SHARK REEF publishes two issues a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. Submission deadlines are June 30 and December 31. We consider solicited and unsolicited material, published previously or unpublished, fiction, non-fiction prose, poetry and dramatic writing. We feature artwork by local visual artists in each issue as well.

General guidelines: Submit in only one genre per issue and no more than three pieces of writing, total, per issue. Maximum word limit is 5,000 words. Please include your name, address, daytime telephone number, e-mail address and short bio. Visual artists may submit up to five pieces maximum.

If your work was featured in one issue, we ask that you skip an issue before submitting again as we will not publish work by a writer in two consecutive issues.

Please double space your work. For everything except poetry, use a line break between paragraphs instead of indenting. To be sure your submission receives our full consideration, please proofread your text carefully; spelling, grammatical, and mechanical mistakes may prevent us from giving your work the full editorial attention it deserves.

Submissions can be made via email to editor@sharkreef.org or by mailing a CD to Lopez Writers Guild, c/o Lorna Reese, 66 Country Road, Lopez Island, Washington, 98261.We neither charge nor remit payment for submissions or selections. We do not require any legal document to change hands. The selections are posted as our Current Issue until the next issue comes out and then moved to the Archives section.

Important: Many email service providers use rather aggressive spam filters. Please make sure that your email system is set up to accept mail from us—usually adding our email address editor@sharkreef.org to your address book is sufficient.

Editorial Standards & Policies—Literary Submissions

SHARK REEF endeavors to give voice to the serious writers of the San Juan Islands who have made a true commitment to work hard to produce original writing of high quality. We are particularly passionate about publishing the work of the “common man and woman” whose writing emerges from first-hand experience.

As all evaluation of art is subjective, we make no bones about the fact that our selections are informed by our own tastes, whims, and fancies.

Editorial Standards & Policies—Visual Art

SHARK REEF endeavors to provide a venue to the serious visual artists and fine art photographers of the San Juan Islands.

As all evaluation of art is subjective, we make no bones about the fact that our selections are informed by our own tastes, whims, and fancies.

File & Formatting Guidelines

Please submit text documents as a Word document or in RTF (Rich Text Format). Please keep formatting simple, as complex formatting can’t be easily transferred to HTML.

Please submit images in JPEG or PNG formats. Images size should be no larger than 640 pixels on the longest size, and JPEGs should be compressed at High Quality (60-80) settings.

Note: Mac users, please make sure that your documents include the appropriate file extension: .rtf, .png, or .jpg

Contact Us

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments to editor@sharkreef.org.