Defenestration is a humor magazine. We don’t worry about the particulars of genre, style, or form as long as the work is funny. What exactly constitutes as “funny” varies from person to person, but we try to publish a wide range of humor, from the ridiculous to the satirical, and everything in between.

A friendly note from the editors: We get it. You really want to write something hilarious about the current U.S. presidential administration. But our nonfiction and fake nonfiction schedule is filled months in advance. Any topical humor inspired by this administration will probably be irrelevant within 24 hours, and will certainly be stale three months later. We also guarantee that whatever it is you’re going to write, we’ve seen it 12 times already. The world is already filled with stand-up comedians, late night talk show hosts, SNL, and a million amateurs on social media all making the same jokes. We really don’t need to see them written down. Sorry. If you want to get noticed, we urge you to write about something other than Tr*mp. Please. The last time he was in office was the longest four years of reading submissions we’ve ever had to endure.

What We’re Looking For:

We are currently OPEN to short story and poetry submissions.

We are currently OPEN to nonfiction and fake nonfiction.

We are currently OPEN to visual submissions.

The Submission Process (Click to Enlarge):

Biographies and Cover Letters:

First impressions matter. We’re not very formal people, so something like “Dear Editors” or “To Whom It May Concern” bores the hell out of us. We have names. Some of us are rather proud of them.

We really don’t need to see a synopsis of your story or poetry submissions. Most writers hate writing these anyway, and we can tell.

We typically like to see a brief, 100-word or less biography, the sort you’ll want to appear below your piece(s) should they be chosen for publication. This way, we don’t have to ask you about it later. We don’t care if your biography is full of lies. If you want to tell us that you live on the moon and that you once punched a koala in the face, be our guest.

Short Story and Poetry Submissions:

Short stories and poetry are published three times a year in an online magazine format. A new issue appears on April 20^th, August 20^th, and December 20^th of each year. Short stories and poetry are subject to reading periods that determine when, if accepted, they’re published.

April 20^th Issue: December 20^th through April 5th

August 20^th Issue: April 20^th through August 5th

December 20^th Issue: September 20^th through December 5th

Note that our reading periods are closed April 5th through April 20th, August 5th through September 20th and December 5th through December 20th.

We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Simultaneous submissions will be deleted unread. 

To submit, send no more than one (1) short story or no more than five (5) poems to defenestrationmag(at)gmail(dot)com. The subject line of your e-mail should begin with “Defenestration Submission / Fiction” or “Defenestration Submission / Poetry.”

Short story submissions must be no more than 4,000 words. Attach your submission to your e-mail as either a Microsoft Word Document (.doc) file or a Rich Text Format (.rft) file. The file should be titled with your last name and the title of your story, or, in the case of poetry submissions, with your last name and the number of poems.

Do not send us more than one submission at a time. Please wait until you have received either an acceptance or a rejection from us before submitting again.

Do not mark your submission as “Time Sensitive” or “Urgent.” We look forward to reading all of the submissions we have received within the our review time as outlined. Also, the only thing that is urgent is the passing of time and we have no control over that.

Reprints are fine, but please tell us when and where the piece appeared previously.

Please avoid the types of things we’ve seen too often:

1. Stories where the only humor derives from a twist ending or punchline. We’re a humor magazine; readers are expecting a joke, so your surprise at the end will have considerably less impact. This doesn’t mean that your story can’t end with a twist, but that twist has to be earned, and the story should be funny throughout.
2. Stories narrated by animals, especially those where the narrator’s identity is revealed as a twist ending.
3. Stories where the narrator is [religious/ethnic/foreign/LGBTQ+/from the American South] and all the jokes revolve around how different their [religion/culture/foreign country/sexuality/raging Southerness] is. Bonus awful points if the story is written entirely in an accent or dialect. Double bonus awful points if that accent or dialect is nearly incomprehensible.
4. Film noir-style crime stories. (Full disclosure: We’ve published a couple stories like this in the past and have since hit our limit.)
5. Stories where the protagonist dies (or is about to die) and meets God, Satan, Death, or famous celebrities or historical figures. Thinly veiled satire of human nature and organized religion ensues.
6. Stories where one of the characters is obsessed with sex organs, excrement, or farts.
7. Stories where one of the characters is an anthropomorphized sex organ, pile of excrement, or fart.
8. Fantasy that reads like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
9. Science fiction that reads like a Star Trek episode.
10. Poems about writing poems.
11. Transcripts for fake talk shows, game shows, or reality television shows, or any other story made up entirely of dialogue.
12. Story where the “punchline” involves rape, torture, or the abuse, including against animals.
13. Stories with stale or dated subject matter (telemarketers, the DMV, etc.), or subject matter that will quickly become dated or stale. As of July 2020, this includes anything about COVID-19 and the current U.S. presidential administration. We are also not interested in any stories, poems, cartoons, essays and/or diary entries related to, involving, starring, or featuring Trump and/or Elon Musk.

Nonfiction Submissions:

Nonfiction is published year-round. There are no reading periods for nonfiction.

