PRISM international publishes exciting, original, literary material from established and emerging writers in Canada and around the world.
We accept submissions year-round. Due to the high volume of submissions we receive each month, reply times range between six to twelve months, depending on the time of year. We are currently experiencing a backlog. Please do not reach out to check on the status of your submission. Your submission remains under review unless marked “declined”. A good deal of our content is generated from our annual fiction, poetry, short forms and creative non-fiction contests. Please visit our contest page for more details.
If you encounter any issues using Submittable when trying to submit to a free category (for example black or indigenous entries) please send an email directly to one of the editors below.
Please note: PRISM does not accept submissions from current and incoming students and faculty of the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing (this includes the UBC Optional-Residency MFA Program). Work submitted by incoming students prior to their acceptance to the UBC School of Creative Writing, if still under consideration, must be withdrawn. In order to submit, UBC alumni cannot have taken a UBC School of Creative Writing course during the previous two years.
PRISM does not publish the same writer twice in a publication year.
GENERAL SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Submissions must be made through Submittable, as we do not accept submissions via email or mail (the only exception is for incarcerated writers). We charge a $3.00 reading fee per submission. Writers for whom the $3.00 fee is prohibitive are welcome to contact us directly about alternative methods of submission.
Please submit to only one genre at a time, and await a reply before submitting again. See the particular guidelines for each genre below.
Submissions should be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please specify the genre of your submission in your cover letter. All submissions should be set in Times New Roman, 12-point font.
Include in your cover letter your full contact information (including your email address) and a short bio.
Please note that we cannot accommodate re-submission or submission replacement requests.
We accept simultaneous submissions. If your piece is accepted elsewhere, please let us know immediately. We purchase first North American serial rights and pay $40 per printed page for prose and $45 per printed page for poetry. Contributors will receive two copies of the issue in which their work appears.
We encourage submissions from Indigenous writers, writers of colour, writers with disabilities, LGBTQQIP2SAA+ writers, and writers from other intersectional and marginalized groups, including low-income earners. If you identify as one or more of the above and would like to let us know, please mention it in your cover letter.
PROSE GUIDELINES
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Submit only one piece at a time, unless you are submitting flash fiction or non-fiction (under 1,000 words), in which case you may submit up to three pieces in a single document.
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Our recommended length for submissions is approximately 4,000 words or less. We have a limited page count per issue and aim to offer a platform for as many talented writers as possible. While we accept prose submissions of up to 25 pages (6,250 words), we must emphasize that it is only exceptional pieces of this length that will receive publication.
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Send original, unpublished literary essays, personal essays, hybrid-genre works, and literary journalism. Please note that we do not publish rhetorical, academic, or strictly journalistic non-fiction.
Click here to submit.
If you have any questions about these guidelines or a piece you’ve already submitted, please email Natasha Gauthier at prose@prismmagazine.ca.
POETRY GUIDELINES
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Submit up to four poems, to a maximum of six pages. Do NOT submit six one-page poems.
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We welcome cross-genre and interdisciplinary poetry and poetics.
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In your cover letter, please specify the number of poems you are submitting and list the titles of the poems.
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Poetry submissions should be typed and single-spaced. If you would like to submit poems with alternate spacing, please mention it in your cover letter and submit a PDF instead of a Word document.
Click here to submit poetry.
If you have any questions about these guidelines or a piece you’ve already submitted, please email Dora Prieto at poetry@prismmagazine.ca.
Translation
- Prism welcomes the best of translation into English from all over the world and offers compensation and contributor copies to original authors as well as the translators. Let us know if you’d like to see sample translator and original author contracts to get an idea of the information that we require. Such works must be undertaken with the permission of the original author. Please include a copy of the original work with your submission.
Poetry Translations
- We pay $45/printed page plus two mailed contributor copies, and $30/printed page to the original author plus two mailed contributor copies. PRISM may choose to publish original poems alongside translations, and this will be up to the editor to decide on a case-by-case basis.
Prose Translations
- We pay $40/printed page for prose translations plus two mailed contributor copies, and $25 per printed page to the original author up to $200 to the original authors plus two mailed contributor copies.
Cover Art
- We accept photography only, submitted by email in high-resolution PDF, TIF or PNG files. We pay $300 CAD for the cover of one issue, along with three copies of that issue. An image of the cover will also appear on our website, the British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers website, and the affiliated websites of Magazines Canada.
Please send photography submissions to Adrian Matias Bell, Managing Editor, at circulation@prismmagazine.ca.
Reasonable exceptions to our guidelines will be made for submissions from
writers in prison.
Reviews and Interviews
PRISM international welcomes review copies of high-quality literary fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, graphic novels, theatre, and chapbooks. We also accept pitches for interviews with local or international authors. If you’d like to do a review or interview for us, please contact our reviews editor Victoria McIntyre at reviews@prismmagazine.ca. We ask you to disclose any conflict of interest prior to submitting a review.
Reviews and interviews are published weekly on our website. We pay $60 per piece.
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[…] Submit […]
How do you submit $3.00 CAD. Is this the fee for submitting work?
Hi Joan. Submissions through submittable cost $3.00 CAD (there was a glitch on our account that made it USD by default but we’ve solved that). If you’re submitting by mail you only need to pay for postage. For everything else kindly follow the guidelines above. I hope this answers your question!
Good to know there’s an option to submit for only $3.00. Thanks!
[…] (I would be remiss in pointing out that if you don’t want to enter the contest, they accept regular submissions all the time, too.) […]
[…] Submit […]