First, a note from our editors
Writers Resist was founded with a goal of immediacy in the resistance movement against autocracy and censorship. Our writers and artists often resist literally as atrocities occur unchecked.
While we’ve grown in volunteers to attempt to match the volume of submissions, we’re facing an ever-increasing backlog of important works, despite our valiant attempts to keep up. Yet, we don’t want our writers and artists to wait a year to be published.
After a lot of thought and discussion, we’ve decided to increase the number of submissions we’ll publish per issue, to avoid the backlog and wait time, while we exercise a little more consideration in how many works we can manage to thoughtfully publish. It’s a challenging balancing act, and we will continue to be a necessary platform for dissenting voices.
Thank you all for your valued support. Resist!
Please note our new submissions and publication schedule
Submissions are closed in February, May, August, November and December. Our volunteer editors need time to review submissions, edit them, write a few words of their own, and contemplate their navels.
In reverse, we are open for submissions, January, March, April, June, July, September and October.
We publish quarterly in March, June, September, and December.
Please read ALL of these guidelines before submitting!
We are eager to see original writings and artwork that can reasonably be described as expressions of resistance, whether poetry, fiction, narrative nonfiction, or digital images. We are also eager to see submissions that celebrate a step toward social justice anywhere around the globe.
We do not accept previously published works. This includes publication on social media platforms, blogs, etc.
If your submission is accepted, please wait three months from your publication date before submitting again.
We publish with the intent that the works will be shared far and wide, so please submit only if you are comfortable making your published submissions available to the world via a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.
We know how lovely it is to be paid for our art. Consequently, we offer a heartfelt pittance—an honorarium of $10—per accepted submission.
Folks who are able decline their honoraria are embraced in virtual gratitude.
Honoraria are sent via PayPal only. Consequently, for you to receive an honorarium for a piece we publish, you must have a PayPal account.
Our editors are all volunteer, so, if you’d like to submit your writing, please help keep their work to a minimum. You can accomplish this by thoughtfully doing the following:
- Prepare your submission as described below. Really. Do this, please.
- Send only one submission at a time, and wait to hear back about a submission before submitting again.
- Simultaneous submissions are fine, but if your submission is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw it from our submission manager.
- Make sure your work is indeed an expression or celebration of resistance—or both.
- Read your written submission out loud often, revise it, and read it aloud again. Give it to a friend or two to read and revise it again. Read it out loud one more time, revise it, proof it, and then submit it. You get the idea.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: Please include your name, your contact information and your short bio in the same document as your submission—and your website URL and any social media presence you’d like to share with our readers.
- Poetry submissions: You may include a maximum of three poems in one submission. Please submit them in a single MSWord document with your name, contact information, and a short bio.
- Fiction and narrative nonfiction submissions: You may submit one piece of fiction or narrative nonfiction with a maximum of 2,500 words. Please submit it in an MSWord document with your name, contact information, and a short bio.
- Digital images: SUBMIT IMAGES ONLY VIA EMAIL (do not submit images via our submission system). You may submit a maximum of three images, in JPEG format, with your last name and first name as the file name. EX: cubbins.barth.jpeg. Please include with your submission an MSWord document with your name, contact information, a short bio, and the image’s title.
NOTE: Images must be submitted via email to WritersResist@gmail.com.
Please submit writings via our free, automated submission system.
Also, please note our apology to Taiwanese authors, artists, and poets: We are unable to change the offensive “country” language in the submission form, but please know we understand.
Again, please submit digital images to our email, WritersResist@gmail.com.