welcome to the screwball society!
this is a home for the writing hidden in the back of the sock drawer or stamped beneath shoes alongside the rest of the chewed-up-and-spat-out. we crave the work you fear to be too weird, embarrassing, or morbid for mainstream literary magazines. if your life has been colored by the jank and absurd, touched by characters considered awkward and bumbling, or marked by plots both manic and ugly, it’s considered a life well-lived in the eyes of screwball.
we are accepting:
essays
interviews
cultural critiques
auto-fiction/literary nonfiction
standalone sections of memoirs
reviews (books, movies, music…)
we do not have hard limits regarding word count – however, consider the sweet spot to be between 1k and 6k words.
while we are attempting to cultivate a space for the clumsy, brutal, and uncomfortable, we also understand the sensitive nature of these topics. screwball reserves the right to add content warnings to the beginning of your piece, if chosen to be published.
to submit, please email your piece to thescrewballsociety@gmail.com. we accept .docx or .pdf files. if you’d like, you can provide a one-sentence summary of or quote from your work for us to add as a subheading. make sure to include a short, third-person author statement in the body of your email – you can list your social media handles, previous publications, and/or one of your most prized embarrassing moments.
we accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw via email if your piece is accepted somewhere else. we accept previously published work as long as you have all the necessary permissions.
if you don’t receive an acceptance or rejection within three weeks, please send a follow-up email to confirm with us.
thank you for trusting screwball with your work. remember – there’s no shame here.