Submissions In order to guarantee a response about your submission, please read and follow these guidelines.
Send all submissions to mary.sands@gmail.com. Send a brief biography with your submission. If I accept your work, you may also send a photograph to be placed on the Credits page. I will be accepting submissions for the winter issue of Jack until January 31, 2005.
File formats accepted (send your submission as an attachment, no bigger than 2MBs):
Text: .doc or .rtf
Images: .jpg, .gif, or .bmp
Don't send submissions within the body of an e-mail message, because my e-mail program might not translate with yours and the formatting will be screwy. Feel free to submit many poems within one Word document, but make sure that you clearly show poem titles, formatting, and so on.
About art: Traditionally, the cover of the magazine and all the major sections of the magazine are a part of a series by one featured artist. I also accept art that will illustrate a particular feature or article; collaborate with the writer.
Read the magazine to get an idea of what we publish. This is a magazine that has traditionally published non-mainstream articles in honor of the Beat Generation and others who liked to experiment. That sometimes makes things controversial, but censorship is for the birds and I like to shock and surprise now and then--as long as the art and writing is intelligently formed. Anyway, that doesn't mean that this magazine is limited to talking about Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. You should submit new things, in order to maintain the fresh style of Jack. Your writing should be dynamic and unpredictable. Also, I'm stealing a phrase from someone I know who was recently soliciting writers:
Do not try to emulate any writer's "style." You should write as yourself and write what comes naturally to you.
Don't submit stuff that's already online elsewhere. I make very few exceptions to this rule.
Do a spell-check and grammar check before sending your submission. Have your piece ready to go. I always let the contributors have a sneak preview of an issue before it goes to publication, but by that time I don't like to change much except for honest mistakes.
I'm the only "staff" at Jack Magazine, and I have two speeds: stop and go. So if you don't hear back from me right away, don't despair; it just means that I'm doing other things. I sometimes take weeks-long breaks from dealing with Jack. Feel free to remind me about your submission.
About doing reviews: Going along with the last point I made about the fact that I'm the only "staff" here, I don't have the time to review books and CDs (as much as I'd love to). However, Jack does accept reviews, so if you find someone to write a review of a book or film or piece of music, please have that person submit it.
Since Jack is a nonprofit e-zine, there is no monetary payment for submissions. However, I'm happy to plug your art, books, links, and so on.
