Submissions Guidelines:

  • Every page of your submission must include last name and story title in the header
  • Simultaneous submissions are accepted
  • Submissions will be generally replied to within four months of their receipt (possibly longer over the summer)
  • Contributing writers receive two complimentary copies of the issue their work appears in as payment
  • All rights revert to the author upon publication
  • Our journal does not consider work that has previously appeared elsewhere
Lake Effect is looking for well-crafted and lively literary or personal essays. We are not looking for literary criticism, but essays that engage literature in the context of a lived life are certainly welcome. If your essay is longer than fifteen pages or so, please query first. Lake Effect seeks essays from both established and new and emerging voices.
Lake Effect is looking for poems that demonstrate an original voice and that use multi-layered, evocative images presented in a language shaped by an awareness of how words sound and mean. Each line should help to carry the poem. There is no length limit per poem, but send no more than four poems at a time. Lake Effect seeks poems from both established poets and from new and emerging voices.

Lake Effect is looking for stories that emerge from character and language as much as from plot. Lake Effect does not, in general, publish genre fiction, but literary fiction. For stories of longer than fifteen pages or so, query first. Lake Effect seeks work from both established and new and emerging writers.