GENERAL GUIDELINES
- Submissions are open year-round; you may submit as many pieces as desired.
- Submissions from approximately November to March are considered for spring publication, while submissions from about April to October are considered for fall publication.
- The submission deadline for the Fall 2023 edition is October 16th.
- Submissions in any language are allowed and do not need to be translated into English.
- Submissions should be in a 12-point standard font, like Times New Roman or Arial.
- Unless the formatting of a piece is essential to the work (as in visual poetry), submissions should be in 1.5 spacing. Special formatting for visual poems and similar genres will be respected and kept for final publication.
- Submissions must have not been published in other journals.
- When submitting, you will be asked to mark your piece with a genre – please only use one of the following: fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, visual art, or audio.
- Submit additional submissions in a separate submission.
- Please check your email regularly after submission for communication from our team!
- If an author wishes to retract their work from being considered for the journal, even if their work has been accepted, please email The Vernal Pool as soon as possible.
Please Note: Any work that is published in The Vernal Pool is still the author’s intellectual property. This means that the piece is still owned by the author and can be submitted to any other publication without contacting the journal or the editorial board.
WRITTEN SUBMISSIONS
- Individual submissions should be in a single file, and should not exceed approximately 2500 words.
- Please submit poems in individual files, unless they are part of a thematic collection. Then you may submit the collection of poems as one file. Please note that poems in the same file will be considered as a whole, with either all or none of them being accepted.
- Please submit written pieces as either a .pdf, google doc, or a .docx.
VISUAL ART SUBMISSIONS
- Visual art is accepted and welcomed – please submit pieces as either a .png or .jpeg (whichever of those two the original file is in).
- Please submit pieces individually, and not in a .pdf or .docx collection.
AUDIO SUBMISSIONS
- Audio files must be accompanied by a transcript, sheet music, or description
- Audio submissions can be up to 5 minutes in length
- Music or other audio that samples previously published or copyrighted audio cannot be submitted (all work must be original and unpublished.