Guidelines:

• Submissions must be previously unpublished and unrecognized.

• Mollusk Lit is open for submissions only Thursday through Sunday of every week. This is to ensure our editors enough time to process submissions quickly and give high-quality feedback. Our submission form will be closed Monday through Wednesday of every week.

• If you have already heard back from us on a previous submission during this submission cycle, we cannot review another submission during this same cycle. We encourage you to resubmit for our next issue.

• For poets and artists that are looking to submit multiple works at once, please submit all pieces in the same file with page breaks between each submission. Please note we only accept 3 poems at a time, but you may submit as many art pieces as you would like.

• Your submissions must be original—no plagiarism, fanfiction, or AI generated content (ekphrastic work, etc. is accepted if the inspiration(s) is cited).

• Please read our page on writing cover letters so that your submission contains all the necessary information.

• See below for category-specific guidelines and check out our FAQ page for more info.

We DO NOT accept:

• Unsolicited resubmissions/rewrites. If we are interested in seeing a rewrite of your previously submitted piece, we will send you a conditional acceptance.

• Pieces containing or promoting hateful ideas, such as racism, antisemitism or other religion-fueled hatred, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, body shaming, etc.

• Pieces that glorify subjects such as rape or sexual assault, abuse, violence, drug use, etc.

• Pieces that depict people or groups using stereotypes.

• Pieces that center around explicitly mature themes such as sex. If your piece features, but does not center around, an explicitly mature theme, we will consider it if you you include a trigger warning in your cover letter. Please note that explicitly mature content may lower your chances of acceptance.

Thanks for following our guidelines, and best of luck! - Sincerely, Mollusk Lit.