No longer accepting submissions for Issue 2.
Students in Carleton’s “Studies in Publishing: Editing and Producing a Literary Magazine” course will be responsible for curating Sumac’s second issue during the Winter 2024 term. Issue 2 will be launched in April 2024.
Submission deadline: December 31st, 2023
Who Can Submit
Sumac Literary Magazine publishes work by people connected to Carleton University and/or the land it is on. Students, alumni, faculty, staff, community members, and anyone with links to our campus or community are welcome to submit their work for consideration. If you walk your dog along the waterfront, drive past the Carleton sign each morning, once applied to Carleton, or ever attended a Ravens vs Gee-Gees event (for example), your submissions are welcome.
A Note on Our Commitment
At Sumac, we wish to uplift creative voices within the Carleton community, including those that experience marginalization and are too often underrepresented. Therefore, we encourage submissions from LGBTQ2S+ folks, racialized people, Indigenous people (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis), neurodivergent folks, disabled people, and persons with intersectional identities.
While we do not require that submitters disclose information about their identities, we welcome you to share your lived experience and/or to include a note on your identity, if you feel comfortable or feel it is appropriate to do so. We believe that lived experience is expertise and that it provides important insights into the unique nuances, challenges, and perspectives that inform how each of us know and interact with the world. If included in your submission, this information may not only contextualize your work, but will also allow the Sumac team to create a magazine that deliberately reflects and speaks to the diversity of our ever-growing community.
General Guidelines
Submissions are only accepted by email. Please send submissions to [email protected]. Note that this email will not be frequently monitored in the Fall 2023 term. You should expect to hear from us about our decision during the Winter 2024 term.
In the body of the email, please write a cover letter that includes your name, contact information, and a brief biographical statement in the third person. The biographical statement should include a brief description of your connection to Carleton University, its campus, or the land it is on. Cover letters should also include the titles of the pieces you have enclosed, and a sense of your publication experience, if any. Please include a word count for fiction, non-fiction, and creative non-fiction pieces.
Send your work as an attachment to your email submission; work should not be copy-pasted into the body of your email. Please submit your work in DOC or DOCX format. If your work contains special formatting or visual elements, please send your work as a PDF. If you are submitting multiple pieces (i.e. 3 poems) please send each piece in a separate document. Please use a standard font such as Times New Roman.
You may submit in various genres, but please send separate emails for each genre you are submitting (i.e. submit 3 poems in one email, a 6,000-word creative non-fiction essay in another email, and a 750-word flash fiction piece in a third email). Please specify the genre of the piece(s) you are submitting in the subject line of your email.
Suitable work should be original and unpublished either in print or online. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please update us as soon as possible with any changes to the status of your submission. Accepted work will be published either/or both in print and online, so you will be asked to give us first North American serial print rights and limited, non-exclusive digital rights. Authors retain full copyright for works published.
Poetry Submission Guidelines:
Submissions must not exceed 3 poems or 360 lines. Do not double-space unless the formatting of the poem intentionally uses blank spaces between every line.
Fiction/Non-Fiction/Creative Non-Fiction Submission Guidelines:
Submissions must not exceed 6,000 words for a single piece OR one to three shorter pieces of up to 750 words each. Double-space and indent the first line of new paragraphs. Please specify at the top of the first page the number of words in the piece.
Other Genre Submission Guidelines:
Submissions of an excerpt from a play must not exceed 6,000 words and may be single spaced.
Submissions of translated creative work (i.e. short stories or poetry) must follow the guidelines of the genre of the work. A permissions letter from the copyright holder (usually the author or the original-language publisher) may be required to publish work in translation.
In lieu of submissions of visual art, please query by email with a link to your online portfolio or a website where your artwork may be viewed.
