Submissions

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Want to submit? Scroll down for our submission guidelines.

We publish emerging and established writers. We are based in Eastern Iowa’s Creative Corridor, and writers from all over the world are encouraged to submit. There is a place for your creative work, and we hope that we are one of those places. Our editors are compassionate, creative souls who invite all writers and artists to share their work here.

Benefits of submitting your work to Backchannels: we let you know when we have received your work, we keep in touch throughout our reading process, our editors work with you as needed to prepare for publication, we give personalized feedback to all who submit work. Finally, we value all work that you share with us. We know it takes magic to create and even more magic to share your work with the world.

To keep things running smoothly, we have a bunch of guidelines for our contributors. Please follow them carefully. We want to consider all work, and to do so, we need you to help us out by following the guidelines. Because we receive so many submissions and try to respond as personally as possible, work that doesn’t meet the guidelines will likely be sent back to you.

We chatted with Jim Harrington about submission content here: https://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/2020/10/Backchannels.html

For all work:

• Submit all work as a MS Word attachment via email to backchannelsjournal@gmail.com. (Please use the contact form for inquiries only, not submissions.)
• There is no fee for submissions.
• We accept only one submission in one genre per writer/artist in each submission window. If you work in multiple genres, send us something now and something in the next submission period.
• Use Times New Roman, font size 12, double spaced for bios and writing. Creative (read: weird) fonts don’t always come across. Make your point and create your style using language, not fonts.
• All submissions must be made by the artists themselves.
• All written submissions should be original English language works; we do not accept translations.
• We accept only original work that has not been previously published. The occasional exception is work published on your personal blog; please note that in your submission.
• We do accept simultaneous submissions (work sent to more than one publication and awaiting review) but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
• You retain the rights to your work; by submitting your material to us you are giving us first publishing rights and non-exclusive electronic permissions for online archival purposes. If you publish your work elsewhere later, we ask that you credit first publication to Backchannels.
• Please include a short bio (about 350 characters) in the body of your submission email. Please start with your name and use third person. Keep places/published works to a reasonable number—pick your favorites. Free to promote yourself, including Twitter or Facebook accounts. Let us know how you heard about us. Finally, please indicate how you want your work to be labeled (poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, essay, non-fiction, multi-genre…the possibilities are probably not endless, but there are a lot of them.)
  • Example: Jamilla Smith is a writer from Ontario, Canada. Her work appears in Green Lantern Review, The Last Straw, Best American Short Stories (2015) and others. Her latest book is Poems I Never Wrote (Panda Attack Press, 2017). She can be found on Twitter at @jsmithwrites or www.jamillasmith.com.
• All submissions will be acknowledged within a month of receipt. Our acceptance response time is usually 3-6 months. We respond to submissions on a rolling basis.
• With your submission, within your email, please let us know how you heard about us. This helps us target our efforts.

Poetry submissions:

• Submit up to three poems not longer than ten pages total. All poems should be edited and complete. We cannot accept poems that still need revision.
• Poetry should be single spaced within stanzas and double spaced between. Indents and multiple spaces may not translate to our online format; creative spacing or formatting demands may cause problems with publication.
• Carefully edit your poems. All poems should be in form with intentional capitalization, punctuation, and word choice. We rarely accept updated poems during our reading or editing periods.
• All kinds of poetry are welcome; we care about form, theme, and function. We want to laugh, cry, chortle, and say, “What the…?” when we read your poems.

Prose submissions:

• Fiction, nonfiction, personal essay, memoir, creative nonfiction or multi-genre work should be doubled-spaced with no tabs or no double spaces after periods.
• Prose submissions must not be more than 3500 words.

Visual art submissions:

• Images should be high quality but resolution only needs to be 72 dpi for online display.
• We invite visual artists to submit five images per submission.
• We LOVE original work in any medium. In addition to your bio (follow guidelines above), please include a short note about the medium you work in and creative process.

About content:

We are always interested in strong story lines, characterization, and dialogue. Here’s the deal: we like sex as much as the next person, but we are not publishing erotica or pornography. Also a note about sexual violence: if it is a part of your work, it needs to be contextually and socially important; if you’re not sure what that means, you can always email for additional clarification.

We invite work from all voices and experiences, especially those outside the mainstream. If you create work about race, racism, or sexualities, we highly recommend you write from experience or use care and consideration of your subject matter and understand the complexities and social and historical context of what you take on.

All told, we like a bit of everything: surrealism, realism, post-modern, Victorian, post-post-modern…whatever label you’d like to use. Intrigue us. Inspire us. Confound us.

HEY! If you have questions about submitting – ASK US. Shoot us an email and ask! We are always nice – hey, we live in Iowa, it’s a requirement here. WE WANT to publish your work.