the open call for issue 006 is out!

hello!

we hope that the summer has been lovely, and that the return to work or school or life has been as gentle as it can be. we’re so very excited about what the next few months have in store, starting with the open call for issue 006 of mnemotope magazine!

to get you feeling ready to send in your stories, we decided to do a little substack post answering our most frequently asked questions and going into some more detail on the submission process. if there’s anything we’ve left out, you can always reach us by email or through instagram dm!

do you accept work other than writing?

yes! mnemotope is a magazine for written and visual arts, so we accept drawings, paintings, etchings, comics, photo-based art etc. as well as written texts and recordings of spoken stories to be transcribed. 

what format should i submit work in?

for voice memos - .mp3, .wav, or .m4a

for text - .doc, .docx, or .rtf

for visual arts - .jpg, .png or .tiff

we can’t use pdfs as they’re not editable and the quality is often too low for print - please don’t send them to us! if you’re not sure, shoot us a message and we can work it out together. 

the maximum word count we can include is 3000, so keep that in mind for essays/stories/long voice notes etc. if you’ve written something longer, we can include an excerpt that fits within the word count! 

the magazine is printed in black and white, so if you send us a visual artwork in colour we’ll have to put it in grayscale. if you want to have more control over contrast/grading etc. change it out of colour before submitting. 

do you publish work in other languages than english?

yes we do! as the magazine is widely circulated across europe and the us, all pieces in other languages are published alongside an english translation. we recommend that you submit your own english translation when sending the piece in, but if not we’ll source a translation for publication with it. we can’t guarantee that we will be able to have that translation proofed with you before the magazine goes to print (although we do try our best to have them approved by authors as much as possible!). 

while we use english as a base language, we mean that very broadly - use google translate if you’d like and show all of the places where english lacks the depth of your language, write phonetically in english, show your accent through your writing, translate directly, use non-english grammar structures, explore and exploit the language however you want. 

if you have any questions or would like us to work with you on sourcing a translation, feel free to get in touch with us - the earlier the better (and always before the open call deadline!) so that we have enough time to get it all sorted out. 

can i submit work that’s been published before, or that i’m hoping to publish again elsewhere?

yes! we don’t require the rights to your work, only the right to use it in this edition of the magazine, any future reprints and promotional/marketing material. that means that you retain the copyright and continue to fully own your work, as it should always be. we don’t ask for exclusivity either, so you’re free to republish your work whenever you want. 

if you’re submitting work that’s already been published, make sure that the previous publisher has the same policy as us - when you submit work to mnemotope magazine you agree that you hold all of the rights to the piece, so if a previous publisher had an exclusivity clause with your work, for example, you cannot submit it to mnemotope. 

i’ve never submitted work for publication before. what can i expect from the process?

firstly, we’re so very excited that you’re thinking about submitting work! your stories deserve a place in print and we’re thrilled that you’re sharing them. if there’s anything we can do to make the process easier for you, don’t hesitate to reach out. 

you can find the link to the open call at the end of this substack, on our website or at the link in our instagram bio. you fill that form out with your email address and add up to five files of your work (in the formats we listed above!) in the ‘file drop’ boxes. for each one, there’s a question asking for the title of the piece as you want it printed, and another asking how you want to be credited - that’s the name that you want to be printed alongside the work. it can be your name, a pen name, a nickname, anonymous - whatever you’re comfortable with!

once you’ve answered all of the questions and submitted the form, a little ‘thank you’ note should pop up on screen. it takes us a few weeks to go through all of the submissions, so it can be up to a month before you get an email from us. we might ask some more questions about the piece in the meantime, so keep an eye on your inbox. once we’ve worked our way through everything, we’ll send out emails to let you know whether your piece/s will be in issue 006 of the magazine.

it’s very very very important to us that you know that our decision is never a reflection on the quality of the work submitted - we have limited space in the magazine and pair up pieces on spreads when they somehow work together, so the final selections are often based on what makes this edition of the magazine most whole as opposed to what is most aligned with our personal tastes. your work is absolutely deserving of being shared, and if not through this publication through another.

if your piece is published in the magazine, there’ll be another round of emails sent out where we tell you about the launch event for the magazine and ask for your address to send you your contributors copy and a little gift from us. send us your address in reply to that email, please! (also make sure to check that you’re pressing ‘reply’ and not ‘reply all’.) then we’ll hopefully get to see you at the launch to tell you how grateful we are in person, and get you your copy of the magazine!

can i change or amend my submissions once i’ve sent them in?

if you’ve submitted work and want to change or withdraw it, just send us an email before the deadline of the open call. once the deadline has passed, we can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to make any adjustments or remove work from the magazine as we often move quickly with print, so it’s really important that you’re making any necessary changes before the open call ends. 

how do i know if you’ve received my submission?

once you submit the form, a little ‘thank you’ message from us should pop up on screen. that means that we’ve received your work! if that doesn’t appear, you can either try to resubmit the form or send us a message to check whether it’s arrived with us. 

do you edit or proofread the submissions?

as we include a lot of experimental writing in the magazine, we tend to avoid copyediting unless the piece is clearly a more ‘traditionally’ written short story or essay. any bigger alterations that we make for clarity or graphic design etc. will always be run by the contributor before we go to print with the magazine. if you’d like us to have your piece proofread or edited, let us know when you submit it!

that’s it! please do let us know if you have any questions that we haven’t answered here. we’re so looking forward to reading through all of the submissions, and hearing all of the brilliant stories issue 006 will hold.

the submission form is available here!

bisou bisou bisou -

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