Our democratic editorial policy takes time, so forgive us if we take a bit to get back to you, and rest assured that your work gets the undivided attention of several members of our editorial board. Please also know that we never take a reading hiatus and we sincerely appreciate your submissions.
Guidelines for Submission
Painted Bride Quarterly accepts up to 3 poems per submission.
Please include all poems in a single document. Do not include any personal information on the document with your poems. We get all that we need within your submission.
We only accept previously unpublished work. We are fine with simultaneous submissions; please just be sure to tell us right away if part or all of your submission is accepted elsewhere!
We also think most writers understand that we’re not interested in work generated by ChatGPT or other AI language models. We want your fully human creation.
To get a feel for the kind of work we like, just read through current issues or check out our podcast! We regularly find new authors to feature on the podcast from the current pool of submissions. If your work is strong and will generate discussion, we might choose it! If that happens, we’ll reach out to you directly to ask if you’d be open to us discussing and voting on your work on the podcast.
If at any time you wish to check on the status of your submission please make a formal edit request through Submittable. This is the only way we can assure that we will see your message.
We are open for poetry submissions this fall.
Issue 105 in January 2024 marked an exciting turn in PBQ’s long history. After nearly 25 years of being a hybrid publication, appearing in print and online, going forward we’re focusing solely on digital publishing and our podcast, the Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile. We’ve learned a lot in the last few tumultuous years, and one of those things is to keep doing what we do and focus on doing it well.
In Fall 2024, we are opening for new poetry submissions. We’ll cap this submission period at 200 submissions.
Please send us your very best work. And remember, we find the poets and authors we feature on the PBQ Slush Pile Podcast almost entirely from submissions!
Stay tuned for more news about when we'll re-open for fiction submissions.