If you have questions about the kind of work we accept please read over our Mission and About pages. We are interested in submissions where contributors do not to dull the edges of their art, because the violence of our time is not dull. We ask that artists not spare their readers, because life does not spare us. We assume creative acts as a responsibility to the community, to the powers of imagination, to memory, to story. To be more honest, we must be creatively ruthless.
We especially encourage submissions from marginalized voices, such as Queer, Trans* and Two Spirit writers as well as, Black, Indigenous, Writers of Color and those from the Global South. decomp is committed to centring your voices, please do not self-reject.
[Guidelines]
We invite submissions of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and art/media. All submissions should be sent in using our online submittable platform.
- For poetry: You can submit up to 3 poems at a time
- For Prose: 8,000 words maximum. If you write pieces that are under 1,000 words, feel free to submit two.
- Art/other media: We accept art across all mediums as long as they can be uploaded in JPG, mp3 or mp4 files
We publish three issues a year and submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis.
We only accept previously unpublished work and yes, we consider websites, blogs, youtube channels, etc., as previously published.
We readily encourage simultaneous submissions, all we ask is that you notify us when another market accepts your work. If another market accepts one or more of your submissions [congratulations], please write a note in Submittable instead of withdrawing the whole submission.
Submitters have the option of sending in a 3-4 line biography alongside their work. This is your chance to tell us a bit about yourself and your art. It is by no means a requirement. We ask for this because we want to give writers the ability to bring more of their full selves to the work that they publish. We are interested in you just as much as we are interested in your art. Feel free to include a link to your website and your email address, in the case that your work is accepted we will publish these as well unless you ask us not to.
We are a team made up of students and volunteers who try our best to respond to submissions sorta, kinda fast, while attempting not to fall into capitalism's constant demand for productivity, so give us around 90 days.
[Payment, Edits, and Legal Matters]
Unfortunately, we cannot offer payment for accepted work at this time even though we really wish we could pay you.
If your work is accepted, it may be subject to minor editing and copyrighted upon publication.
For accepted work to be published, writers agree to automatically grant decomp First North American Serial Rights which means we will have the right to publish your work first, as well as Archival Rights which allows us to keep your work archived online (for-ev-er). Rights revert back to the author upon publication. If a piece of yours is reprinted online or in print, we ask that you please mention it appeared in decomp first.
We won’t ever share or sell your personal information, and we leave it up to you how much or how little of yourself you want to share along with your work.
We are excited to read, admire, and become enamoured with your submissions. Remember, the creative tools handed down to us, the tools of resistance, have not been forgotten. They have only undergone decomposition.
Who is allowed to be healthy and at whose expense? How might an encounter with a medical professional feel routine for some, and for others, horrific?
In the western settler-colonial context, “good health” has historically been a measure of proximity to a specific set of identity categories: abled-bodied, cis-heterosexual, virtuous, respectable, white, male. Scientific and positivist inquiry make promises of a universal objectivity that awards the researcher, the scientist, and the medical professional a veil of anonymity and authority over the studied subject(s). Horrifying accounts of medical experimentation on Black female slaves or Indigenous children in residential schools are a part of a long legacy of violence at the center of the current medical model and healthcare system.
This curated e-zine from decomp journal will help show that the genre of horror extends beyond the superficial thrill of slasher films and campfire stories, to ask how genres of horror (the weird, the macabre, and the supernatural) can offer a complex site of healing, cultural production, and empowering social commentary. Horror storytelling in the form of folklore, mythology, spirituality, and traditional medicine has also functioned as a site of healing and knowledge for many communities, and can be inextricable from collective understandings and embodiments of health and wellness. For the Anishinaabe, the Wendigo warns against the accumulation of wealth and encourages offerings as medicine, and for writers like Dan Rabarts (Ngati Porou), when the strong connection between land and the health of the Māori is threatened, it is a source of horrifying devastation (embodied through monsters, demons, or spirits).
We encourage submissions that use horror storytelling as a powerful epistemological tool to understand how we source individual and communal wellness, and how we can make powerful critiques that speak back to systems of oppression that have deadly health consequences.
Submissions might consider:
- How might the aesthetic/genre of horror offer a way to articulate experiences of oppression or discrimination within health care systems?
- What are alternative ways of knowing and practice, rooted in the holistic and/or metaphysical, that are related to health and healing?
- How might representations of health and illness in horror storytelling (i.e., films, television series, and written/oral works) serve particular narratives (and how might this be critically interpreted)?
For our ezine/digital publication, we are accepting submissions that include (but are not limited to):
- Creative prose (e.g. Poetry, short stories, essays, fiction and nonfiction)
- Visual art
- Ceremony
- Video and audio work
- Oral traditions
- Film analysis
- Academic essays
- Personal essays
- Multimedia and experimental projects (e.g. interactive and/or performance work)
- Textile work/weaving
Submissions are welcome from folks around the globe.
We encourage you to think creatively and critically, within and beyond the aforementioned mediums. We ask you to try leaning into discomfort as a way to unsettle and challenge oppressive frameworks and systems (which may include “traditional academic convention”). We ask you to create in meaningful, imperfect, and authentic ways.
Lastly, we ask that you think about horror in all its transformative and complicated potential: “Horror is a window that has options, regardless of the genre you’re writing your horror within, to expose some of the rot that surrounds us, and putting it on the page might prompt the reader to think a little differently about things when they put the book down” - (Dan Rabarts).
Submission & Guidelines: Submit your work after reviewing our guidelines at https://decompjournal.com/submit
Note: decomp journal uses a third-party platform called Submittable to process submissions. We encourage sending submissions before the deadline in case of any technical issues.
DEADLINE TO SUBMIT: April 12, 2024 @ 11:59 PM PT
Questions or concerns? Contact us:
Email: decomp.magazine@gmail.com
Website: https://decompjournal.com
Instagram/Twitter: @decompjournal
Facebook: decompmagazine