Submit

Submissions

WE ARE CLOSED FOR SUBMISSIONS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Gertrude accepts art and writing submissions from new and established writers and artists year 'round. We accept simultaneous submissions because life is too short. We do not accept previously published work. Art can be submitted also at the link below. Please submit poetry ALL TOGETHER in one document. For book reviews and interviews, email tammy directly. Use the black button to send in your work.

Only 1-5% of work submitted is published, so please send your best!

For more detailed info on what we are looking for, please read our DUOTROPE interview and our recent interview with Entropy Magazine.

We are a 501(c)3 non-profit run by an all-volunteer staff, so if you have a few bucks to support our work promoting queer art and lit, chip in! And thank you. It's tax deductible.

Judges for our Chapbook Contests NOW CLOSED

photo credit: Jess X Snow

Poetry

Duy Doan is the author of We Play a Game, winner of the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Slate, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, he received an MFA in poetry from Boston University.

Fiction

Brontez Purnell is a writer, musician and film maker. He has been writing, performing and curating in the Bay Area for over 15 years and is the author of three books: The Cruising Diaries, Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger and Since I Laid My Burden Down. He has a forthcoming children’s book and is the recipient of the 2018 Whiting Award in Fiction.

Creative Non-Fiction

Jessica Jacobs is the author of Pelvis with Distance, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and Take Me with You, Wherever You're Going (March 2019). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Orion, New England Review, The Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Oxford American. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock climbing instructor, bartender, editor, and professor, and is now Associate editor for Beloit Poetry Journal and faculty for American Jewish University's Brandeis Collegiate Institute. She lives in Asheville, NC with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown.

CHAPBOOK CONTEST GUIDELINES ( CONTEST HAS CLOSED! )

Submit 8,500-10,000 words of short fiction OR creative non-fiction (multiple stories/essays or a self-contained manuscript excerpt), on-line only. For poetry, submit 25-30 pages of your work with a table of contents.
Submissions should be set in 12pt font and double-spaced.
Indicate which selections have been previously published and by whom. Unpublished pieces are also welcome.
Work may be of any subject matter and writers from all backgrounds are encouraged to submit.
Please indicate how you learned of the contest in your cover letter.
Contest is blind judged. Please DO NOT include any identifying information on your manuscript.
Include a $17 submission fee via our PayPal (link in Submittable when you follow the button above).
WINNER RECEIVES $250 AND 25 COPIES OF YOUR GORGEOUS CHAPBOOK. Good Luck!

The Benefits of a Chapbook

We view our chapbooks as a stepping stone for writers. With this publishing credit, you can started bringing your career to the next level. Should you win the contest (yeah!), here are a few answers to question you might have:

We will announce you on our eNews list and you will be featured for a year on our website.
We provide you with an initial order of 25 author copies to sell at reading, give to libraries, wallpaper your house...
Additional copies are available through us at a significantly reduced price. You can then sell them at readings for the cover cost, keeping the profit (which we find works better than a royalty system since we don't aggressively sell chapbooks).

Your perfect bound chapbook looks great, with art from one of the artists we have featured in the journal that year.
With a chapbook form a reputable press like ours, you are more marketable in the eyes of larger publishers. We will also continue to support you on this path, by announcing your successes on our channels, inviting you to read at events, etc. Reach out to us on how we can help!
This publication credit may also satisfy professional requirements for consideration for tenure and promotion at some colleges and universities.

Now, send us your best work and good luck!