Submissions Guidelines

The Basics

• Please submit your work electronically through the relevant portal via Submittable. We do not accept hard copy or email submissions.

• Work submitted to River Styx must be previously unpublished in print or online, including social media posts.

• We will read simultaneous submissions but ask that you inform us of such and notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

• Translations are welcome if permission has been granted from the copyright owner.

• All submissions will be considered for our online magazine. Submissions for our print edition should be submitted through the print submission portal. We open the portal twice per year. Follow us on social media for submission period announcements. If your submission is not accepted for the print edition, we will consider it for online publication.

• Expect up to five months for a decision. Please do not query before five months have passed. We may take longer to consider long-form work.

Genre Information

We accept fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry.

• All prose pieces should be typed, double-spaced, and page-numbered. 

• For fiction, we consider microfiction, short fiction, and short stories. Please send no more than one short story, essay, or play per submission. Stories of 1500 words or fewer may be sent in groups of up to three. Stories that exceed 1500 words should be sent separately.

• For nonfiction, we accept work of 5000 or fewer words. Essays of 500 words or fewer may be sent in groups of up to three.

• For plays, we consider all forms and lengths. 

• For poetry, send up to five poems per submission.

Important: Our reading periods for the online magazine vary according to volume of submissions and editorial need. Reading periods for the print edition vary by issue.

We do our best to keep our listings up to date on Poets & Writers, CLMP, and Chill Subs. Duotrope maintains its own listings. Therefore, we advise writers interested in submitting to our magazine to check our website for the most accurate, up-to-date submissions information.

Find more information about our annual contest in fiction & poetry here.

• We accept a range of visual art and multimedia, including photos, videos, interactive graphics, multimodal and mixed media work, and more. For submissions that cannot be easily uploaded, you may submit a URL and screengrabs to Submittable or contact us for assistance.

• For cover art we seek a single, striking color image, 6"W x 9"H, that can be wrapped around the block. Cover images should be horizontal/landscape orientation (or able to be cropped). Be mindful of where the spine will fall, and which portion of the image will be visible on the front cover.

• If your work is a part of a series of images, please submit up to 12 images. We like having choices.

• Graphic stories may run as long as they need to tell the story. Page length is limited only by how long they keep our interest. Please submit only one graphic short story at a time.

All writers and artists whose work we publish will receive compensation.

For poetry, we pay $25 per page and a maximum of $100 per writer.

For prose, we now pay $100 per accepted piece, except for microfiction and very short essays (500 words or fewer), which are $40 per piece.

For multimedia, we pay $25 per individual piece and a maximum of $100.

For scripts and plays, we pay $100 per play up to 80 pages. For works longer than 80 pages, the payment is $200.

Contributors are paid upon publication of their work via PayPal or paper check. If you reside outside the United States, River Styx is not responsible for paying any fees or duties incurred in a funds transfer.

We purchase First North American Serial Rights (FNASR). Once the work has been published in River Styx, the copyright reverts back to the author. If you go on to republish the work in another form (as in a collection of short stories or poems, or as a novel), we ask that you credit River Styx magazine with first publication.