Greetings from minor literature[s]!
As we enter our third year we are particularly keen to expand our pool of contributors — we accept submissions for all our sections. We publish fiction, poetry, experimental prose, essay & memoirs, book reviews, and interviews. Fiction subs are received during the months of January, April, July and October. Poetry subs are received during the months of March, June, September, and December. The other sections are open year round.
This is what we’re looking for — please note that work must be original and not previously published, including on a blog.
Essay & Memoir: This is an incredibly varied section which has in the past incorporated drawing, painting, photography and video. With visual pieces, there should be a unifying theme and some sort of accompanying text. We are looking for unpretentious, sharp, critical pieces — critical can be understood in a subjective sense too. We are particularly keen in pieces that bring visibility to topics and practices that may not receive attention in the mainstream arts and culture media. We also welcome images and writing from artists that reflect in an exploratory way on things like the creative process, and the conceptual, subjective and intellectual underpinnings of a practice. Collaborative pieces are encouraged.
Experimental Prose: We welcome genre-shattering prose exploring all aspects of experimentation. Have a look through our section to get an idea of what we like to publish. Please note that as we are an online publication — in order to guarantee readability across devices — we are limited by what we can do with our layout; a piece with complicated form or long lines, for example, might not look the same way on mobile, tablet or a desktop computer. We prefer work that is conceived with this in mind. That said, we do accept experimental that explores form but we reserve the right to publish this type of piece as a PDF file, without further consultation.
Interviews: We are particularly keen about conversations that bring visibility to topics, people, and practices that may not receive attention in the mainstream arts and culture media. We welcome interviews with writers, artists, filmmakers, poets, outsiders, freaks, and anybody you think might be relevant to minor literature[s].
Fiction: We want outstanding writing that challenges, provokes, enthrals and fascinates us and our readers. We embrace difference and particularly welcome voices from the margins — people or characters who aren’t part of dominant narratives — outsiders, or those who live at an angle to the world. Bear in mind these can be your characters; they don’t have to be you (we don’t know who you are, by the way, as this is an anonymous submission). We aren’t keen on fiction about white American men in their 20s–60s which focuses on gasoline, cigarettes, whiskey, fighting, sitting around, dogs, the military. If you insist on sending us stories about these topics and about this type of character, please make it satire. We like to think we’d reject Hemingway if he submitted to us — there are many other places keen on that kind of writing.
Poetry: We publish poetry that is itself without trying to be something else or telling us what we should think. We like poetry that experiments with the best ways of being itself, gets through to us, goes deep, reveals itself. As with experimental prose, pieces which focus on form might be published as a PDF in order to avoid being read differently across devices.
Reviews (books): We prefer indie/small press publishers, places including but not exclusive to: And Other Stories, Fitzcarraldo, Granta, Two Dollar Radio, Repeater, Zero Books, Verso, and Influx Press. We do not currently accept reviews of self-published books or titles put out by Amazon’s Kindle Direct publishing. While we are open to subject/genre, we aren’t likely to be interested in yet another dystopian vampire YA romance novel. Give us reviews about offbeat, intelligent books — have a look at our section to get a feel for what we’ve done in the past, and the styles: they’re thoughtful and creative. We accept standard and experimental format reviews — if you are using images/video, please make sure you have rights to use it and cite the source. With poetry, chapbooks are welcome if you are doing multiples tied together with a theme that can really be explored in-depth. Generally we would like books published within the last year, but feel free to pitch us on others. We’d love more reviews of books in translation, and if you’re multilingual and know of a great book that isn’t yet in translation but that you’d still like to review, we’d love those too. Word limits are usually 800-3000.
If there is something not covered here that you would like to pitch us about, we’d love to hear it: email us at minorliteratures@gmail.com. We look forward to reading your work!