Deadline: July 21st, 2023
Payment: $50 CAD per page
Theme: Artists of marginalized genders for fiction, creative nonfiction, visual art, and poems of utopic exploration who can answer: Is Utopia possible, and for whom?

Who is the future for? Room and guest editors from Augur Magazine seek artists of marginalized genders for fiction, creative nonfiction, visual art, and poems of utopic exploration. Is Utopia possible, and for whom? What are the DIY steps to craft beauty from ugliness? How can the social experiment go right? Craft and complicate perfection; make the unimaginable real.

Please note that we are not looking for Dystopia, but we welcome complications & examinations of what Utopia means and who it’s historically been imagined for.

Edited by Kerry C. Byrne, Terese Mason Pierre, Toria Liao, Yilin Wang, Nara Monteiro, and Micah Killjoy

Before submitting, please read our About section to see if your work fits within Room’s mandate, then refer to the Submission Guidelines on how to format your work. Underrepresented writers—including but not exclusive to women (cis and trans), trans men, Two Spirit and non-binary writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, queer, and/or disabled—are particularly encouraged to submit.

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Submissions Period

Extended deadline: now until July 21st, we’re accepting submissions from writers and artists of all marginalized genders!

General Guidelines

Thank you for considering Room for the publication of your original short stories, poems, creative non-fiction, or art. Room publishes fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art by folks of marginalized genders, including but not limited to women (cisgender and transgender), transgender men, Two-Spirit and nonbinary people. We specifically encourage writers with overlapping under-represented identities to submit their work. We don’t want writers to feel restricted by gender or genre labels, so if you are unsure if your work is a fit for Room, please get in touch at [email protected]. We also strongly suggest you get a sense of our tastes by reviewing material we’ve published in recent issues—buy newsstand copies, subscribe, borrow from a library, or visit our latest edition online. Alternatively, you can order single copies of specific issues, or pre-order our next issue for only $9 using the link below (may take up to three months to arrive).

• Submit your work through Submittable, a secure online submissions management tool. We do not accept submissions via mail.
• Submit only work that has not been previously published, in print or online.
• Fiction and creative non-fiction: up to 3500 words.
• Poetry: up to 5 poems.
• Art: up to 5 images.
• Submit all work in Times New Roman 12-point font.
• Double space all prose submissions.
• We gladly accept simultaneous submissions. Please note in the “Bio” section whether your submission is exclusive to Room or whether you have submitted it to other magazines as well. If another magazine accepts your work for publication, please advise us immediately.
• We do not charge for submissions, with the exception of our annual contests.

Additional Information

• All contributors will be paid upon publication: $50 CAD per page (up to a maximum of $200)
• Check our home page regularly for updates on upcoming themes and deadlines. If your work is targeted for a particular theme, it will be considered for that theme as long as it is sent by the deadline. There is no need to add a special note or designation.
• We receive over 4,000 submissions each year and can only publish approximately 80-100 pieces. So send your absolutely best piece(s) of work.
• We do not publish the same writer more than twice a year, and never in consecutive issues.
• To avoid a flood of material by a single submitter or overly frequent submissions, please send only one submission in one category—poetry (up to 5 poems), fiction, or creative non-fiction—per quarter. (Note: You may enter our contests and make a regular submission at the same time so long as the materials are different.)
• Do not send a second submission until you have heard back from us considering the first one.
• We respond to all submissions by email. Our average response time is between two weeks and six months.
• If you are using Hotmail or Gmail, please be sure to designate Room as an approved sender to prevent our response being caught up in your spam filters.
• For information on our writing contests and cover art contest, please visit our contest page.

Art Submission

All art submissions should be sent through Submittable. Send us your most engaging work. These are not images to illustrate accompanying writing, but submissions of their own standing. Submit up to 5 images (maximum of 1MB sized JPG or PDF). Include a short paragraph about the work of art including: the title, size, medium and date, which you can write into the “Bio/Artist Statement” section when you submit. Please note that all art considered for our internal pages will be printed in black and white or greyscale and we ask that you take this into consideration when choosing which artwork to submit to us.

Book Reviews

We review fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, published by smaller Canadian publishers, in an effort to suggest intriguing and original new work for our readers. Interested book reviewers who were born or reside in Canada can send their pitches to [email protected]. See also our FAQs.

Download Room‘s submission guidelines (PDF).

Via: Room Magazine.