Submission Guidelines

Submissions for the sixty-eighth volume will be accepted between July 15 and December 31 of 2024. 

Spectrum’s mission is to publish a spectrum of voices, perspectives, narratives, and forms. This includes those stories and voices which are underrepresented, including but not limited to those in the BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, immigrant, or international communities.

We accept fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art, but we don’t want you to feel limited to these definitions of genre. If it can be printed in two dimensions, we will consider it for publication. This includes sheet music, photography, collages, poems, essays, and stories with untraditional layouts, and much more. We love surprises, as do our readers.

We are open to all genres and forms, including hybrid work. Spectrum has a legacy of publishing inventive, high-quality, and provocative work. Check out recent editions of Spectrum for examples of the work we like to publish.

Spectrum celebrates originality and at this time does not accept submissions generated by AI. 

Please submit prose and poetry in .doc or .docx formats.

Please submit art or hybrid work in a .doc or .docx when possible, with the highest quality or resolution.

All work must be previously unpublished. We do accept simultaneous submissions, but we ask that you inform us immediately if it is published elsewhere.

Please note that we read all of our submissions anonymously, so remove your name from all documents submitted to us. Pieces that violate our submission guidelines will not be considered for publication. We do ask that you fill out a positionality statement as a part of your submission. This space is used as an opportunity for a justification or disclaimer for content or voice in your piece. 

We accept submissions via our Google Forms only (links are in the blue box). Any submissions sent by email or by snail mail will not be read.