The Charleston Anvil is a voluntary communal art and literary project that relies on an open submissions process for content. By submitting, you agree to have your piece included in an issue of The Anvil, and your submission may be highlighted, sampled from, or showcased in promotional materials for the issue.
Your submission is yours and remains yours, and if selected will be included in one issue of the magazine, with your name, or a pseudonym you've requested, credited. You retain all rights and ownership to your piece, even after printing.
Be advised The Charleston Anvil is not a for-profit publication. No one is being paid for their submissions, or volunteer work, and any money made from the sale of the magazine will be used to recoup printing costs.
Submissions may be kept on file for publication in a later issue.
SUBMISSION PERIODS
January 1st - February 28th
releases Summer
July 1st - August 31st
releases Winter
HOW TO SUBMIT
We need these 5 things in an email:
- 1) Your name (or, your name AND a pseudonym you'd like us to credit instead*)
- 2) Your mailing address (if your piece is printed, you’ll receive a complimentary copy of the issue it’s in)
- 3) Your submission's title (use untitled if it doesn't have a title)
- 4) A short description of the submission (i.e., Illustration, poem, short story, experimental prose, etc)
- 5) The piece(s) you'd like us to consider
- Please format the file name of your piece to the following:
YourName_TitleOfPiece.filetype
Examples:
LeonardodaVinci_MonaLisa.jpg
ErnestHemingway_TheSunAlsoRises.txt
EmilyDickinson_AThroeUponTheFeatures.doc
JohnDoe_Untitled.pdf
Send that email to: TheCharlestonAnvil@gmail.com
Also feel free to include a short bio (150 words or less, written in the third person) and any contact info you'd like, because if your piece is printed, we'll add them to our contributors section for that issue.
*If you want to officially use a pseudonym, just include it with your name, because if we don't have your real name and your submission is used, we can't mail you a complimentary copy.
After that, it may be a while before you hear from us. This doesn't mean the piece was rejected. It's not unusual to get an acceptance months after your submission.
What happens after I submit, and when should I expect to hear back?
Don't expect to hear back immediately. It's likely you won't hear back from us for a couple of months. After the open call ends, the volunteer editors read, view, and sort all of the recent submissions. After that, they use the new submissions and the older, unused submissions and compile selections, as best they can, into publication form. All of this can take a while, depending on the number of submissions received and the medium they arrive in. If you don't hear back from us immediately, don't worry. We welcome your questions and seek to allay any concerns you have after submitting work, and will do our best to respond to every question we receive.
IMAGE SUBMISSION SPECIFICATIONS:
- When emailing images, make sure the image is 300PPI in quality. (For example, if you have a 4x6 inch image, make sure it's 4x6 at 300PPI, not 72PPI. A 4x6 image at 300PPI is 1200 pixels x 1800 pixels.)
- We accept .pdf, .jpg, .bmp, & .tiff file types, but please, no program files, like .psd or .ai.
- When emailing images, make sure to include your submission as an attached file, not inserted in the body of the email itself.
TEXT SUBMISSION SPECIFICATIONS:
- When emailing literature, make sure to include your submission as an attached text file (either .rtf, .doc, or .txt). Do not submit it in the body of the email itself.
Submission Guidelines
- By submitting, you're asserting that you own the works submitted and that you are the copyright holder of the works submitted.
- We suggest submissions be 1-6 pages. The suggested maximum word count for text submissions is 4,500 words. However, in no way will longer pieces be rejected for length.
- Submissions can come from almost any medium, including but not limited to prose, poetry, illustration, comics, short stories, illustrated fiction and non-fiction, photography, short and long-form essays, fake ads, your amazing ham recipe - anything than can be printed, in any genre or style, will be considered.
- Keep in mind that no matter what you send us, the magazine will be printed in black and white. (I.e., grayscale)
- You DO NOT have to live in the Charleston, WV area to submit. The Anvil is meant to showcase talent and drive - art for art's sake - and is not exclusively local. We welcome nationwide submissions, as well as international.
SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS:
We don’t mind simultaneous submissions, nor do we mind previously published material. We’re not asking for exclusivity, first printing rights, etc, however, please be mindful of other publications’ guidelines.
If your simultaneous submission is accepted elsewhere and you need to withdraw your submission, please let us know immediately; we try to let accepted submissions know their piece will be printed as soon as we can, but each issue is on a 6 month production schedule, so even if your piece is selected for print, you may assume it’s not because it has been a few months and you haven’t received an acceptance confirmation.
WHAT WE DON'T WANT:
- Proposals. If, for example, you have an idea for a submission that you think is maybe a little more outside the box, and you wanted to make sure we wouldn’t reject it outright before you take the time to create it, that’s fine, we can tell you if we would consider the hypothetical submission for print. But, we can’t tell you if it will be printed, especially before you create it. I.e., we can tell you if a hypothetical submission will be considered, not if it will be printed.
- Hate literature. Anything that can be deemed as hate speech will be outright rejected.
Setup and Layout
- Page size is 5.25" x 8.5" and Safe Zone size is 4.75" x 8".
- Or, at the correct resolution, Full Page size is 1575x2550 pixels \ Safe Zone size is 1425x2400 pixels
- You may layout your own submission, but it is not necessary. If you choose to do so, please use the following template: (DOWNLOAD SETUP FILE HERE) Make sure file sent is an 8-bit LZW compressed TIFF file.