Barrelhouse loves to celebrate books just like you do, so let's do that thing together! We're interested in running reviews of books that fit Our Whole Thing. You read Barrelhouse, so you know what we're about. Let that be your guide. And also, these:

Book Review Guidelines:

• Please send us reviews of books other than your own.
• No self-published titles.
• Do not submit work to the Reviews section that is meant for another section.
• Do not submit excerpts or essays based on your own work.
• We prefer reviews that focus on recent titles, meaning books that came out within the past six months or that are upcoming in the next six months. That guideline can stretch to about a year, but not much farther. (Our Reviews Editor has a pretty good record for response times.) We do not run retrospective reviews.
• We have a strong taste for small-press titles, especially books that might not be reviewed anywhere else. We love weird books, hybrid work, and other rare birds. We are extremely unlikely to accept a review of a book by a major publisher (Harper, Random House, Riverhead, etc).
• We're interested in full-length or chapbook-length collections of poetry & prose. We're open to memoirs and story or essay collections.
• Include publisher, page count, and date of book release. Include a link to the publisher's website for purchase.
• Word docs preferred but RTF is OK. No Pages, dear Lord.
• We are open to non-standard reviewing forms, as long as it doesn't distract from the book in question. We do not want book essays.
• If you've previously spoken to our Reviews Editor, Katharine Coldiron, please indicate that in your cover letter.
• Simultaneous submissions are encouraged, but please let us know and withdraw your submission if your work is accepted elsewhere.
• All accepted reviews are subject to editorial suggestions.
• We love you but we do not pay for book reviews at this time. Reviews run online only.

If you are an author or a publisher who wants your book reviewed at Barrelhouse, you can query, but be advised that we almost never assign books pitched to us in this way. Your best bet is to find a reviewer and ask them to submit a finished review to us here, through Submittable. 

Barrelhouse is now open for fiction submissions. Wondering if your piece is a good fit? The best way to know, of course, is to read some of our back issues and see if your writing would hang out in the same places as the writing we’ve published before. Short of that, here are some hot takes on the ways in which we tend to skew, followed by some boilerplate submission info. Hopefully this helps:
We tend to choose polished work with an engaging voice, conceived with humility and somewhat clear intention.  We love to find great new writing, and it doesn’t matter to us if your submission is your first or five-thousandth effort, as long as it is well done and worthy of praise.
We are anti-fascist and anti-racist as a rule, so if your piece handles social, racial, sexual or what-have-you difference in an unthoughtful way, we will think that’s super weird and immediately move on to the next thing in queue. If you don’t know why this would be, or whether or not your piece is fair to all peoples and creeds, it’s probably best if we broke up right now.
We do not hate on genre writing, although we do seek the traditional literary qualities we admire in such work. Which is to say, a good fantasy setting or interesting SciFi concept won’t be enough without good characters, solid storytelling and dramatic tension in which the readers feel something real and true is somehow at stake on the page.
We aren’t afraid of longer stories or other works (over 5,000 words-ish) if they’re awesome. However, thirty pages of writing in dire need of editing is a $100 fine for each word read after the 5,000th.
PS - We pay you! You’ll receive $50 as a contributor to our print or online issues. Print contributors also receive two contributor copies of the journal. (We know it’s not gonna make a big dent in those student loans, although it could be enough to make you forget your troubles for a little while.)
Boilerplate stuff:
No previously published work.
Please submit only one piece at a time.
We accept simultaneous submissions, on the understanding that you’ll tell us if you place the work elsewhere.
It will probably take us two to three months to get back to you. We try to do that faster, and sometimes take longer, but there are few of us and many of you.
Always be writing, and stay righteous,
The Fictioneers


***Fiction submissions for this period will be capped at 500. If we hit that limit before 5/31, the submission window will automatically close***  

Barrelhouse will open for nonfiction submissions on 5/15 and close on 5/31, unless we hit 500 submissions in that window (history indicates we will not hit this number). All essays will be considered for print issue 25.

Please note that all Barrelhouse essays must have a pop culture angle of some kind. This is non-negotiable. It’s one of our big things.  Recent issues include essays that that focus in some way on topics like Taxi, Lorena Bobbitt/cultural treatment of Bobbitt, summer on the boardwalk, Guns ‘N Roses, mountain climbing, the Nebraska Cornhuskers mascot, Paula Abdul, John Prine, and being back on one’s bullshit. Some other notes:

• We are really unlikely to print "newsy" essays; we know a lot of you are working on pieces about important global events , but unless there are several additional layers beyond the news peg, it's just not our thing and, honestly, you don't want to send us a time-sensitive piece when it might not see the light of day for 9 months.
• You don't have to be funny, or "funny" but it doesn't hurt if your piece indicates the existence of a sense of humor.
• We're extremely open to and interested in pieces that play with structure in some way (leaving this note intentionally broad). 
• All contributors receive $50 and two copies of the issue
• Essays we publish tend to be in the range of 2000-7000 words, though there are no firm rules regarding length.
• If you’re submitting flash essays (about 750-850 words or shorter) feel free to include up to 3 in a single document.
  

***Nonfiction submissions for this period will be capped at 500. If we hit that limit before 5/31, the submission window will automatically close***