Submission Guidelines

A smash cake is the proportionally-sized, secondary birthday cake given to a one-year-old
child for the purpose of complete obliteration. It’s carefully decorated, yet destined to be experienced fully, and just once, in a well-documented moment of abandon. The party guests have no intention of protecting the cake; instead they savor the moment itself at face value for what it is.

We believe that life is better lived in those moments. The lovely mess, total destruction, and sticky fingers are what the human experience is really made of.

Time has to be spent. It can’t be saved. The best we can do is to remember the tiny genuine bits and leave behind something worth feeling.

That’s what we’re dedicated to here at Smash Cake. We are a collection of moments, nothing more, nothing less. High-brow vocabulary does not matter; whether you’ve been published before isn’t even a question we’ll ask. We want those deep, burning things that are floating around in your subconsciousness. Keep the outline for the piece you think you should write for someone else; we want the one that kept you awake and wouldn’t give you the choice.

Humor is fabulous. Morbid stories are fantastic. Any subject, tone, genre, or length goes. Fiction, flash, essays, novellas, blogs, artwork, poetry, or random digital word soup—give us what you’ve got, and we’ll take a look at it. Style and form do not matter here.

What matters is that twinge, that unmistakable truth that translates to the reader and makes us feel what you’ve felt. We want emotion. We want soul. Energy. Pain. Joy. Terror. Love. Life.

Bring it.

Details:

Smash Cake is a print magazine, published twice yearly, featuring a wide array of genres and forms. Our first issue is scheduled for release in Fall 2010.

We wholeheartedly believe that artists and writers should be paid for their work. Though it is not much, we know, we pay $2 per piece (regardless of length, format, or spatial placement) upon publication. As our readership continues to grow, we hope to raise this amount and offer more.

Text submissions should be sent within the body of an email to SUBMISSIONS gobbledygook AT gobbledygook SMASHCAKEMAGAZINE dotcom, with the obvious red bits omitted. (Stupid spambots. Ugh.) Please use the format “SUBMISSION – yourname, yourtitle” in the subject of your email. Also remember to include a 250-word (or less), third-person bio in the message body; this may contain any information you’d like.

If you submit artwork or photography, please attach a low-res JPEG to your email, and include the correct subject line and your bio, as above. (If your image interests us, we will later request an image in TIFF format at 600 dpi, our minimum for suitable print.) All images chosen for publication will be rendered in grayscale (black and white) except for the cover picture.

We accept submissions throughout the entire calendar year. Reprints are not allowed (except in extremely special circumstances), but simultaneous submissions are, provided you inform us quickly if your piece has been accepted elsewhere. And yes, for the record, things you’ve posted to a public blog count as previously published. Please allow 30-60 days for a response, and do not query before the first 30 have passed. You will be emailed a quick confirmation upon our receipt of your submission.

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Snail-mail submissions are also accepted, but are not preferred. Please include an email address in your postal submission for follow-up contact, and know that submitted materials cannot be returned to you.