Submitting

Please read our guidelines carefully. Consider looking at our past issues to gain a sense of our publication before submitting your work.

Submission Timeline

Submissions are open until 10/31/2025

Submitting Your Work

We accept submissions via Submittable.

We do require no fee to submit your work.

PASTEL

Quibble, an online & print lit mag for prose, poetry, and art, is excited to open submissions for PASTEL: Volume VI of Quibble Lit! 

Check out the website to get a sense of the publication.

Selected submissions will be published online at Quibblelit.com and promoted across our platforms. They will also appear in print in PASTEL – Volume VI of Quibble Lit, to be published in late November/December 2025. Contributing authors will receive a complimentary copy.

By submitting, you consent to publication online and in print. You retain all rights to your work—Quibble only wishes to share your writing, not own or profit from it.

Theme: Pastel

This volume’s theme is Pastel. We selected this word for its evocations of color, delicacy, softness, and subtlety—but also its layered meanings: the sketch beneath the final painting, the muted voice, the gentle mood. We invite you to interpret it widely—personally, creatively, literally, and metaphorically.

As always, our themes are a creative challenge, not a hard requirement—but our guidelines are required.

Submission Guidelines

  •  Prose:      Submit a single work of no more than 2,000 words. 

  • Poetry & Art:      Submit up to 3 pieces. 

  • Include a short personal bio (third person). 

Document Specifications

  •  File type: .doc or      .docx only 

  • Format: single-spaced,      12pt, standard readable typeface (Times New Roman, Georgia, etc.) 

Simultaneous submissions are welcome—please notify us promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Compensation

At the moment, we can only afford to offer complimentary copies of the print volume to our contributors in exchange for their agreement to share their work online and in print.

While we wish the compensation were greater, we will champion the heck outta your art, as loudly as we can.

submit

As a member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), Quibble utilizes Submittable, an online submission management platform that is trusted by more than two million users and 11,000+ organizations, including Random House, Simon and Schuster, Harlequin, New Yorker, CBS, NBC, Harvard, MIT, LA Times, TechCrunch, NPR, and 300+ universities.