Nonfiction includes what we call “fake” nonfiction. Think of it as fiction that reads like nonfiction. This can include anything from reviews of non-existent books, interviews with imaginary people, bogus letters to the editor, etc. Use your imagination. If you’re unsure whether your piece falls into this category, send it to us anyway. We’ll sort it out.

Note that while we love the topical, our nonfiction queue is such that it could be six to nine months before an accepted piece is published. Therefore, if your work is time sensitive, it may be a better fit for another magazine (or at least until we get our time machine working again). Our “topics we’ve seen too often” list applies to nonfiction and fake nonfiction, too.

Send no more than one (1) nonfiction submission to defenestrationmag(at)gmail(dot)com. The subject line of your e-mail should begin with “Defenestration Submission / Nonfiction.”

We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Simultaneous submissions will be deleted unread.

Nonfiction submissions must be no more than 2,000 words. Attach your submission to your e-mail as either a Microsoft Word Document (.doc) file or a Rich Text Format (.rft) file. The file should be titled with your last name and the title of your submission.

Do not send us more than one submission at a time. Please wait until you have received either an acceptance or a rejection from us before submitting again.

While we accept reprints of short stories and poetry, the same is not true of nonfiction. Please send us only original, previously unpublished nonfiction.

Visual Submissions:

Visuals are published year-round, in both the site’s weekly updates and the thrice-a-year magazines. There are no reading (viewing?) periods for visual submissions.

Send your visual submissions to defenestrationmag(at)gmail(dot)com. Submissions can be in any medium. Send no more than five (5) visuals. Your artwork should be attached as a (.jpg), (.gif), or (.png) file in appropriate sizes (in other words, if a full-view of your painting or comic takes up the whole computer screen and the screen of three other computer beside it, your file might be too big). Please, no (.bmp) files. We also accept video and flash submissions for those of you handy with technology.

We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Simultaneous submissions will be deleted unread.

Do not send us more than one submission at a time. Please wait until you have received either an acceptance or a rejection from us before submitting again.

Reprints are fine, but please tell us when and where the piece(s) appeared previously.

Response Times:

We try to respond to all submissions within four weeks of receiving them. After submitting, you should get an auto-response from our e-mail address letting you know we’ve received your transmission loud and clear. If you don’t receive this response within 24 hours, please resend.

Artwork and nonfiction will receive a rejection or an acceptance. Short stories and poetry will receive a rejection or a note informing you that your piece(s) have been held for further consideration. Work held in this matter will be given a final response by April 8^th, August 8^th, or December 8^th, depending on the reading period.

Submissions are read from the bottom of our in-box to prevent you from waiting too long for a response. We use Gmail for our poetry and prose submissions; please do not reply back to your submission in an attempt to “bump” it to the front of the queue. You’re really just doing yourself a disservice.

Rejections will get a form letter. We do not provide specifics about a rejection, so please don’t ask. It’s not that we don’t want to help you out; we just don’t have the time!

Simultaneous Submissions:

We read all of our submissions with tender love and care. Therefore, we ask that you not send us a submission that is also being considered by another magazine/journal/literary enterprise — especially as our response time is very quick. Writers who do decide to be cute and sneaky and submit a simultaneous submission will 1) receive the wrath of the gods and 2) will be blacklisted.

AI Policy:

Defenestration believes that artistic expression is a uniquely human experience. As such, our AI policy is very strict: we do not accept any submissions aided by or wholly created using AI. This includes using AI to brainstorm ideas; offer critiques, editorial services, or writing advice; conduct research; generate images; or produce documents incorporating material from AI prompts. There are no exceptions, so please don’t ask. Although we have a number of reasons for wanting to keep AI out of the arts, we feel strongly that artists should avoid feeding their original ideas to AI, which degrades human creativity and makes us all intellectually poorer.

Defenestration does not give anyone permission to use its website or any of the content published on it, including images, poems, stories, articles, and columns, for training AI.

Publication:

By submitting to Defenestration, you are certifying that your submission(s) are your own work. You are also certifying that your work is the product of human intelligence and not the result of a prompt you loaded into an AI program or some other form of plagiarism robot.

We do not own your work, nor do we pretend to. You and you alone are the sole owner and copyright holder for anything you submit to us for publication.

We are not a paying market. Defenestration does not profit from the publication of your work in any way.

That being said, we take First Electronic Publishing Rights, with the exception of reprinted material. This means that if we publish your work on Defenestration, it can only be marketed elsewhere as a reprint. Keep this in mind when submitting to us. If you’re trying to make money off your writing (and we highly recommend doing so), getting it published by us and then reprinted by a paying market later might not be the best way to go. Giving up your First Electronic Publishing Rights for a place in Defenestration is your choice. We promise we’ll take good care of your stuff.

We reserve the right to make minor corrections of spelling and grammar. We typically won’t accept anything that requires heavy editing. Also, we make no distinction between “American” English and “British” English, and typically keep pieces in their original forms; your extra Us don’t bother us one bit!