The Overview

Lighthouse Weekly acts as a harbor for high-quality, sea-salted, and landlocked narratives. We want to illuminate luminous narratives, the diverse biospheres, zones, deep-sea algae, and glow of strange, wonderful stories. Through a weekly response time, weekly posts, and an open heart to all genres, forms, styles, biographies, and backgrounds, we're a carefully cultivated shelter and digital showcase for some of the best and most beautiful fiction and poetry that creative writing has to offer.

The Specifics

Weekly Fiction and Poetry

Because we love to read, and would love to support and showcase as many writers as possible. Our publication schedule intends for two fiction and two poetry features a week (sometimes more, sometimes less; of course, it all depends upon submission volume and fit with Lighthouse).

​Submissions are always open, but the deadline for each week is Sunday evening. Accepted content from the previous week will be posted every following Monday-Friday (we aim for Monday, but delays may happen depending on if we need more information from writers: biographies, etc.).

Fast Author Responses

Some magazines take six months to a year to respond to their writers (in most cases, quite understandably; staffing, university bureaucracy, giving each submission the time it deserves), but we believe we can respond within one week.​

Showcasing Quality Writing

By quality writing, we don't mean pretention, big biographies, or rejecting creative works off of a first paragraph misspelling. We mean showcasing stories that we love, that crash into our hearts and leave us shipwrecked for days afterward regardless of all that. Stories that send us somewhere astonishingly new, or strike an original song of emotions inside us, whatever the genre, form, style, font, or formatting. Stories that make us leap out of bed because we need to share it with someone else.

​Basically, if you're exploring the uncharted waters of story in some way—emotionally, conceptually, narratively, aesthetically, linguistically, philosophically, or any of the other unmentioned "ly's"—and it elicits some kind of reaction from us, then it's probably the right fit for Lighthouse.

​In summary, we want to share fiction and poetry with our readers that stays with them forever, however you define or create that experience.

And of course, we'll edit out that first paragraph misspelling if we see it.​

Content Context

Lighthouse Weekly doesn't necessarily need or want narrative based around lighthouses, although those will likely garner additional consideration (same with narratives based out of Main, or the coast, or at sea). Rather, we'd like to read stories and poems that feel like a new ship seen from the pier of an old village, pointed at and shouted about, people excited when it docks and looks adorned with never-before-seen goods and flags. Or maybe a strange and alien-looking ocean corpse that has washed up stinking and glowing onto the shore, and is now surrounded by scared onlookers, horrified marine biologists, and sea-soaked soldiers.

We suppose we just want something fresh. Weird. Exhilarating. The talk of the town. Crusted with salt and decay, bloated and green, or wood-polished and guarded by well-dressed pirates, or something cracked to smithereens from a cannonball strike, sinking down into the dark depths below.

​As a final note: for now, give us anything you think we'd enjoy reading. When we have some writing posted soon, read that, then you'll have a better idea of what stories we'd like to illuminate within human narrative's beautiful, shadowy shipwreck.

​All genres are acceptable. All forms, too, especially anything hypothetical or experimental.

Our Offering

Publication, exposure, and support. We've seen that some magazines and journals offer monetary payment and some don't, and at least for the near future, we will sadly be one of the ones that don't. Initiating this project was more expensive than we thought, so for now, we're operating heavily in the negative profit side of things. We'll implement payment when we can, hopefully within a few months.

Mechanics - Important

Fiction, Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, Flash Fiction, Artwork, & Micro Fiction Submissions Only.

Simultaneous submissions accepted—please withdraw upon acceptance elsewhere.

Fiction - 10,000 word limit, any file format, font, genre, and style.

Poetry - 5 Poems, any file format, font, genre, and style.

Creative Nonfiction - 10,000 word limit, any file format, font, genre, and style.

Flash Fiction - 1,000 word limit, any file format, font, genre, and style.

Micro Fiction - 500 word limit, any file format, font, genre, and style.

Artwork - 5 images, JPEG or PNG, any style.

* Include a cover letter, third-person biography, relevant pseudonym, and social media titles with your work, or include them in your acceptance confirmation. If you don't include a biography or social media, we will likely post your content without them. As a rapid-turnaround creative content hub, we can't wait for email back and forths. The ship must sail!

Lighthouse Weekly is a proud member of CLMP.