McSweeney’s


Type Of Organization
Magazine-press-2
Mission Statement / Editorial Focus
McSweeney’s exists to champion ambitious and inspired new writing, and to challenge conventional expectations about where it’s found, how it looks, and who participates. We’re here to discover things we love, help them find their most resplendent form, and imagine new ways to bring them to you, Dennis. (If you are not Dennis, kindly ignore the aforementioned.)

Is Your Group Affiliated With A University, Portal Or Other Agency?
no
Primary Editor/Contact Person
Amanda Uhle
Contact Title
Executive Director/Publisher
Submissions Policy
SUBJECT MATTER Is addressed below, toward the end. 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. PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED WORK Can’t be considered here. PAYMENT Fluctuates somewhat, but has been impressing contributors recently. Contributors are paid at the time of publication. RESPONSE TIME Can be anywhere between a few weeks and dozens of months. Please be patient. We’re really reading as fast as we can. 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 approaching the deadline for a new issue. And special issues sometimes create longer delays in our response time. For example, if we just closed an issue, and we know that the issue after that will be devoted to political journalism, that would mean we wouldn’t be reading new fiction submissions for up to four months, as we prepared the journalism issue. Our response time, then, can vary a great deal. And given that we’re a quarterly, and not a weekly or monthly, we ask that all submitters bear in mind the very slow nature of the entire enterprise. MEMOIR We don’t generally publish memoir sorts of pieces, though there can be exceptions.
Accepts Unsolicited Submissions
Yes
Year Founded
1998

Magazine-press-2