Menagerie publishes fiction, essay, and poetry. What we like: sentences so sharp they draw blood; the strange and inexplicable; the wild and weird and uncanny; words in thickets, clusters, and flocks; pieces that move us beyond caring what others think about said pieces.
We care about writers and artists. That means if you've entrusted your work to us, you'll get a response. And we pay $50 per piece accepted. Because it's important we value what you've made.
We'll do our level best to promote your work, pairing each piece with original artwork, and providing social posts you can use on your own channels.
It's our hope that Menagerie serves as an accelerator for bringing your work into the world, and getting it seen.
We observe the following guidelines:
- Simultaneous submissions are allowed.
- Please submit to only one category at a time.
- Poetry submissions may include 3-5 poems at once.
- Stories and essays should be no more than 5K.
- Please expect a response time of 30-60 days.
In short: if you've written something and don't know what to call it, we want to see it. Our menagerie is vast and unending, and contains all size and shape of curios.
Perhaps yours will be soon be one of them.
—The Editors
You might call this a poem, but you might not. It may or may not be lineated.
It may or may not contain: daggers, people you know, amphetamines, corrugated cardboard, mementos, things of little intrinsic value, lists of no apparent purpose, etc.
You may or may not care. But no matter what, it should be wild, entertaining, and knock us flat.
Please submit 3-5 poems as a single file for consideration.
You might call this a story, but you might not.
It may or may not contain: tourniquets, drinks made in coconut shells, people you want to know but don't, lies of immense importance, self-aggrandizing behavior, characters of the invented variety, lists of no apparent purpose.
You may or may not care. But no matter what, it should be wild, entertaining, and make us stop breathing for short periods of time.
Please submit a single story of no more than 5K words for consideration.
You might call this the truth, but you might not.
It may or may not contain: passive-aggressive statements, borrowed misery for wallowing in, unwarranted optimism in the face of disaster, notes for self-preservation during your next breakdown, various items you've overheard but can't make sense of, lists of no apparent purpose.
You may or may not care. But no matter what, it should be wild, entertaining, and make us feel like we've been entrusted with a secret we're dying to share.
Please submit a single essay of up to 5K words for consideration.