Submission Guidelines
About Place Journal is published twice a year, in spring and fall. A new Call for Submissions is posted twice a year. Please review the current call and follow any specific genres called for in the upcoming issue.
Work can include:
- Poetry: up to 3 pieces which do not exceed 50 lines each. Acceptable file types include doc, docx, odt & rtf. If your poetry submission contains special formatting, we suggest submitting a PDF in addition to your Word doc.
- Fiction, essays, creative nonfiction and other prose: up to 3 pieces which do not exceed 4000 words each. Acceptable file types include doc, docx, odt & rtf.
- Audio/Visual/Hybrid artwork: up to 5 photographs, paintings, prints, comics pages, or other forms of A/V art (e.g. video essay, photo essay, spoken word). Acceptable file types include jpg & tif for still art; mp3, m4a, ogg & wav for audio; and avi, flv, m4v, mov, mp4, webm and wmv for video. Please include the size and media of each artwork with your list of works, if applicable. Visual work should not exceed 1275 px in width. Video and audio submissions should not exceed 10 minutes.
- The total number of submitted pieces cannot exceed 5, even if your submission includes items from several genre categories.
Please provide a numbered list with the title of each work you are submitting (1 to 5 works) in the field of the Submittable form where indicated. If you are submitting audio/visual artwork, please include the artwork size and media, if applicable, as part of your list.
Each submission must be accompanied by a document in doc, docx or rtf format that provides a bio for each collaborator or your group. Bios must be in the third person and not exceed 150 words each. A single artist statement, when relevant, may be included in this document and should also not exceed 150 words. Please include your website, Twitter and Instagram links if desired.
By submitting, you guarantee you hold the rights to the work, and you grant About Place Journal the rights to publish the submitted work with first serial rights (FNASR). After publication, rights revert to the author. Original, previously unpublished work only. All pieces must be submitted through Submittable.
Creative collaboration is an opportunity to summon and practice ways of being in the world and with each other that challenge myths of exceptional individualism as constructed within colonial and capitalist contexts. This type of collaboration can acknowledge and affirm that making art is not an isolated event, and has the potential to share and/or redefine power between artists and the communities in/with which they work. The dynamic and responsive work that emerges from entangling minds, perspectives, and positionalities speaks and models on the page or screen, through the body or soundwaves, the care and imagination that is integral to community building and kin-making. Creative collaboration is a method and commitment to seeding and nurturing webs of knowledge, histories, practices, and relationships with each other and the places that are sacred to us.
Guided by this understanding, the Spring 2025 issue of About Place Journal invites submissions that contemplate what it means to collaborate with others through practices and processes that are careful and care-full, that is collaborations that are cautious at various stages and shaped by an ethics of care between the artists, for their communities, and throughout the process of co-creating. Submissions are open January 1 - March 10, 2025.
Keeping in mind the core values of the Black Earth Institute to use Art to “promote an understanding of the interconnectedness of all living beings and this earth we share” and to “work toward a society based on Justice, Spirit, and Earth Centeredness…” this issue invites joint submissions from artistic collaborators that make transparent the practices, processes, and creations that connect them to each other, honor the earth, engage with spirit, and promote/fight for justice in ways that require careful and care-full attention to individual and communal needs and desires.
We are interested in submissions that define community and care, and that consider how/why collaboration necessitates careful or care-full approaches to creating, re-vision relationships with art, artists, community, nature, and/or the divine.
Questions to explore include, but are not limited to: How does collaboration lead to care and what connects the two? How does conflict within collaboration lead to new ways to care about each other? What practices shape your work as an individual? As a collaborative unit? As a community? How are care-focused interspecies or inter-technological collaborations imagined or practiced? How does engaging with spirit or the spirits shape your creative practice? How, when, and why do we share our work with each other?
We welcome your poetry, prose, visual art, audio, and hybrid forms of collaborative expression. Interviews, recorded dialogue, or other forms that document creative collaboration are also welcomed. Submissions from collaborative partners or groups will be prioritized over those of individuals.