Folly Journal

Guidelines for the Folly Prize and general submissions

What we’re looking for:

We want to laugh, be entertained and intrigued. For Folly, reading is about entertaining your reader, with work that is pacey, enjoyable and sometimes comedic. We are curating a publication for enjoying life’s lazy and decadent pleasures. Folly is for taking on holiday, reading on the beach, dipping into and out of after a long day. Hence our focus on shorter works.

You can also purchase our previous issue to get an idea of what type of writing we publish. 

General guidelines: 

We accept international and local New Zealand submissions via Submittable from roughly January each year through to around the end of May. Please check our submissions portal for current dates. You are welcome to submit to both the prize and the general category at the same time.

We generally only publish original stories that haven’t been previously published online or in print, including on a personal website or blog. If you have a piece of writing that had been previously published that you would like to have considered, please contact our editor. Note that we accept simultaneous submissions but ask if your submission is accepted elsewhere, you withdraw your submission as soon as possible.

General formatting guidelines 

Lines should be double-spaced and follow NZ/AUS English spelling, ideally. Fonts should be legible, e.g., Arial or Times New Roman. The title of your submissions should also match the file name. Please include page numbers.

Fiction 

Submissions should be no longer than around 2500 words. But don’t feel like you have to take this word count as a goal! We also enjoy short prose that’s punchy, pointed and snappy. One story per submission please.

Poetry 

Up to three poems can be submitted at a time, with each poem not exceeding 40 lines. All poems should be able to be printed on one page of Folly.

When submitting via Submittable, all poems should be compiled in one file and the titles of each poem should be the file name.

Non-fiction 

One work per submission detailing what sort of nonfiction your work is (creative nonfiction, or a personal essay etc). Please ensure you have removed any identifying characteristics of real life people, or obtained their permission to include them in your story.

A note on using pseudonyms

We appreciate that frankness and honesty in writing requires courage, especially for those submitting from this small island at the bottom of the world. For this reason, we happily accept stories and poems from writers who wish to use a pseudonym. We will endeavour to ensure your anonymity is maintained during any marketing coverage resulting from your writing and publication within our journal. However, please note that if a submission entered under a pseudonym is a finalist in our Short Story Prize, the prize money will be allocated to a charity of the finalists’ choice. 

A note on using profanity/strong language 

At Folly, we don’t mind a few F-bombs. If the language is adding to the story, we’ll happily embrace it.