Submissions

Submission Guidelines for PLUMb

ABOUT US

PLUMb is a semi-annual journal of arts and culture and accepts submissions in the following categories: Poetry, Short Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, Movie and Book Reviews, Short Essays, and photographs of Visual and Performing Arts. All manuscripts, solicited or unsolicited, are subject to review by the editorial board and may be published or not according to the editors’ discretion. At present, all submissions must be sent electronically as Microsoft Word™ Documents and .jpeg images attached to emails (address below).

PLUMb assumes no responsibility for the acknowledgement, return, or publication of unsolicited manuscripts. PLUMb reserves the right to edit all submissions for length, style, and accuracy. By submitting to PLUMb you agree to allow us one-time publication rights as well as perpetual archiving on our website. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. At this time, PLUMb is not a paying market, but will give two copies to contributors in lieu of payment.

THEME

Each issue is governed by a theme. The themes for coming issues are printed along with the issue’s publication information. Except in the cases of movie or book reviews, for which timeliness is more important, writers should try to allow the theme to prompt their work. This does not mean that the theme must be explicit, but that your piece grows out of, or develops, the theme.

CRITERIA FOR SHORT FICTION, CREATIVE NON-FICTION, ESSAYS & POETRY

All prose should be typed and double-spaced and should be no longer than 600 words (about 2 pages or shorter). Longer pieces may displace several shorter pieces, so the longer the story the greater its quality should be. Poetry should be typed in the format in which it is intended to be printed. Please submit no more than three poems at a time. Writers should wait for a response to a submission before submitting again.

In the case of movie, book, or theatre reviews, or artist or writer interviews, please query first. Help with query writing can be found here.

CRITERIA FOR PHOTOGRAPHS

All images should be sent in JPEG format, 8” x 10” at 300 dpi (filesize less than 5 MB).

TIPS FOR WRITERS

While we are a Christian Publication and regard Scripture as authoritative, it is important that writers learn to take risks, to ask challenging questions, to pose alternatives to ideas long-held or long-neglected. We do not publish testimonials per se, but biographical insertions which are important to the narrative are certainly appropriate.

We do not publish essays and articles that are confessional — that is, creative non-fictional accounts of the journey of the self — nor do we accept writing that treats its subject matter superficially, or, conversely, that would be more suitable in a specialized academic, refereed, or professional journal.

We accept poetry of any subject, form or point of view, but are looking for fresh, vital verse. Poetry characterized by simple rhyme and meter is unlikely to be seen as dynamic or challenging; at the same time, free verse poetry which reads like prose may be seen as unpolished.

In all cases, quality is the chief criterion of publication.

STYLE CONSISTENCY

1. Format: Times New Roman Font, size 12, 1.25 inch margins, double-spaced. This consistency helps editors in their review of submissions.

2. Dashes: take care to differentiate between hyphens (-) and dashes (―)All dashes should be “em dashes,” like this ― with space before and after the dash. Your word processing program should join and lengthen your dash for you automatically, or you may need to go to “insert”, and then “symbol” (in MS Word; other programs may differ).

3. Ellipses: Use space before and after, like this … but, generally, no ellipses are needed at the beginning and end of a direct quote (unless needed to avoid misrepresentation).

4. Line indents: Consistency within each piece is always preferred.

5. Paragraph indents: Entire blocks of text may be indented for a purpose (e.g., to display a letter within a piece of fiction or a long quotation within a review). Consistency of indent size is preferred for all pieces.

6. Single or double quotation marks: The American style is for double as the first order, and then single within double. Canadian style tends toward the American style, and for PLUMb we prefer the American style.

7. Italics is preferred for titles even if the author uses underlining or quotation marks.

8. Curly rather than straight quotation marks and apostrophes are preferred in all cases.

9. Spelling choices: Canadian (Canadian Oxford) spelling is the preference of the PLUMb editorial staff.

Send submissions to plumbplumb@gmail.com.

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