Submission Guidelines
What We Read, What We Publish
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Cardgame, SF Northbeach
We read Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Flash Prose, Poetry, Visual Art, Young Adult Literature, and Literary Translation.
- We also curate Amuse-Bouche, a monthly content series, highlighting works of all genres.
- We award two prizes each magazine cycle as well: The Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts.
Submitting to Lunch Ticket’s Next Issue
- Lunch Ticket’s Issue 26 comes out in December 2024.
- The submission window for Lunch Ticket’s Issue 26 is August 1st to August 31st.
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The submission window for Flash has been extended to September 14th.
- The submission window for Amuse-Bouche is August 1st to September 30th.
- Visual Art, Translation, and Young Adult are open for submissions year-round. However, submissions will only be reviewed between February 1st and March 31st for the spring issue and August 1st to September 30th for the fall issue.
- Submitting to Lunch Ticket is always free.
- The age requirement for Lunch Ticket is currently 18 and older.
- We welcome multilingual submissions in all genres.
Lunch Ticket 26 Theme: “Resistance and Liberation”
Since their founding, Antioch University, the Antioch MFA program, and Lunch Ticket have centered the pursuit of social, racial, environmental, gender, and economic justice. As we watch the reversal of decades of social victories, the suppression of dissent, the use of indiscriminate violence, and the rise of authoritarianism in the USA and around the world, we at Lunch Ticket 26 feel compelled to address the theme of “Resistance and Liberation” for our upcoming issue. Lunch Ticket seeks to be a beacon and a home for stories, essays, poems, translations, and visual art that highlight how people resist oppression and fight for collective liberation.
As Ursula K. LeGuin said, “We will need writers who can remember freedom.” We are looking for high-quality writing that engages with the nuances and complexities of our times and isn’t afraid to tackle difficult subjects. While we are prioritizing such voices, we are also interested in reading your pieces even if they do not apply to our theme. As always, we aim to center writers and artists who have been marginalized and underrepresented, or historically misrepresented, and feature work that plays with form and strives for a more just world. We are especially interested in writing and art from people directly engaged in resistance and liberation. Multilingual submissions are welcome in all genres.
Ralph & Rita in Sienna, 36″x24″
Submission Guidelines
- Please submit to Lunch Ticket only once per submission reading period (regardless of genre).
- If your work has been published in Lunch Ticket, please skip one submission reading period before submitting again.
- All submissions at Lunch Ticket are read anonymously in the first round. We only read pieces that have all identifying information removed. Make sure no identifying information exists in the document title, submission title, or the work itself. Identifying information (such as names and bios) can only be included in the cover letter, and not in any attached files or the submission title.
- There is a 3,500-word limit for all genres and a three-poem limit for all genres that accept poetry. Longer submissions will not be read.
- All genres have a submission cap of 300. (Submission windows will close on the date specified above or after this threshold is met, whichever comes first.)
- Please submit work to us that is double-spaced, and in size 12 Times or Times New Roman font.
- Please read the genre-specific guidelines in Submittable before submitting to Lunch Ticket.
Selection Process
For all genres and contests, you will receive a selection notification by or before the end of November. For Amuse-Bouche, selection notifications are sent on a rolling basis.
We will contact you no matter the result of your submission.
Kitchen I, 48″x36″
Notes About Publication
If your piece is selected, Lunch Ticket retains the first North American serial rights to publish, produce, reproduce, distribute, and market your submission. All other remaining rights revert to the author upon publication. If the work is published again, we ask for a credit line to indicate that the work first appeared in Lunch Ticket.
We encourage submissions from Antioch University Alumni, if and only if two or more years have passed since their graduation. (Please see our “About” page for further opportunities for students and recent graduates.) We do not accept submissions from the Antioch MFA program’s faculty or staff for publication in any section of the journal.
Literary Translation note: Please refer to standard Lunch Ticket guidelines for either poetry or prose. Your submission should include the original work along with your translation. We also require a statement that grants us permission to publish both the original work and the translation online, and that certifies that you have received permission from the original rights holder (either the publisher or the author, as applicable) to grant us such rights.
Thank you for your interest in submitting to Lunch Ticket! We look forward reviewing your submission(s).
