Yo! Look here first: Barrelhouse is now open for everything — fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and online stuff. Have at it.

A few general rules:

No previously published work.

Please submit only one piece at a time. Except for poetry. You can submit up to five poems. Everybody else — just one!

At this time, we can’t pay you. Not in money, at least. Contributors to the print edition will be paid in copies (2). Online contributors are paid primarily in karma. All contributors are also promised free beer, if we ever run into you in the flesh. If you don’t believe us about the free beer, ask around a little bit. We are frequently tipsy and imprudently generous.

We accept simultaneous submissions, on the understanding that you’ll tell us if you place the work elsewhere.

It will probably take us two to three months to get back to you. We try to do that faster, but there are few of us and many of you.

About electronic files:

Please only send us word (.doc) or RFT (.rtf) files. Seriously. If you send something in a file format that we can’t read, it greatly reduces your chances of publication.

For poetry: Please submit 3-5 poems as a single document.

A note on nonfiction. We’re looking specifically for essays that touch on pop culture in some way. In the past, we’ve published essays on movies, rock, Magnum, PI, convenience stores, Barry Bonds, Godzilla, American Idol, and why overuse of the word “rocks” does not rock. Got a wonderful essay about David Lee Roth or Mr. Rogers or Exile on Main Street knocking around that brain of yours? Write it down. Send it to us.

On the other hand, if you’ve got a great essay about a very special camping trip with your dear departed grandmother, or why people should pay more attention to stop signs, or how mean everybody was in high school, or whatever non-pop culture related topics you might be writing about, those are probably not for us. No offense, and we’re sure that was one hell of a camping trip, and your grandmother was one hell of a lady. There are lots of other lit mags out there looking for that type of thing. Just not us.

Online Stuff:

We try to make our little online home an interesting, dynamic place, so we’re always looking for shorter fiction and essays, and just about anything else that might work on the Barrelhouse site. It’s a short-attention span world out there, internet buddies, so please submit your best short work — under 1,500 words. As usual, we’re not looking for any particular aesthetic, just your best, funniest, saddest, weirdest, coolest work.