It’s new. It’s flashy. And they’re wicked fast.
I submitted at 1am on Tuesday, May 17th and I got a response by 11am on Thursday, May 19th (it was the good rejection letter I mentioned earlier on this blog). In the world of literary journals, where the wait ranges from 6 weeks to 6 months, that is an impressive turnaround rate.
Associated with the Rosemont College MFA program, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, a strictly online publication, has debuted within the past month and is accepting fiction and non-fiction submissions until August 15th. They are publishing a favorite submissions on the website every week during that time. They’ll be accepting poetry later in the year.
The only catch? Prose has to be sub-600 words and poetry will also have to be extremely compressed. As they like to phrase it: “We publish (very) tiny, compressed prose creations of 600 words or less. We use Submishmash for all submissions. We value form, character, and words that fit to both. Experimentation is interesting. Experimentation for the sake of appearing experimental is less interesting. We like close reading and close writing. We like to feel what we read before we understand.”
So visit their website to see what kinds of works they’re choosing and get a feel for what you should write, compress, and submit. Every email they send–even the automated message confirming the receipt–is warm, friendly, and makes you fall in love with this new journal a little more.
If you’re tired of waiting and want to hear some news immediately, submit right now!
Hannah Karena Jones 