Submission Guidelines

Please read all guidelines thoroughly before submitting

NOTE: WE DO NOT ACCEPT graphic violence or graphic sexual content

Submissions open until 4/27

General Submission Guidelines

All work MUST be submitted as an editable document (.docx or .doc) if it is written OR a high-resolution image (.jpg or .tif) if it is a photo. Submit to earwormsmag@gmail.com. You also MUST include your name, genre, and the title of your piece in the subject line! However, your name should not be on the piece itself. In the body of your email, include a short, third-person bio (aim for under 75 words) and which earworm helped inspire your piece.

Personal Playlist: In the event that you don’t feel drawn to the songs or themes in our playlist, feel free to add one of your own! If there is a song or artist you love, love, love, we would be more than happy to read the art that you’re inspired to make from hearing theirs. In this case, please make sure to add, “Personal Playlist” to the beginning of the piece, followed by the music/musician your work is influenced by. (ex. Personal Playlist: “The Cue” by Sarah and the Sundays)

Make sure to include trigger warnings for sensitive content. In the event that you are accepted to earworms magazine, we will put these trigger warnings at the top of your piece.

Please consult our House Style Guide [link to come] for specifications on how we would like to receive your work, but generally, all prose should be double-spaced and all poetry should be single-spaced! We will copy-edit work for grammar and spelling, but we will not make content edits.

Simultaneous submissions are totally expected and welcomed, but please let us know if at any point during the review process your work has been accepted elsewhere so that we can be aware.

If you are accepted, please know that all rights will go back to you as the author, but if you (hopefully) republish elsewhere, we appreciate being credited as a place in which your work resides.

Absolutely no AI or AI-enhanced work will be accepted. Everything using AI in any way, shape, or form will receive both a warning and a rejection. If you try to submit with AI or AI-enhanced work after receiving a warning, you will be blacklisted.

We will NOT accept: sexual fantasies, violent fantasies, (etc).

We will NOT accept previously published work.

Please give us 2-3 months to read your work and get you a response. If you do not receive a response within this window, feel free to inquire about our progress by emailing earwormsmag@gmail.com.

Genre Specific Submission Guidelines

Fiction should be kept to 2,000 words, but please try to aim for around 1,000 at minimum.

Poetry can be, at maximum, 40 lines in total. You may submit up to three poems at a time! Please send as a .docx or .doc, but if you have particular formatting wishes, also send an accompanying .pdf.

Creative Non-Fiction pieces, like fiction, can be 2,000 words (at max!), but sometimes it’s possible to be effective with fewer than 2,000 words. We are looking (non)specifically for lyric essays, which are (more specifically) braided, segmented, or hermit crab essays.

Flash should be under 1,000 words but you may submit three pieces! Or two! Or one! But not four! Or anything more than four!

Experimental works can be between 100 and 2,000 words! It can be hard to define “experimental,” so please consult our dedicated page of Stuff We Like to get a better idea of what it is we’re looking for.

Photography is welcome! You may send us up to 3 of your photos in the highest quality possible!