Note: Because RFM was on hiatus for over a year, response times on websites such as Duotrope or Submission Grinder may not accurately reflect RFM’s actual response time. In general, I like to respond to a submission in under a week or in less than a day if possible. In some cases, I respond within an hour. I check submissions frequently. Please do not worry about a long response time.
Rural Fiction Magazine (RFM) is seeking high-quality short stories and poetry that explores the beauty and drama of rural life. RFM is willing to look at any genre (mainstream, literary, horror, fantasy, noir, mystery, thriller, adventure, etc.) so long as it has a rural setting and addresses topics or themes of interest to people in rural areas or with connections to rural areas.
RFM wants to develop talent, measuring it in a fair and equitable way to find hidden and disadvantaged talent in a world where not everybody has an equal chance to exhibit their abilities. RFM does not discriminate against anyone. The only personal criterium for publication is talent in use of English and in developing outstanding stories. Because RFM embraces the global community, RFM embraces differences, whether those are race, age, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or physical ability. RFM wants to see diversity in writing from around the world, from all time zones. RFM respects everyone’s voice and strives to create a culture in which people from all cultures, races, and backgrounds feel encouraged to express their ideas and perspectives.
Why should you submit to RFM when we don’t pay? Simple: exposure. Because we cannot pay, in exchange for the use of their stories, we promote each author as widely as we are able. When your story is published on RFM, it automatically goes to our pages/profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Bluesky, Mastodon, and soon Instagram Business. RFM strives to reach a global audience, therefore our publication time of 11:00 CST (12:00 EST) is the midpoint of the day for the east coast, the one time zone where the most publishing houses and universities (including some of the most prestigious) in the US are concentrated. This also equates to 5:00 p.m. in London and 6:00 p.m. in Berlin, so all of Europe has an opportunity to read your work as soon as it comes out. Although we try to limit the amount of words in a bio accompanying a story or poem, we do encourage authors to include their website(s) and social media accounts, so that readers can explore more of your works.
RFM accepts submissions of short fiction and poetry on rural life from around the world. Works can be from any genre (though we lean toward literary and mainstream), so long as the work has a connection to rural life or to living in rural communities. RFM would love to see a variety of countries, cultures, ethnicities, peoples, settings, and situations represented to show the universal qualities that bind us together (or divide us) as human. Submission guidelines are on the website.
As someone once said, all stories are ultimately about people, genre is secondary. Submissions can be stories involving hunting, fishing, farming, wildlife, farm animals, camping, small town politics, working in the outdoors, or anything that would interest people in a rural community, but ultimately the stories will be about people.
RFM will also consider press releases about upcoming novels or short story collections for its blog, so long as they meet RFM’s broad requirements for rural fiction. If RFM starts receiving a considerable number of press releases, a separate page/blog might be considered.
Although RFM expects the vast majority of submissions to be set in the US, I would love to receive works set in rural areas of other nations. This is going out over the Internet. People all over the world will be able to read the stories published here, be they from Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, India, Taiwan, Germany, Thailand, Japan, Ireland, Ukraine, or wherever. A sampling of rural cultures worldwide would be terrific.
For the foreseeable future, RFM will publish submissions on an individual basis as they are accepted. Generally, stories and poems will be published about two weeks after acceptance. The author will be notified of its publication date upon acceptance so that they have time to publicize the story.
RFM is also accepting examples of oral storytelling. Go to the Storytelling page for more details. Submissions of oral stories should follow the same guidelines as for other stories.
Please note: there is no pay for any submission at this time. Maybe this will change sometime in the hopefully not too distant future, but for now, RFM does not pay.
However, the writer retains all rights to his/her work. Once it’s published here, you can reprint it wherever you like, whenever you like, as often as you like.
Learn more by reading the publisher’s interview on Duotrope.
Details:
Send all submissions and queries to publisher@ruralfictionmagazine.com. All submissions must be in a separate Word document (.doc, .docx, etc). This makes it easy for me to copy and paste into WordPress. PDF’s and other non-Word systems present problems. If you do not have access to Word, you can put the story/poem in the body of the email. That usually works well.
For prose, please put the word count in the upper right corner of your submission.
Poems can be up to 40 lines (more or less) per poem. Line count is what matters for a poem, not word count.
The upper word limit for a short story is 7,500.
Stories of 300 words or less are usually considered micro fiction. RFM considers anything of 300-101 words to be micro fiction, which (for various reasons) will be published on a separate page.
RFM won’t print anything of 100 words or less. RFM doesn’t have anything against stories of 100 words or less. Creating a true story in less than 100 words is a daunting challenge and an art in itself. The problem is one of time management for the publisher/editor: do I want to take the time to create a post for each six-word (or thereabouts) story, should a dozen six-word stories be submitted at once? The answer is no. Although I enjoy my work, I do have other matters (like eating, sleeping, and walking my dog) that demand my time and attention. There are other magazines, such as Microfiction Monday Magazine, that specialize in stories of 100 words or less.
It helps if you put RFM or RFM Submission in the subject line of your e-mail. I get a lot of email. Some of my email is personal; some is for RFM; some is for…whatever. Having “RFM” in the subject line helps me sort my inbox quickly.
Please keep profanity to a minimum. RFM is trying to reach the widest audience possible. Obscenities will turn away many people. Remember the old adage that for every obscenity a writer uses, he/she loses a !@#$%^ reader :)
Please use Standard Manuscript Format. This makes it a lot easier for me, the editor, to read your work, and the easier you make my life for me, the better the chance you have of being published. I won’t be holding to this religiously, but if you turn in an experimental piece that I have to figure out what is going on…well…which would be easier: to burn up my time trying to decipher some arcane format or to simply reject it and go with a story whose format I can easily read and understand?
You can also use the web variant, which is the same as the Shunn but with no indents while paragraphs are separated by a return (the sometimes inscrutable WordPress often automatically converts Shunn into this anyway). Please do not mix the two together (e.g. indented paragraphs separated by a return).
There is no submission fee or submission period. RFM accepts submissions 24/7/365 from the US or from any corner of the globe.
Please attach a short bio of 50 words or less. It may include your website, twitter handle, or any other social media identification you like. If you haven’t written one before, look at the author’s bios in any of the other RFM stories. I can be a little flexible with the word count, but not much.
Please submit only one story or up to five poems at a time. Once you have submitted, please wait until you have heard about that submission before submitting more.
I will take simultaneous submissions but be professional and withdraw your work if it has been accepted elsewhere before being published here.
I will consider reprints.
I reserve the editorial rights necessary to make minor changes needed for clarity (such as obvious typos and misspellings). I will never make revisions or major edits. It’s much simpler and easier to just reject the work or ask for a rewrite (if the work is particularly good). The less editing or formatting I must do, the more likely you are to be accepted. Be professional.
I will try to respond to submissions as quickly as possible, but please allow a couple of weeks before querying about your article/story. This will depend on the backlog of submissions and other factors.
Gratuitous sex, extreme violence, violence to children, rape, and anything else that offends my personal sensibilities or anything that skirts the boundaries of the law will not be published.
Pseudonyms are fine, but please state them as the byline and include your actual name and contact info in the top left of the first page of the submission per standard manuscript format.
Do not send fan fiction.
In your cover letter, please tell us where you heard about RFM initially. This helps us tailor our marketing to the optimal areas.
Always re-check the guidelines before submitting. I may change them without prior notice.
Remember: send all submissions and queries to publisher@ruralfictionmagazine.com.
