Submission Guidelines FAQ

What sorts of submissions do you accept?

River Oak Review welcomes submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. Book reviews, interviews, and critical articles are written by the staff.

How many works should I send at a time?

Please send no more than six poems (one per page) or one story or essay of up to 25 pages. If we receive more than that, we will either not read the excess or we'll send the entire submission back to you and ask you to resubmit the right number. We are trying to be fair to our poor harassed readers.

When can I submit my work?

You may submit your work from August 1 through February 1. Work received outside this period will be returned unread. Please send us only one submission per period. It does wonders for helping us keep track of things and responding more promptly.

Do you accept submissions by US mail, email, or both?

We currently accept submissions only by US mail, not by email, at the addresses given below. We do, however, use email to communicate with writers, so we appreciate your providing us that information. If you wish to contact any of us, the email addresses of the editors and intern can be found on the Staff page of this web site.

What limitations are there on what you accept?

We do not (with rare exceptions) accept work that has been previously published, though we are open to simultaneous submissions. We simply ask that you inform us in your cover letter if your work is being submitted elsewhere and that you contact us pronto if your work is accepted elsewhere.

How quickly do you respond? And do you ever comment on submissions?

We try to respond to submissions within three months. Usually, we succeed at this, though with some lapses for which we are properly contrite. After four months, please feel free to prod the Editor by email. We only occasionally comment on submissions, usually if we think a work has promise and could be revised for publication.

How should submissions be formatted?

All manuscripts should be typed or computer-printed on standard 8-1/2 x 11 inch white paper (or the nearest equivalent for our international friends). Clean photocopies are acceptable. Prose must be double-spaced.

Poems should be typed as you wish them to appear in our pages; if your poem runs beyond one page, indicate clearly where stanza breaks are to go. Please do not get fancy with fonts and colors. Also, if your poetic lines are even longer than Whitman's, we reserve the right to break them on the page rather than print them sideways, use microscopic type, or run them into the gutter and margins. Remember that the care you take in the presentation of your work speaks volumes about your respect for the craft of writing.

It is crucial that your complete identifying information be on the first page of every poem or story you submit, and that your name, the title, and page number be on all following pages. Given how much paper moves through our office, if the pages of your submission get separated, the odds of our successfully reassembling it are low. In fact, it's a risk we generally won't even let you run: if your pages don't have the necessary identifying information on them, we'll usually return them to you and ask that you label them properly and resubmit your work.

Would you like a cover letter?

Absolutely. We greatly prefer the courtesy of such a letter and the information it contains. Please list the titles of all the works you're submitting on the cover letter, and let us know whether you're submitting your work to other journals simultaneously. If you don't explicitly tell us to return your manuscript, we'll assume you're content to have it "green filed," which is frankly what we prefer. Ideally, we'd like to have your letter include the fifty-word Contributor's Note you'd want us to run if your work were accepted.

Any advice about the SASE?

Actually, a few things. (1) Make your address on it as neat and legible as possible, so we can find it quickly among our SASE file and so we don't worry about whether our response will actually reach you. (2) The "Forever" stamp was made for SASEs. Your using one saves us having to "top off" the return postage when rates rise. (3) Self-sealing envelopes save us having either to use our tongues or those annoying little plastic bottles with the sponge tops. None of these suggestions are strictly requirements, though we will bless you for following them.

What do I get if you accept my work?

Our policy is to give you two copies of the issue free and to allow you to purchase up to ten copies at half price.

What rights do you claim in the work?

We claim first North American serial rights and non-exclusive electronic publishing rights. After publication, all print rights revert back to you, though we ask that if you reprint the work anywhere you acknowledge prior publication in River Oak Review. We hold onto the non-exclusive electronic publishing rights, though we will relinquish them upon written request. That is, we like to keep a selection of work on our web site, but we will take yours off if you ask us.

Are there any restrictions on the work you carry?

Our literary tastes are pretty broad. Our poems are mostly free verse lyrics, though with a smattering of deft formal work. They tend to run from about ten lines to three pages. Our stories run from the stylistically traditional to the modestly experimental with no limit on content beyond outright pornography or ethnic malice. There is a broad middle channel between the overly simplistic and the impenetrably obscure where we usually like to sail. Reading a few samples on our website will give you the best idea.

We don't, in general, go in much for genre work or anything that strikes us as formulaic or facile. Instead, we resonate to work in which a concern for language and a concern for life find their intersection. We read every submission with care. We publish the material we find ourselves wanting to reread. If something in your work makes us want to take a second look—or, even better, a third or a fourth—the odds rise sharply that we'll take it.

How can I get a more concrete sense of what you're after?

Creative Writing 101: Purchase and read the Review, or at least read the samples we've put on our web site.

Any further advice or final comments?

When we're reading submissions, one thing that jumps off the page is whether the writer actually reads modern liteature or only wants to write it. The difference between a writer who reads and a writer who doesn't is as impossible to miss as it is to describe. Mary Oliver suggests reading two hours for every hour you write. Our shared experience with thousands of pages of poetry and prose each year bears out the wisdom of her counsel.

Nothing we've been saying here, by the way, is unique to us. We suspect that the majority of editors who read this FAQ will nod repeatedly and whisper "Amen" under their breath. Let us assure you, finally, that we put our long hours into River Oak Review because we love vigorous, well-crafted, strongly-felt poetry and prose. We live for those moments when a new piece of work makes us catch our breath.