Sky Island Journal

How to submit

• Process

  Submittable

• Cover letter

  Cover letters and bios? We don't want them; we read blind. Why? We receive and publish high quality work from writers with diverse backgrounds—from traditional academic settings, as well as the rural and the urban, the domestic and the international. Sky Island Journal accomplishes this by not allowing writers to include cover letters or bios with their submissions. We respect your writing enough to experience it on its own merits. This guideline creates a refreshing challenge for well-established professionals who have been favored by literary journals in the past because of their credentials, while simultaneously encouraging emerging voices: writers, young and old, who would normally be rejected out-of-hand by many literary journals because of their lack of pedigree. If we accept your work, we’ll be anxious to get to know who you are. We do not, however, want that information influencing our decisions beforehand. If your writing finds a home with us, we’ll solicit a full bio and author photo to be featured alongside your work. Any submission that includes either a cover letter or a bio will be declined.

• Eligibility

  Over 18

• Formatting

  We have no specific formatting requirements. You should present your work exactly how you want it to be experienced by us.

• Author's rights

  Sky Island Journal acquires First North American Serial Rights and First Electronic Rights for all work that it accepts for publication. Upon publication all rights are immediately returned to you, the author. We simply ask that any future publications of the work recognize Sky Island Journal as the original publisher.

• Additional info

  If you live outside of the United States, and paying our submission fee would create either a financial hardship or a security risk for you, we can waive our submission fee. Please email us with your waiver request at skyislandjournal@gmail.com "A wonderful online quarterly lit magazine. No payment, but the responses are so intelligent and heartfelt, I didn't care. They kept me going for months." We believe in removing barriers between readers and access to high quality literature—especially in regions of the world that have traditionally been underserved by English language journals or completely ignored by the literary establishment. We publish accomplished, established authors—side by side—with fresh, emerging voices. We receive and publish high quality work from writers with diverse backgrounds—from traditional academic settings, as well as the rural and urban, the domestic and international. Sky Island Journal accomplishes this by reading blind and by not allowing writers to include cover letters or bios with their submissions. We respect your writing enough to experience it on its own merits. This guideline creates a refreshing challenge for well-established professionals who have been favored by literary journals in the past because of their credentials, while simultaneously encouraging emerging voices: writers young and old, who would normally be rejected out-of-hand by many literary journals because of their lack of pedigree. If we accept your work, we’ll be anxious to get to know who you are. We do not, however, want that information influencing our decisions beforehand. If your writing finds a home with us, we’ll solicit a full bio and author photo to be featured alongside your work. Like many literary journals today, we charge a submission fee, via Submittable. Unlike many literary journals today, we are 100% free-access and 100% advertising-free. The former makes the latter possible. We believe our readers deserve a focused and accessible literary experience—free from advertising and subscription fees. So, that is what we deliver. We believe that every writer's work deserves several cycles of deep-reading and real-time discussion. So, that is what we deliver. We believe every writer deserves and a prompt, respectful, individualized response detailing what we appreciate about his or her work (regardless of whether we accept or decline it). So, that is what we deliver. We also believe that writers who submit their work should not have to wait longer than an average of 9 days for a response. So, that is what we deliver. Unlike many literary journals… We are not affiliated with any university, foundation, or corporation. We are not grant-funded, and we do not indulge in crowd-funding. We neither solicit nor accept “donations” or “tips.” We do not sell subscriptions, or have pay walls, because we believe that readers all around the world should have free access to high quality literature. We cannot sell print copies because we do not have a print component. We do not have advertising revenue because we refuse to cheapen the literary experience of our readers by subjecting them to ads. What does all this mean? It means that we are truly independent; we are not beholden to anyone. It also means that we are a single-revenue source journal. Our $4.99 submission fee is the only thing that keeps us operational, and—for the price of a coffee at a café or a bottle of water at an airport—it also allows us to deliver. And Sky Island Journal delivers in ways that few literary journals can. Like many print journals that “pay with a copy,” we pay with publication as well. When you become a Sky Island Journal contributor, however, your writing will neither collect dust as a limited-run tangible on some obscure university library shelf, nor will it waste away behind a pay wall as some unclickable link in an online table of contents. Our publication has over 150,000 incredibly diverse and highly engaged readers in 150 countries. If we publish your work, it will be accessible—in perpetuity—for free—to anyone around the world with an internet connection. Although we do not provide a token payment for publication like some other literary journals do, becoming a Sky Island Journal contributor means that we go the distance for your work—and for you as a writer—in ways that many so-called “paying markets” are unwilling to. At Sky Island Journal, we consider our contributors family, and we are fierce advocates for them. We dedicate ourselves, indefinitely, to their continued success. We work tirelessly to celebrate and promote our contributors on our website, our 3 social media platforms, and our global podcast—Voices from the Sky—long after we publish them. When our contributors have new books out, we actively promote them. When our contributors win awards, or begin exciting new projects, we make sure the whole world knows about it. Check out our Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts to see how we promote the accomplishments of our over 900 contributors. This kind of positive publicity—promoting your writing, building your brand, and exposing your work to a new and diverse readership—in perpetuity—is worth more than any kind of “one-and-done” token payment could ever be. Too many literary journals forget about their contributors after publication. As writers ourselves, that has always troubled us. As a contributor, Sky Island Journal will always be an enthusiastic promoter of your work. We’ll always have your back. You’ll be familia. As much as we love social media, we've elected to leave the "scroll-through experience" and pop-up ads to other literary platforms. Our readers demand and deserve a more mindful approach. Each piece of writing that we publish opens as a protected, read-only Word document for an authentic, focused, and immersive experience that encourages a close, intimate, distraction-free reading of the work. We want your experience with each contributor's work to be singular: just as it would be on the printed page, with crisp white paper between your collective fingertips. We understand this is a radical departure from how most literary journals present writing to their readers online, but we think it's a refreshing change for the better. It's okay to slow down. Savor the worlds that our contributors have created for you. Sky Island Journal was established in 2017. Our publication's birthplace and spiritual home is Luna County, New Mexico. The Florida Mountains Wilderness Area is our muse; its landscape is the source of our name, our positive energy, our rugged independence, and our relentless tenacity. Join us where the desert meets the mountains—where the indigenous meets the exotic and the old ways meet the digital frontier.