Dear writers,

Thank you for your interest in submitting to Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern! We gladly consider unsolicited works. Because we are a very small organization with an even smaller editorial department, it often takes us a long time to respond to our submitters, and we can only review one story per author at a time. We appreciate your patience with us as we work on getting to your piece.

LENGTH
Is up to you.

COVER LETTER
Please keep yours brief, though we do like to hear from people who read and like the magazine. We’re not concerned about writing degrees or past publications, though, so don’t be daunted if you don’t have an MFA or much in the way of previously published work.

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE TENDENCY
Should not be submitted here.

FORMATTING
It’s better if you don’t use colors or Fun Fonts or strange formatting.

YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION
Should be on your submission—not just on the cover letter. Please include your name, mailing address, phone number, and email address.

AUTHOR BIOS
Feel free to include a brief biography of yourself.

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED WORK
Can’t be considered here.

PAYMENT
Contributors are paid at the time of publication. At this time, we offer a fee of $400/full-length story (unless it is very long or very short or falls into some category that probably won't be relevant for these purposes).

RESPONSE TIME
Can be anywhere between a few weeks and dozens of months. Thank you for your patience.

SPECIAL ISSUES AND READING PERIODS
Because our staff is so small, we aren’t continually reading submissions for the quarterly. More often than not, we read in month-long bursts, when we’re filling a new issue. Special issues sometimes create longer delays. Our response time, then, can vary a great deal. We ask appreciate you bearing in mind the slow nature of our magazine.

POETRY
Please refer to our site for poetry submissions. This is not where you submit poetry.

MEMOIR
We don’t generally publish memoir sorts of pieces, though there can be exceptions.