We are looking for new and innovative works of literary arts across all mediums and genres. When we are open to submissions, please send your work to us by using this form. Submissions sent by email or submitted outside the reading period (unless specifically requested by the editors) will not be read.

We are particularly interested in work from women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ creators.

Based in Los Angeles, Air/Light seeks to be an international publication. As such, we are eager to receive submissions from around the globe, including translations.

Baseline rates are as follows:

• Poetry: $50
• Responses and department pieces: $100
• Fiction and essays/nonfiction: $200
• Visual art, music, and multimedia: $200

What we read

Nonfiction: Personal essays, critical essays, memoir, diaries, letters, reviews, reportage, travel, interviews. Anything up to 4000 words.

Fiction: All genres and styles, up to 4000 words.

Poetry: No more than 5 pages per submission. We are interested in poems of all shapes and sizes, traditional or those that play with genre and form.

Cross-genre: Original work that blurs the lines of genre and form, whether text only or incorporating images and other multimedia elements.

Collaborations: Collaborative essays by two or more writers, or by a writer and an artist, up to 4000 words.

Music: Original recordings, compositions, and mixes.

Video: Short films, video essays, video poems, experimental collage, or anything in this territory.

Guidelines

We only consider previously unpublished work.

Our taste is wide-ranging, but please familiarize yourself with the journal prior to submitting to get a sense of what we publish.

Simultaneous submissions are fine, but if you decide to publish elsewhere, please notify us immediately that you are withdrawing your work from consideration.

We have a small staff, so please wait one month before inquiring about the status of your submission. We’ll get to it, and we are doing our best to be as prompt as we can.

Responses to submissions will be made via email.

Submission formatting

Prose: Please submit your work in Word .doc or .docx format, double-spaced with one inch margins, in Times New Roman 12. Please put the title and your name at the top of the first page, and add a short bio (no more than 50 words) at the end of the piece.

Poetry: Please use a new page to begin each poem, and put the title and your name at the top of each page. Add a short bio (no more than 50 words) at the end of the piece.

Audio, visual, multimedia, or digital: We can work with any of the standard file types for music, image, and video. If your work demands a different file format or mode of presentation, let us know and we can work with you to figure it out.

Note: We maintain First North American Serial Rights for each piece we publish.