Update 5/1: The Issue 30 reading period has officially closed! We'll be back open for all submission categories starting July 1st for issue 31. 

We have been getting fewer visual submissions lately than we'd like during our online reading periods. Because of that, we're keeping our visual art and comic/graphic narratives forms open in May and June. Work submitted during this time may be considered for either Issue 30 (releasing early August) or Issue 31 (releasing early December). 

Note that these forms are only for visual art (photos, paintings, drawings, digital art, collage, etc.), comics, and graphic narratives. Any poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction without a visual element that is submitted to these forms will be rejected unread.

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After Happy Hour is a free online literary journal that comes out twice a year online in winter and summer, with a print contest issue in the spring. We're not limited to any particular genre, and publish poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, visual art, and hybrids of any of the above. We're headquartered in Pittsburgh, and love to get work from folks who have a connection to the region, but the journal is not exclusive to Pittsburgh-based writers and artists--we've published stories, poems, and artwork from all over the world. If you want more insights into what we look for, we posted some wishlists and hard sells on our blog.

Our typical reading periods are: 

• March 1st-April 30th for the summer issue (released early August)
• July 1st-August 31st for the winter issue (released early December)
• November 1st-January 31st for the annual contest (print issue released in May)

Although time is wibbly-wobbly and these have been known to change (we'll update things here if they do).

For our online issues, we accept fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, visual art, photographs, graphic narratives, and any combination thereof. All contributors are paid $2.50 per printed page, with a minimum of $15 and a maximum of $50, on publication ($25 for our cover artist).

We have a few submission categories:

• Free general submissions (capped at 300 per month--we'll post an update if we hit that limit)
• $4 expedited submissions with a guaranteed response within 14 days of submission
• Feedback submissions for donations of any amount to our current target charity (currently Casa San José)
• $3 tip jar submissions (open only when our free submissions fill up)

Entries for our contest are $10, and can be fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction.

As far as what we want from the work: Be bold and take risks, make an impact and make it early. AHH favors the audacious. If you want to get a sense of the type of work we publish, you can check out our past online issues free on our website. 

After Happy Hour requests first publication rights on acceptance for unpublished pieces, and one-time publication rights for reprints. For our online issues, we also ask for non-exclusive electronic archive rights and anthology rights, to potentially re-print your work in our annual print issue (of course, we will let you know if we do).  Authors and artists retain full ownership of their work and can do whatever else they want to with the work after publication (and if a piece we've published gets reprinted elsewhere, we'd love to hear about it so we can promote it to our readers, too! Especially if you've put out a collection, won an award, or some other exciting and cool thing).