SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Inspired by the mission and role of the town common, an egalitarian gathering place, The Common aims to foster the global exchange of diverse ideas and experiences. As such, we welcome and encourage submissions from writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, LGBTQIA+-identifying, immigrant, international, and/or otherwise from communities underrepresented in U.S. literary magazines and journals.
We seek stories, essays, poems, and dispatches that embody a strong sense of place: pieces in which the setting is crucial to character, narrative, mood, and language. We receive many submissions about traveling in foreign countries and discourage writers from submitting conventional travelogues in which narrators report on experiences abroad without reflecting on larger themes.
To learn more about The Common and its editorial vision, check out these interviews with Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker.
READING PERIODS
STORIES, ESSAYS, POETRY, and TRANSLATIONS:
- March 1 – June 1
- September 1 – December 1
- Subscribers may submit year-round for free
DISPATCHES: All dispatch submissions are accepted year-round.
IMAGES: We are not currently accepting unsolicited submissions for images or art.
All prose pieces receive 3 reads by our reading staff, before going to an editor for a decision. While this guarantees that your work will be carefully considered, we regret that it also leads to longer wait times. We appreciate your patience!
WE DO NOT ACCEPT EMAIL OR PAPER SUBMISSIONS
(Paper submissions will not be returned to submitters, email submissions will not be read.)
All submissions must be received though Submittable.
Subscribers may submit their work, in any genre, year-round for free! If you are a subscriber, please choose the Subscriber Submission genre.
Are you familiar with the work we publish? Check out the latest issues of The Common.
