Submissions

(photo courtesy Varf via Flickr Creative Commons)

Do you accept submissions?

Absolutely. Slices of Life is the online, oft-updated wing of Slice magazine, and run in much the same spirit. Although we have a core of regular writers, reading unsolicited work and considering it for publication isn’t just a favor; the discovery of new, great writing is what we live for. Well, we also like sunshine, furry animals, good music, and sundry debaucheries, but you get the idea.

What’s an appropriate submission for Slices of Life?

Right now, we’re looking for profiles—nonfiction writing about someone other than you (nothing personal). This can be interpreted as loosely as you’d like; a journalistic interview-and-writeup would be wonderful, as would a simple musing on the person, or a specific anecdote, or a freeform list of interesting facts, maybe even a epistle of love/hate (the thin line there between? A common slash. Go figure). The person can be living or dead, known well or viewed from afar.
The only absolute requirements are:

  • brevity—no pieces over 350 words.
  • verisimilitude—no fiction. There must be some semblance of a real human being behind your piece.
  • prose-y-ness—no verse. Here’s a rule of thumb: if you feel like asking, “Is this poetry or prose?” then it’s totally poetry.

If you need any inspiration, just look at the pieces we have up already. And, ideally, do something totally unlike them. Our theme should be considered a challenge as much as a requirement, and anyway, rebels are sexy.

If you have any further questions, please address them to the webtroll. Odds are, though, he’ll say something like, “Do whatever works best for you,” because he was raised by hippies.

But I have an 8,6702-word short story that really speaks to the truth of the human condition, and in fact one could argue that by entering the world of savvy fabrication one is able to evoke deeper truths than by restricting oneself to the hollow and empirical, the quotidian and mundane, which…

Yeah, okay, chill on that. Slices of Life is, as has been pointed out, the online arm of a tangible literary magazine, Slice. The hard-copy magazine accepts a much wider range of submissions, including verse, prose, and longer-form creative nonfiction. If your piece qualifies as one of these, please click here to go to the Slice magazine homepage and see if we look like a fitting home. If so, click on the “submit” link in the navigation bar and follow the directions.

Why should I send my short piece to the blog instead of the magazine?

The advantages are two, really. 1) Less waiting around for your piece to be read and published, yet your work is still editorially reviewed by people with some semblance of knowledge of what they’re doing. 2) We run our guest writers’ pieces on Fridays, so you have three days of being “on the cover,” as it were.

Okay, I’d like to submit to Slices of Life. What do I do?

Send your piece to blog@slicemagazine.org.

If you’d like to specify the embedded illustration(s), please attach graphic file(s) as a .jpg or .gif. Otherwise, the webtroll will just pick something out of his fevered mind and Flickr Creative Commons it.

If you’d like a brief bio and picture on the contributors’ page, please provide those as well.

A few requests, however, to make your grumpy webtroll mildly less grumpy:

  • Don’t make your graphic files too big. Nothing’ll ever go up wider than about 350 or so pixels in width.
  • Keep your formatting simple. As far as layout platforms go, XHTML is slightly more sophisticated than a Speak N’ Spell, and those still give the webtroll fits. Italics, bold, and underline have to be set by hand, as do changes in font size. Special symbols don’t show up on all computers.
  • Send your text in the e-mail itself whenever possible. Word files tend to come replete with cruddy formatting that can be a pain to strip away.
  • Please do point out formatting errors when your submission goes up.

How much do you pay?

Um, no.

Thanks!

You betcha.