Have questions?
We have answers.
Feel free to ask anything and everything. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll all get on buddy chat (they actually still have buddy chat) and we’ll talk it out until we can answer it for you. If your question is longer than 140 characters, shoot us an e-mail. We love getting e-mail. (Yes, that was a hint.)
You can reach us at lightafirejournal@gmail.com.
Who We Are
It came to our attention that most of you have no idea who we are. You should just know this stuff! We’re making it easier for you to get to know us and we’ve come up with some short bios that will start us off.
Anaïs \ Non-Fiction Editor
Anaïs’s parents named her after Anaïs Nin and yet were shocked when she told them she wanted to be a writer. She is currently working on her B.A. in Writing & Rhetoric/Comparative Literature at Florida Atlantic University and freaking about grad school constantly. She listens to a lot of Talking Heads and Ella Fitzgerald, starts perpetual knitting projects, sees movies alone in the afternoon, walks her dog infrequently, writes constantly, and reads even more.
You can find Anaïs on tumblr under the name bibliotheque.
Caitlin \ Poetry Editor
Caitlin is currently working towards an M.F.A. in Poetry after completing a B.A. in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. She knits, drinks too much tea, rides horses, loves fiercely, and writes feverishly.
You can find her on tumblr under the name thefranticsearch.
Josh \ Fiction Editor
Josh was born and raised in a rural town in New York State. At the ripe age of 18, he left for a four month European adventure where he 
discovered his love for writing and traveling. Upon his return to the States, he ventured out West where he attended the University of California at San Diego where he majored in Literature. While there, he led numerous workshops focusing on the art of writing fiction. He has many interests including music, movies, books, libraries, poetry, my dog, hiking, surfing, shenanigans, flannel, writing, sounding pretentious, particle and nuclear physics, cooking, but mostly just shenanigans.
You can find Josh on tumblr under the name joshisinfinite.
Lisa \ Review Editor
Lisa is a graduate of CSU, Chico with a Bachelors Degree in English, and a Certificate in Editing and Publishing, along with being the 2009 winner of the Walker Prize for excellence within the publishing program. She has previously worked for Flume Press, Watershed Literary Magazine, and has freelanced for such publishers as Naturegraph. She writes a little and knits a lot, and can be found online through her blog, Unsympathetic.
The Issue
I want to apologize for the delay in communicating this to everyone. We’ve been very busy, we’ve read the submissions. Don’t worry. We want Light A Fire to be something that everyone involved can be proud of; editors, contributers, and readers. We’ve given it a lot of thought the past week and we’ve realized that we want to continue with submissions and put out our first issue come the new year.
We really believe that we have something amazing going on here and we don’t want to half-ass it. While we continue to prepare for the first issue, we wanted to open submissions up again. If you missed the deadline, no fear. Please feel free to submit your work to us. We’ve made some changes to our submission policies as well, which you can view on the submission guidelines page. If you have already submitted, you’ll be happy to know that you can submit as many pieces as you’d like, so feel free to send them our way.
Stay tuned for more updates. Up next: Who the heck are we?
Last Day To Submit To Light A Fire!
The deadline is here! Well, it will be at midnight Eastern time tonight (November 20th) so please get your submissions in to us. We’ve received a good amount of them and the editorial staff is very excited to start reading them. Questions about submission guidelines? Find some answers here.
Even more questions? Shoot us an email at lightafirejournal@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Issue #1 Submissions Due Friday at Midnight
The date is fast approaching and we are hoping to see more submissions for our first issue. Please be sure to review the submission guidelines if you have any concerns about format.
More questions? Shoot us an email at lightafirejournal@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
FAQ: Copyright
We received a question in our mailbox about our copyright policy and I’d like to take the time to clarify what our policy is and why we feel that it is the best for everyone involved.
We don’t want to take ownership or hold the copyright of any works that come our way from individual authors; the authors will maintain copyright on all of their works and, in a sense, are letting us or giving us permission, to use their work. We will not strip you of your right to your own work. We believe that the best way to foster creativity and growth is for you, the author, to maintain copyright. You wrote it, you put in the work, it belongs to you.
Issue #1 Submissions Open
Light A Fire is a monthly creative journal aimed at highlighting original and imaginative works such as short stories, creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.
Light A Fire believes that good literature, poetry, and stories can shape and inspire generations and define a culture. No matter the subject or genre, these works aim to define humanity one letter at a time.
Deadline: Friday, November 20th at Midnight
Please read our submission guidelines for what and how to submit.
The first issue will be out December 1st so stay tuned.
Submission Guidelines
How To Submit
Submissions are only accepted via e-mail. Send your submissions to lightafirejournal@gmail.com.
E-mails should be formatted as follows:
The Subject Line - The subject should be the title of your work and the type of work. Example: The Awesome Dinosaur-Robot Adventure - Creative Fiction.
The Body - Your work should be pasted into the body of the e-mail. Do not send attachments as they will automatically be deleted. Do not use any crazy formatting such as different colors or fonts. Please also include the following information in this order:
[The Title]
[Author Name]
[URL]
Length
Most submissions should be a maximum of 5,000 words. This is usually the magic number for online lit as it is long enough to be interesting but short enough to keep the reader’s attention. The only exceptions are poetry submissions. At this time, longer fiction will be “novella-length” and will be published in parts during each issue. We also accept literary and film reviews.
Other Things of Note
- If, for some reason, your submission is not accepted and you would like to re-submit, please go right ahead. In most cases, we will let you know if we would like to hold onto a work for a later issue.
- If we don’t accept your submission, we’ll tell you why (if you want us to). Don’t be afraid, we’re nice, promise.
- Do not bombard us with e-mails regarding the status of your submission. We promise to get back to you one way or another.
- You are allowed to submit more than one piece.
Payment
Sorry, but we are unable to pay you at this time. We’re broke. If it were possible to pay you, trust us, we would. We make no money from this site and if we ever change our minds and decide to monetize this, we’ll definitely pass the fortune (haha) on.
