send us up to three of your best fiction and/or nonfiction works 1000 words or less. we allow a word cushion, but any works exceeding 1000 words will automatically be rejected. Excerpts are welcome as long as they can stand alone from the whole piece.
send us up to three of your best short poems. please place each poem on a separate page. we are looking for poems that are around twenty lines.
simultaneous submissions are encouraged, but please let us know as soon as possible if your work has been accepted elsewhere. We do not accept previously published works.
if you would like feedback on your work, please select your preferred add-on when you submit.
we aim to get back to you within three months, but alas we are a small staff and sometimes it takes us longer. if you have not heard from us within five months, feel free to query us at editorinchief@thetinyjournal.org
"The ultimate realm has one thousand kinds and ten thousand ways. When we think about the meaning of this, it seems that there is water for various beings but there is no original water—there is no water common to all types of beings." Zen Master Dōgen, Mountains and Rivers Sutra
How can we indulge ourselves in the ecological? What ecological pleasures can we embrace amidst trends of inhibition and moderation? What does indulgence mean to you, and what does it mean to other creatures? What combinations of settings, styles, and subjects seem delicious? What stories do you have that are arranged like three-course meals? What is succulent, intoxicating, sexy, refreshing like sour lemonade, relaxing? Following Zen master Dōgen, how can we embrace the proliferation of perspectives, sensations, and delights of the more-than-human world---of an anglerfish fluorescing in the dark, a pinecone breaking open to seed in the midst of burning, a fire ant biting down?
In No Common Water, a collaborative anthology between the tiny journal and Electric Phoenix Press, we seek stories, essays, and poems that reify one thousand kinds and ten thousand ways of being. We invite writers to abandon restraint and write towards abundance in a time of ecological scarcity. We want to devour flavors, choreographies, flirtations, delicacies, flora and fauna, desire and satiation in the widest and wildest terms. We are interested in what ecological familiarities romance gray whales and house Haleakalā silverswords. Take your time, relish, and tangle with the sublime of speculation.
We welcome works that experiment with form and scale: works that luxuriate, overindulge, or dissolve. We prefer literary works, but are open to stories that are genre-connecting or -bending if it helps engage indulgence. We are not interested in works that have gratuitous violence, sex, or offensive language if it is not serving the purpose of the piece. Write toward pleasure without apology, toward ecological worlds that are imperiled, and also irresistibly alive in the face of it all. Let abundance answer catastrophe.
- Prose: up to 7,500 words (flash and short-shorts especially welcome). You may include multiple prose pieces as long as the total word count does not exceed 7,500 words. Please include them all in one file and place on separate pages.
- Poetry: You may submit up to 5 poems, totaling no more than 10 pages. Please place each poem on a separate page.
- Visual Art: up to 3 pieces of visual art. Any form.
- Simultaneous submissions are encouraged, but please let us know as soon as possible if your work has been accepted elsewhere.
- Reprints of published works are allowed if author retains rights for print, e-book, and audio, but original works are preferred.
- Contributors whose work is accepted receive one author's copy. We also nominate for Pushcart Prizes.
- Submission fees ($12) support operating costs. Fee waivers are available upon request through the contact form on the tiny journal website.