Barrelhouse is an independent non-profit literary organization. We are not affiliated with a university or writing program.

Barrelhouse bridges the gap between serious art and pop culture. It's an annual print journal featuring fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays. Barrelhouse Books publishes 2 books (1 poetry, 1 NF) per year. 

Barrelhouse is produced by writers for readers who are looking for quality writing with an edge and a sense of humor.

Barrelhouse bridges the gap between serious art and pop culture.
 
Barrelhouse is a biannual print journal featuring fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays about music, art, and the detritus of popular culture.

Barrelhouse is a web site that regularly posts new short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, book reviews, and other literary things.

Barrelhouse is a small press that puts out roughly two books a year. 



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Barrelhouse

Barrelhouse loves to celebrate books just like you do, so let's do that thing together! We're interested in running reviews of books that fit Our Whole Thing. You read Barrelhouse, so you know what we're about. Let that be your guide. And also, these:

 
Book Review Guidelines:

  Please send us reviews of books other than your own.
  No self-published titles.
  Do not submit work to the Reviews section that is meant for another section.
  Do not submit excerpts or essays based on your own work.
  We prefer reviews that focus on recent titles, meaning books that came out within the past six months or that are upcoming in the next six months. That guideline can stretch to about a year, but not much farther. (Our Reviews Editor has a pretty good record for response times.) We do not run retrospective reviews.
  We have a strong taste for small-press titles, especially books that might not be reviewed anywhere else. We love weird books, hybrid work, and other rare birds. We are extremely unlikely to accept a review of a book by a major publisher (Harper, Random House, Riverhead, etc).
  We're interested in full-length or chapbook-length collections of poetry & prose. We're open to memoirs and story or essay collections.
  Include publisher, page count, and date of book release. Include a link to the publisher's website for purchase.
  Word docs preferred but RTF is OK. No Pages, dear Lord.
  We are open to non-standard reviewing forms, as long as it doesn't distract from the book in question. We do not want book essays.
  If you've previously spoken to our Reviews Editor, Katharine Coldiron, please indicate that in your cover letter.
  Simultaneous submissions are encouraged, but please let us know and withdraw your submission if your work is accepted elsewhere.
  All accepted reviews are subject to editorial suggestions.
  We love you but we do not pay for book reviews at this time. Reviews run online only.

If you are an author or a publisher who wants your book reviewed at Barrelhouse, you can query, but be advised that we almost never assign books pitched to us in this way. Your best bet is to find a reviewer and ask them to submit a finished review to us here, through Submittable.

Book Reviews

What we're looking for: Original personal essays (under 1,000 words) on a pop cultural obsession. We can define "pop culture" pretty broadly here. But the personal is particularly important. We're not interested in a movie review, or a book recommendation. Rather, we want to read about your idiosyncratic relationship to whatever "thing" you're writing about. Maybe you went down some weird rabbit holes watching failed marriage proposal videos on YouTube. Or you're fascinated with the hair and wardrobe choices in the '80s vampire movie The Lost Boys. Or the music of Megadeath still conjures up sweet memories of your first love. 

Newsletter Essays

Barrelhouse will open for nonfiction submissions on 6/1 and close on 6/28, unless we hit 500 submissions in that window (history indicates we will not hit this number, at least not too quickly). All essays will be considered for print issue 27.
Please note that all Barrelhouse essays must have a pop culture angle of some kind. This is non-negotiable. It’s one of our big things.  Recent issues include essays that that focus in some way on topics like Taxi, Jet magazine/representations of Black female beauty, Alex Trebek, Lorena Bobbitt/cultural treatment of Bobbitt, summer on the boardwalk, Guns ‘N Roses, mountain climbing, the Nebraska Cornhuskers mascot, Paula Abdul, John Prine, and being back on one’s bullshit. Some other notes:
***Nonfiction submissions for this period will be capped at 500. ***

Nonfiction for print issues

Thank you for submitting your original poetry to Barrelhouse! We look forward to reading it, particularly if you are a previously unpublished author. Please review the instructions below, so that you have a general sense of what we’re looking for, and how we’d like to receive it.
We look forward to reading your work!
 
 -The Barrelhouse Poetry Team 
 
 
 ***Poetry submissions for this period will be capped at 800. If we hit that limit before 6/21, the submission window will automatically close***

Poetry

Barrelhouse is now open for fiction submissions. Wondering if your piece is a good fit? The best way to know, of course, is to read some of our back issues and see if your writing would hang out in the same places as the writing we’ve published before. Short of that, here are some hot takes on the ways in which we tend to skew, followed by some boilerplate submission info. Hopefully this helps:
Always be writing, and stay righteous,
Team Fiction
***Fiction submissions for this period will be capped at 650. If we hit that limit before 6/15, the submission window will automatically close***

Barrelhouse

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