Submissions

Submissions are closed.

IMPORTANT NOTE: untethered has grown bigger over these last ten years than its founders ever thought it would! As a result of this unexpected (though super exciting) growth, untethered needs to pause submissions while it undergoes changes to its processes and structure behind the scenes. We hope to reopen for submissions in the future, but for now submissions will remain closed. Be sure you’re subscribed and following us on Instagram and Facebook to stay up to date. Thank you for your patience!

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Submission Guidelines

• *NEW* In addition to sending your submission email with all the required attachments and information, you will need to also complete the corresponding Google Form. (In order for your submission to be considered complete, we will need to have received both your email and the Google Form).
• If you are submitting to the POETRY category, please click HERE to complete the Google Form.
• If you are submitting to the PROSE category, please click HERE to complete the Google Form.
• If you are submitting to the HYBRID/EXPERIMENTAL category (those strange things in between), please click HERE to complete the Google Form.

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• Please submit previously unpublished work to us by email, at untetheredsubmissions [at] gmail [dot] com.
• Please specify the genre of the piece(s) you are submitting in the SUBJECT LINE of your email (i.e.; fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, artwork, hybrid).
• Please include your FIRST and LAST NAME in the body of your email.
• Please attach each piece as an individual file to your email and title each file with the name of the piece. Word documents (.doc / .docx) are preferred over PDF (except for art submissions, see below) *We do not accept submissions within the body of an email.

• Please note that submissions that do not follow the guidelines will not be considered. They aren’t arbitrary. They ensure we read every submission.

• You may submit a short bio with your submission in the body of your email, but it is not a requirement.
• If the work you are submitting is not easily defined, that’s okay! Just do your best to describe them in your email (i.e.; poem/essay hybrid or visual poetry, etc.). We love weird and experimental stuff (not specifically in the content or subject matter, but more so in the playfulness of form).
• We don’t publish the same writer in consecutive issues.
• Simultaneous submissions are fine with us! Just let us know in the body of your email.
• IMPORTANT: If your submission is accepted elsewhere, please IMMEDIATELY send us an email to let us know.
• untethered secures first print and digital serial rights; upon publication, all rights revert back to the author.
• If you have not heard back from us within six (6) months, please feel free to email us to check the status of your submission. Please follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for all submission updates.
• If you are unfamiliar with our publication, we urge you to pick up a copy of a back issue here, or read through our selected back issue excerpts here to get a sense of what we tend to publish before submitting.

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Poetry

*NEW* In addition to sending your submission email with all the required attachments and information, you will also need to complete the corresponding Google Form. (In order for your submission to be considered complete, we will need to have received both your email and the Google Form).

If you are submitting to the POETRY category, please click HERE to complete the Google Form.

Guidelines

We will consider a maximum of two (2) poems per person per submission period. There are no length restrictions.

Visual poetry (vispo) and other layout-based poetry submissions may be submitted in PDF rather than Word documents.

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Prose

*NEW* In addition to sending your submission email with all the required attachments and information, you will also need to complete the corresponding Google Form. (In order for your submission to be considered complete, we will need to have received both your email and the Google Form).

If you are submitting to the PROSE category (fiction or nonfiction), please click HERE to complete the Google Form.

Guidelines

For fiction and nonfiction, we will accept a maximum of 3000 words total in each genre.

(e.g. Three 1000 word nonfiction pieces, or anything that adds up to 3000 words, OR one 3000 word piece.)

Please keep in mind that if it is on the longer side, it must earn its length—the piece should be as long as it needs to be.

Do not send us a pieces over the word count, they will not be considered. If your piece is slightly over, we highly suggest you do another edit to trim out the extra words. In our experience this often makes the piece stronger.

We aim to publish high quality, thought-provoking, literary fiction and creative nonfiction.

Unless your piece purposefully breaks form conventions (which we are all for!) it should be professionally formatted with proper punctuation, indented paragraphs, etc.

We do not publish genre fiction (fantasy, horror, sci-fi, mystery, romance, etc.), articles, academic essays, writing for children or YA, so please don’t send them to us.

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Hybrid/Experimental

Have a piece that’s not easily categorized? Experimenting with a new form? We’d love to give your work a home—we love those strange beings in between!

*NEW* In addition to sending your submission email with all the required attachments and information, you will also need to complete the corresponding Google Form. (In order for your submission to be considered complete, we will need to have received both your email and the Google Form).

In your email, please do your best to describe your piece (i.e.; poem/essay or visual poetry, etc.).

If you are submitting to the HYBRID/EXPERIMENTAL category, please click HERE to complete the Google Form.

Guidelines

We will accept a maximum of 3000 words total.

(e.g. Three 1000 word hybrid pieces, or anything that adds up to 3000 words, OR one 3000 word piece.)

Please keep in mind that if it is on the longer side, it must earn its length—the piece should be as long as it needs to be.

Do not send us a pieces over the word count, they will not be considered. If your piece is slightly over, we highly suggest you do another edit to trim out the extra words. In our experience this often makes the piece stronger.

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Art

We feature one artist per issue, so please send a sample of the portfolio or collection of work you’d like us to consider (five to ten pieces).

Art work can be sent to us in various formats (i.e.; PDF, jpeg) or share a Google Drive folder with us. If you have a website with more artwork from your portfolio you might want to include that as well.

We usually publish 8 – 10 pieces, including cover art and work inside the issue. We prefer publishing pieces that have similar theme or style. You can check out some of the art we have published in the past on our excerpt pages.  

Send artwork submissions to untetheredsubmissions [at] gmail [dot] com. Please note, you do not need to complete a Google Form if you are submitting artwork.

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You may submit pieces in all categories as long as you follow the guidelines for each type of submission. *Please send separate emails and files attachments for each genre.

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Payment for Publication

Contributors will receive a $20 CAD honourarium OR one (1) copy of the issue in which the contributor’s work appears.