displayed in our journal.
• Publication Errors: If you find a mistake in the publication after it has been released, feel free to bring it to our attention and we will do our best to correct it.
• Submission Email: Submission email is <editor [at] alternateroute [dot] org>.
• Errata: I can't think of anything else right now. Just be nice. You know, like, David-Foster-Wallace nice.