Here at Untoward we greatly value what’s humorous. So consider this Untoward’s Mission Statement, then: we want fiction that’s funny in some way, as we see it, laugh out loud, gently stated, or suchlike.

And so aside from actually reading some of the work already posted on this site, to get a better idea of what our influences are and what has informed our notions of humor (and so to improve your chances of being published by us) you might acquaint yourself with the miscellanea included in the following list of authors and / or their novels; plus comics and websites and movies and television shows, et al & to wit: Mark Twain, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, The (‘90s) Simpsons, Calvin and Hobbes, The Jerk, Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme, Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Far Side, Seinfeld, Machado de Assis, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Daniil Kharms, A Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, Dr. Strangelove, The Big Lebowski, George Saunders, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Gaddis, Anton Chekhov, Amelia Gray, Strangers With Candy, J.G. Ballard, Jack Handey, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” South Park, Franz Kafka, Pale Fire (and Nabokov in general), and many more certainly but these should probably be enough to give you the idea.

Submitting your submission(s) to Submishmash:

So for the purpose of better organizing our submissions, and better catering to you, our valued submitters, we are moving our submission process to Submishmash, which you likely are already familiar with, if you have any experience submitting to big lit zines like Pank, Tin House, Analemma, JMWW and so forth. On the outside chance that you are uninitiated, however, just know that you will be required to start a submishmash account. It is a simple process, and one that will do you real good, we believe.

Please include with your work, in the “Cover Letter / Biography” section, a brief  biographical exposition written in the third person. E.g. “Bob Einstein writes short fiction when he’s not out in the world performing surgeries of varying levels of success and sterility. His work has been featured in great publications, so on, and so forth.” Please be advised, while we’re interested in the litany of places you’ve been published before (honest we are!) we reserve the right to pare down your litany of publication credits to a more manageable, less cumbersome number, as we deem fit.

AND THUS, TO SUBMIT:

If you’ve read and feel you understand the preceding guidelines then, hey – CLICK HERE!!! – to begin the process of submitting your work or works to Untoward Magazine. Thanks!

As for how your fiction itself should be sent to us, here goes:

For short stories or “featured fiction” as we call it, the cut off is 15,000 words — we just can’t read any more words than that. AND be advised, 15,000 words is getting awfully wordy, and if your story reaches or approaches that length it should be of the “you think it will knock our socks off because it’s the best thing you’ve ever done” variety. We will try to likewise keep in mind that this is your attitude regarding your work. We’ll try to keep human feelings in mind, on the whole, as we tend to desire the same courtesy when our work is being placed on an altar and left to someone else’s caprice. 2,000 to 10,000 words seem preferable to me. Go with that and see what happens.

For flash fiction, (i.e humor articles and shortest stories), these can be 2,000 words at most (and probably 100 at least). That’s usually enough to get the point across, in so many words.

For poetry, we’re relatively new to this stuff, and how to properly appreciate it, but what we like is mostly poetry of the prose variety, i.e. very similar to your flash fictions of very short length. Check out Zachary Schomburg’s “Scary, No Scary” or check out Franki Elliot or Meghan Lamb or Russ Woods’ works on Untoward (or anywhere they are to be found) to generally see what we mean. Please submit no more than 3-5 poems at a time. That’d be great.

What we don’t want:

No genre stuff of the litany that’s usually eschewed by lit zines: pornographic stuff of all kinds, romance stuff verging on being pornographic (which is commonplace in my experience), romance stuff, fantasy, and on and on. Genre specific work might be acceptable but we’ll probably err on the side of rejection in more cases than we do not. Meaning, genre fiction that transcends its genre is probably what we’ll go so far as to accept (like Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut were to Sci-Fi). So you’ve been warned.

Various items for your consideration:

We can’t pay you for your work. We can’t pay anyone for that. One day, if we can, we will pay, and everyone perhaps! But rest-assured we are making no money off of this here website deal. And it’s costing us something, at least, what’s more.

Authors do retain copyright on all works. What we ask for is one-time electronic rights. Rights revert to author following publication in Untoward. Also, know that we may want to publish your work in a print anthology, etc.

If your piece first published with us is then published in a print collection, we’d really appreciate some acknowledgment someplace in said publication.

Also, yes, you can submit your work here and elsewhere simultaneously, but do us the courtesy of letting us know your work has then been accepted for publication elsewhere as expeditiously as possible. Just don’t be the writer equivalent of a CPOS (as coined in Dan Savage’s sex advice column).

No previously published work, thank you.

Submitting your work to Untoward constitutes acknowledgment of all the aforesaid conditions.  Just do the right thing!