Reading Period

• General submissions are accepted for Friday Features only.

• We accept submissions on a rolling basis.

• There is no submission fee. 

Simultaneous and Multiple Submissions

• Simultaneous submissions to other journals are welcome as long as they are identified as such and we are notified immediately upon acceptance elsewhere.

• Please submit one (1) entry to one (1) genre at a time. Wait until you receive a response on your submission before submitting again.

  • If accepted, please wait one (1) year after publication to submit to Torch again.

Manuscript Guidelines

• Include a one (1) page cover letter noting the title(s) of the work(s) submitted and a brief bio. The cover letter page does not contribute to the overall page count.

  • Note: Submissions without a cover letter may not be read.

• Upload your text submission as a Word (DOC, DOCX) or portable document format (PDF).

• Typed, double-spaced (poetry may be single-spaced) pages.

• Numbered pages.

• Margins should be set at no less than 1” and no greater than 1.5”.

• Poetry: submit up to five (5) poems totaling no more than eight (8) pages.

• Fiction, Creative Nonfiction: 12-point font. No more than fifteen (15) pages or 3500 words (whichever is achieved first). Excerpts of longer works are welcome if self-contained.

  • We want CNF that is thought-provoking, engaging, and personal. Please see the following examples for the type of creative nonfiction we publish:

    • Brittany Rogers, “Before Uses of the Erotic”

    • Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, “Two Traumatic Births Changed My Experience of Motherhood”

• Drama/Screenwriting: submit one act or a collection of short scenes no longer than fifteen (15) pages. Excerpts of longer works are welcome if self-contained. Indicate if a performance video or dramatic audio reading will be available with the text submission if selected.

 

Restrictions

• We do not reprint previously published work for Friday Features.

• Writers must be eighteen (18) years of age or older to be published in Torch Magazine. 

• AI must not be used in the creation of submitted work.

Submitting Online

• We accept submissions via our online submission management system only. Submissions via postal mail or email will be discarded without response.

• To submit online, please use the Torch submission management system, found here.

Notifications and Queries

• Expect up to three months for a decision. Using our online submission system, you will be able to track the status of your submission. Contact us after three months with questions via our contact form. 

Publication & Compensation

• Publication is online at TorchLiteraryArts.org, unless expressly stated for print publication.

• All work will be archived on our website. 

• Authors with work selected for a Friday Feature will receive $150 (US) payment.

• All rights revert back to the author after publication. 

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Awards

• All work accepted for publication will be considered for nomination for internal and external awards such as The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, the O Henry Prize, and the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing 

• To qualify for The AKO Caine Prize submission, fiction submissions must adhere to the following guidelines:

  • Entries must be more than 3,000 words

  • The author must identify as an African writer