Welcome to THE QUATRAIN

The Quatrain is a project for people who value quality Undergraduate and Graduate writing on literature and culture. Full-dress researched, academic essays and scholarly explorations, life-writing, cultural criticism, work that has a reflective, autobiographical style, and creative writing in all its forms: We simply seek to display samples of the interesting, original, and quality writing being produced by gifted students and emerging talents from Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi. This four state region, our geographical quatrain, is our primary interest, although we welcome work from college writers everywhere. So serious or satiric, critical or creative, written for a class or written for yourself, send us your good work and let us display it first. What you do with it after that–sending to a scholarly print journal, revising as a magazine or newspaper piece, including in your chapbook of poetry or longer manuscript–is up to you. We make no editorial or ownership claims upon the writing. Just don’t let it moulder on an old drive. Instead, let us share those insights with other students and readers who can benefit from your efforts.

• The Quatrain accepts unsolicited writing throughout the year. Allow at least one month for editorial decisions, longer if submitted between May 1 and September 1. Please do not query the journal concerning the status of your submission before giving our reviewers this amount of time.
• Only previously unpublished work will be considered.
• The Quatrain only accepts electronic submissions. Submissions using regular post cannot be returned. Send work as a single attached file, either .doc or .rtf (Microsoft Word or rich text format).
• Please submit no more than five poems at a time.
• Please submit only one prose manuscript at a time. 5,000 words is generally considered the maximum length.
• Digital art, photography, paintings, drawings, mixed media, etc., must be submitted as attachments in .jpeg format, preferably 300 dpi.
• Currently, all submissions should be sent to quatrainsubmissions@gmail.com. In the body of the email, include your name, email address, mailing address, brief bio (3-4 sentences), title(s) of work, and brief description of work (such as when and why it was written, or how it was inspired).
• All work published in annual online issues is archived online well.
• Work previously published in any form will not be considered. If we display your work and it is subsequently accepted by another journal, we ask that you notify us.
• We do our best to check references and corroborate the accuracy and originality of all accepted submissions, but that responsibility ultimately falls upon our contributors, who are solely responsible for their work.