Submission Guidelines

General

Make sure your piece is specifically about drinking. Specifically. There's a large backlog, so it may be a while before you hear from us. If at all. If you don't hear from us within two months, you may deduce your submission wasn't selected. We edit for content and space, sometimes rather heavily. Be prepared for changes.

Send your electronic submissions to: editor@drunkard.com in either .txt or Microsoft Word .doc format.

Send your snail mail submissions to:

Modern Drunkard Magazine
Editorial Dept.
212 Santa Fe Dr
Denver, CO 80223

Poetry

Shorter pieces are more likely to be printed. Occasionally we print an epic, but it has to be very good. Send them here.

Fiction

Note: Due to excessive backlog, MDM is currently not accepting fiction submissions.

We accept all manner of fiction, though experimental fiction is less likely to be published. Hemingway, F. Scott, Parker, J.P. Donleavy and Bukowski are good models to follow. Follow--not mimick.

We're looking for stories with a positive view of drinking -- if we wanted boo-hoo ballyhoo we'd go to an AA meeting.

The story should be imbued with drinking. If alcohol doesn't rear its lovely head on the first page, you're submitting to the wrong magazine.

Putting a drink in the hand of your protagonist does not a drinking story make. If you can replace the booze with coffee and the plot isn't affected, you're trying to pull a fast one.

Avoid writing about writing and being a writer.

While it's commendable that you wrote the piece while hammered, that's no excuse for haphazard grammar and bizarre punctuation. Leave that to us, we're quite good at it.

Exclamation points do not make a sentence more powerful. Not even triple exclamation points.

The vast majority of our submissions are fiction, so realize the competition is ferocious.

We get a lot of angry rants and "Me and My Buddies Went Out Drinking Last Night" type submissions, so that sort has to be exceptional to make the cut.

One to four thousand words.

Articles

Note: Due to excessive backlog, MDM is currently not accepting article submissions.

This category is most in demand, and the range is broad. It could be historical (Drinking in Colonial America, Ancient Greece, etc.), humorous, or instructional.

Put some time in it, if you just dash something off without doing any research, it most likely won't be accepted. Make sure you have a point.

One to four thousand words.

Payment

Our present rate of payment is ten cents per published word for articles and short stories. Published poetry will receive issues of the relevant issue. All we want is first time publishing rights in print and on the web, then the ownership of the story, article or poem reverts back to the author.