Oak City Vault

Submissions

The Vault is a Raleigh-based print periodical featuring genre-fiction short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and visual art, all centered around a different theme each issue.

Calling all Triangle Area Residents! We are accepting submissions from the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina only! Wake, Durham, Orange, Chatham, Johnston counties.

Issue 2 Theme: Please Don’t Eat Me

Submission Window: Aug. 1st – Oct. 31st, 2026

In the submission email, please include the name you would like credited, the title of your story, the word count, and your address.

Include your first name, last initial, and the title of your story in the subject line.

Our submission requirements are as follows …

  • Email your submissions to submissions@oakcityvault.com.
  • All submissions must take the theme of the issue into account, but feel free to interpret that theme however you wish. Lateral thinking is encouraged!
  • We accept the following categories: Short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and artwork.
  • We will accept short story submissions up to 3000 words in length, double-spaced, 12-point Garamond, Arial, or Times New Roman font.
  • Flash fiction should be a maximum of 500 words in length, double-spaced, 12-point Garamond, Arial, or Times New Roman font.
  • Poetry submissions should be a maximum of 50 lines in length, double-spaced, 12-point Garamond, Arial, or Times New Roman font.
  • Art submissions should be formatted to fit within a 6×9 aspect ratio portrait orientation page. The top two images will be published in full color on the front and back cover. All other accepted artwork will be published in the interior in black and white.
  • We will not accept fan fiction, or any works based on third-party intellectual property (for instance, no original stories set in established worlds unless you own the setting yourself).
  • We will not accept any work that has already been published elsewhere.
  • NO AI-GENERATED TEXT OR IMAGES will be accepted. We have tools to detect these things, and attempting to submit AI-generated content will get you blacklisted from The Oak City Vault indefinitely.
  • Please submit a maximum of one short story per issue. We will ignore all short story submissions after your first.
  • We welcome up to 3 submissions in any combination of poetry, flash fiction, and art.
  • Authors selected for this issue will not be eligible to submit under the fiction or poetry categories for the next issue.
  • In the interest of full disclosure: we are not aiming to make money on this publication. Any money we do make will go towards offsetting the cost of printing. We will however remit a small token payment to any accepted contributors.
  • You will retain all legal rights to any of your work that gets published in The Oak City Vault.