Submissions

The Puritan is currently seeking submissions. Read the following guidelines carefully to ensure that your submission is given due attention.

General Guidelines

Submissions should fall under one of five (5) categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, interviews, and reviews. Unless we are soliciting your work, all submissions must be previously unpublished (this includes self-publishing). Only e-mail submissions are accepted (save those trees for maypoles). Send all submissions, queries, apologies, and appeals to puritanmagazine@gmail.com.

Send only your very best writing.

Please label your submission as outlined above, and ensure that the title of your work is clearly indicated in the subject heading of your e-mail. If you are submitting more than one (1) piece, simply write the title of your first work. (For example, if you are submitting four (4) poems, then your subject heading should read as follows: POETRY, "The Mayflower".)

All text documents must be .doc or .rtf files. We prefer Microsoft Word files. What is the point of all your hard work if your line breaks are skewed?

Remember to include your up-to-date contact information in the body of your e-mail. Include your name and the title of your piece on the first page of each submission. Number your pages. Also include a bio, so we don't have to pursue you for one later.

Upon receiving your submission, we will promptly respond with a confirmation e-mail. You may have to wait a few months to hear back from us on our final verdict. This is standard procedure. If you are certain we have overlooked your piece, or think that we have forgotten about you, feel free to send us a friendly reminder. Only inquire if you haven't heard back from us after four (4) months.

Simultaneous submissions are permitted. Please remember to inform us if your work is picked up by another publication.

The Puritan purchases first North American serial rights for published works, reverting back to the author upon publication. Authors may reprint their work which has appeared in The Puritan in any manner whatsoever.

The Puritan grants permission to anthologists for printing contributors' work if their whereabouts are unknown.

For now, we are unfortunately unable to pay for submissions. Our sincerest apologies.

For all work other than poetry, please abide by the following rules. Leave only one space after periods. Use three periods for an ellipsis ... like so. Use a no-nonsense font (submissions in comic-sans will be cast off immediately). Try to use 'em' dashes and try to abide by Canadian spelling. Be consistent in your formatting.

Specific Guidelines

FICTION

Feel free to push boundaries. We have diverse tastes; try us out. Length is up to you, but a story over 10,000 words will only be considered if it is of exceptional quality. Stories of high quality and high word counts may be considered for serialization. Please read our last two (2) or three (3) issues in our ARCHIVE in order to familiarize yourself with work we have published in the past. Only send one (1) story at a time, unless you are writing flash fiction (or stories under 500 words), in which case you can send up to three (3).

NON-FICTION

See above. Send only one (1) piece at a time. Non-fiction submissions can be anything from memoirs and creative non-fiction to academic essays on a literary subject. We're open to just about anything, but the more literary your topic, the better.

POETRY

Baffle us, tangle us up, or break our hearts. We're looking for poems of any length (including sequences and long poems). Send up to four (4) poems at a time.

INTERVIEWS

Interviews must be thoughtful, compelling, and original. Strive for depth. They must also be conducted with writers, publishers, editors, and other sorts involved in the world of books and publishing. Length is up to you. Please understand that your subject will be contacted in order to verify that your submission was indeed a legitimate conversation. Please supply your interview with a title that includes the name of your interviewee, such as "The Steadfast Heart": An Interview with William Bradford. Send only one interview at a time.

REVIEWS

We are looking for insightful and challenging reviews of recently released fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Reviews can be up to 2,000 words in length. We prefer to publish reviews of books released by small(er) Canadian publishers, but are open to other works, as well. Please supply your review with a title, and the necessary information about the book you are reviewing. Send only one review at a time. Abide by the following model - Title, Publisher, Year, Price, Number of Pages, and then your name, like so:

"Ahead of His Time": A Review of Thomas Morton's The New English Canaan.
The Prince Society, 1883.

$19.95, 300 pages.

Review by Mortimer Sneed.

If you would like to review on a regular basis for The Puritan, please send us a sample review, and we may enlist you in our ever-growing team of elect reviewers.