The Pygmy Giant

*SUBMISSIONS ARE CURRENTLY CLOSED*

Here are some pygmy guidelines…

1. You must be from the UK (Great Britain or Northern Ireland). We’re not going to debate exactly what that means, but you need to be living in those lands. Voices from all cultures and subcultures are very welcome.

2. We accept flash fiction, flash non-fiction, and other forms somewhere in between, but our poetry section is now closed.

3. Your short story has to be set in the UK – although you don’t need to state this explicitly in a heavy-handed manner. Please see below for our preferred tastes.

4. Please send your work within the text of your email message (we won’t open attachments), along with a one-line biography. We’ll link to your own webpage if you want.

5. The word limit is 800 words or fewer. Even shorter works are often even better – that’s the heart of The Pygmy Giant.

6. Please send no more than THREE pieces of work per email. Otherwise it will take ages to get back to you and everybody else. You can always send some more along another time.

7. If it’s really vulgar, racist, blasphemous or unecessarily lewd, we’re not gonna publish it.

8. If it’s been published anywhere before (or might be soon because you’ve submitted it elsewhere), please don’t send it – we don’t want to get into copyright trouble. The Pygmy Giant will not itself claim copyright of your pieces (we are not paying you, after all), but if we publish one of your pieces and it later gets published somewhere else, it would be nice if you would add a footnote saying ‘first published in The Pygmy Giant‘, or some such. Our web address would be lovely too. Thanks.

9. Leaving comments. Part of the reason The Pygmy Giant has been set up as a blog is so that readers can easily comment and give feedback or contructive criticism on each piece. Note the word constructive. Don’t slam anything unless you have a suggestion about how to improve it! Let’s maintain some good manners.

What we like

TPG started life as a bit of a free-for-all for unpublished UK writers. We very much still want to foster exciting new UK writers and showcase their work. Over the years, though, long-time readers will have noticed a Pygmy Giant-ish feel develop to the work we tend to publish here, and we’ve narrowed the guidelines a bit, accordingly:

Fiction/non-fiction

We veer towards literary fiction and away from genre fiction. We like all sorts of styles and tones, including stories inspired by real life.

This is a place for UK writers, and just to emphasise what a great place this is for literature, your story, real or imagined, needs to take place in the UK. Obviously, you don’t need to state this explicitly – just don’t set it in a different country. All cultures and subcultures very much welcome. We may also accept stories set, for example, in outer space, if they contain really British characters…

We love flash fiction (and non-fiction) to pack a punch, to use a tight word limit wisely, and to leave us feeling some sort of emotion. Surprise, laughter, shock, sadness, or ‘oooooooh that’s clever’.