Guernica is Open for Submissions!
We are excited to consider your work for publication. Please carefully review our submission guidelines before submitting.
General Guidelines
- Submission Platform: All submissions must be sent via Submittable. We do not accept submissions via email or postal mail.
- Familiarize Yourself: The best way to understand our editorial approach is by reading recent issues of Guernica. We encourage you to explore the magazine before submitting.
- Accepted Genres: We welcome submissions in the following genres:
- Fiction
- Nonfiction (personal essays, reportage, etc.)
- Poetry
- Visual art (illustrations, photography, etc.)
- Interviews
Please note: we do not accept pitches. Only completed pieces will be considered. - Original Work: We consider only previously unpublished work. (Note: We do consider previously unpublished translations of work that has been published in another language.)
- Length: While we have no strict word limit, most pieces we publish fall within the 2,000–7,000-word range, with the majority around 4,000–5,000 words.
- Cover Letter: Please include a brief cover letter with your submission that contains:
- Your name
- A short bio
- Contact information
- The title of your submission
- Simultaneous Submissions: Simultaneous submissions are accepted. However, please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
- Response Time: We aim to respond to submissions within 6 or so months.
Thank you for considering Guernica for your work. We look forward to reading your submissions!
Before submitting, please review the general guidelines at the top of this page.
This form is for journalism/reportage, essays, memoir, criticism, and argument of 2,500 words or more. Please send the full manuscript of an original prose work you would like us to consider.
If yours is a piece of journalism/reportage, please add REPORTAGE to the subject line.
As a reminder, we do not accept pitches, interviews, or book reviews, although we welcome longform critical essays that engage several texts/ideas in a single piece.
Before submitting, please review the general guidelines at the top of this page.
This form is for fiction submissions, which should be no fewer than 2,000 and no more than 7,000 words. Please submit only one story, or one excerpt from an unpublished novel, at a time. Works in translation are especially welcome as long as you can convey the rights to publish the piece.
We do not consider flash fiction; submissions sent in hard copy or via email; and or serialized longer works.
Before submitting, please review the general guidelines at the top of this page.
This form is for submitting poetry. You may submit up to five poems at one time, but please do not submit more than one poetry submission at a time to Guernica.
We only publish original, unpublished poetry. Your work must not have been published elsewhere, including on your personal website or blog. Work in translation may have appeared elsewhere, but not in English, and permissions should be secured before submitting.
As a reminder:
- Simultaneous submissions are accepted; please notify us if the poem is published elsewhere.
- Guernica will hold exclusive print and digital rights to the published poem for 90 days, after which our rights become non-exclusive; your poem will remain on our website in perpetuity.
Guernica Global Spotlights excerpts previously published work outside the Western corridors of literary taste-making and prestige. We aim to highlight global innovation and experimentation in fiction and nonfiction – especially when it blurs the boundaries between genres – and to boost independent publishers and their writers. We welcome works in translation, including those that retain inflections of the original.
In fiction, we’re looking for short stories, novel excerpts, and hybrid texts. We welcome fiction born of different literary traditions that refract and reflect upon their contexts – fiction that is adventurous, unapologetic, experimental. We are interested in short stories, novel excerpts, and hybrid texts.
In nonfiction, we’re looking for essays, reportage, memoir, criticism, and hybrid forms – but we’re especially keen to see nonfiction that pushes against established forms or blurs boundaries, either by building new modes or complicating old ones.
Submissions in either genre should be between 3,000 and 7,000 words, published within the last year by magazines, zines, and independent publishing houses. We’re interested in work being written and published outside of the US and Canada, Western Europe, and Australia, but we are keenly interested in work by Indigenous writers in those geographies. (If your submission was originally published in the US, Canada, Western Europe, or Australia, by a non-Indigenous press, it will be declined without review.)
Writers, editors, and translators from these publications are eligible to submit work. Please include the name and contact information of the rights-holder (the person authorized to allow Guernica to re-publish the work in whole or in part). Please also specify which genre you’re submitting for. We aim to respond to all submissions quickly, and in no later than eight weeks.
Guernica offers an honorarium of $100, to the rights-holder, for Spotlights.
If you have an interview to share, please submit the interview in its entirety. We do not accept interview pitches at this time. In your cover letter, please describe why you think the interview would be a good fit for readers of Guernica. Interviews should also contain an introduction. We encourage you to check our Interviews archive for examples!
Guernica publishes art-related writing that engages with a wide range of timely critical, cultural and political issues. We promote perspectives that demonstrate an international outlook and a strong commitment to examining art’s interaction with the world at large.
We prefer full-length, previously unpublished submissions between 500 and 2,500 words. Only highly original, innovative and well-considered pitches are considered.
Please note that we do not accept academic essays, book or exhibition reviews.
Art and Film Submissions
Video submissions should be less than 8 minutes in length and permanently accessible on a third party hosting site such as YouTube or Vimeo. Please send a link to no more than one work.
Artist and project profiles can take the form studio visits, portfolio views, and short interviews. Please send no more than 10-15 images along with a 150-word description of the project submitted for publication.