Issue 5: Submission Guidelines

Issue 4: The Chronic

HELD Magazine Issue #5 is looking for Creative Writing and Visual Art that explores The Chronic. 

The chronic haunts, obsesses, repeats. It rejects termination and closure, even against the goals of its subjects. What is chronic may manifest in the body, brain, environment, and society of your characters and/or world. The chronic is multiplicitous— it can be a collective or individual experience, external or internal, or an amalgamation of both. The chronic, at its core, remains ambiguous in influence: uniting and dividing, confounding and revealing.

Where in life do you see inescapable patterns, systems, motifs? How do these chronic systems or symptoms affect bonds between people and places, both positively and negatively?

Do not necessarily interpret the prompt literally. We are excited by ideas which relate to the theme in ways that may not appear immediately obvious.

We are looking for poetry, fiction, flash, nonfiction, and graphic art submissions that are between 1-5 pages depending on the genre; submissions must be a single story, essay, poem, excerpt, or work of art that can stand alone. We accept many forms of experimental work as well including comics, mixed media, scripts or more. Surprise us!

Who can submit: Open to all. Please be aware we prioritize contributors who identify as Black, Indigenous, Racialized and Marginalized. People who identify as 2SLGBTQ+, Deaf and disabled people, as well as those living with mental illness are encouraged to submit. We will ensure that at least 70% of contributors identify with these communities. We also prioritize contributors who have not been previously published. You are not discouraged from submitting if you do not identify as belonging to one of these groups.

Please email us at heldmagazine[@]gmail[.]com for any accessibility needs during the application process.

To Submit: 

Step 1: Review submission guidelines and format/title your document accordingly. Please title your submission document WorkTitle_Type of Submission. For instance: StarWars_Fiction

Step 2: Fill out this cover page submission form, which includes your submission document upload. 

General Details:

Please submit writing and art that is polished and ready for publication. Please only submit works that are written primarily in English. 

We read work anonymously. Please refrain from including identifying details, such as your name, within your document submission. Your work will be auto-rejected if you submit with your name in the document.

We don’t accept multiple submissions, please only submit to a single category. 

We allow simultaneous submissions, but please immediately withdraw work that has been accepted elsewhere. Let us know by email. We do not accept work that has been previously published. Only original, unpublished submissions will be read. 

We pay contributors $50CAD each. 

Cheques will be mailed to North American contributors. All other contributors must be capable of receiving wire transfers.

If your submission is several pieces, we may choose one or more of the pieces to publish. 

At this time, we only publish online.

We will close submissions on March 16th or when we receive 40 submissions in each genre. 

AI Policy: HELD Magazine will not publish works written, designed, augmented, or edited with artificial intelligence tools or chatbots. 

Once you’ve filled out this cover page submission form and submitted it we will receive your submission directly. It is not necessary to email us a copy.

To help our team centre the contributions of Black, Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+, Deaf and disabled creators, and those living with mental illness, we encourage you to self identify in your cover page (only if you feel comfortable). HELD will not make your identity public; if accepted, we will ask for a “contributor bio” that will be published in the journal and you can identify yourself there if you so choose. If maintaining your anonymity is necessary for you to publish, please let us know in your cover page. For such submissions that are accepted we can publish them as “anonymous.” 

If you have any questions about the submission process please get in touch.

heldmagazine[@]gmail[.]com

If we accept your work:

If we accept your submission, we will not take a revised version.

If we have edits to make, we will send a document of suggested edits to you. You will have a set amount of time to go through these edits and get back to us. You will have final say over what edits are approved or denied. If you do not get back to us within the given amount of time, we will publish your piece with the suggested edits.

We pay contributors $50CAD each. Cheques will be mailed to North American contributors. All other contributors must be capable of receiving wire transfers. If you cannot accept this method of payment, we will be unable to publish your work.