If you’re a beginning or emerging writer, you might have heard of Submittable already. In case you haven’t, here’s a brief explanation: Submittable is an online submission management platform, designed to streamline and simplify the submissions process – which can be oftentimes problematic for writers and publishers. It is free to get an account to submit your writing, and I like how I can see all my submissions in one place, making monitoring of work much easier.
One thing I found less simple was tracking down individual Australian publications or publishers to follow. It’s one thing to do a general search for open opportunities through the ‘discover’ tab – but the majority of these are international. Which is fine if you’re wanting to go down that path, but I wish you could filter opportunities according to country or region. To find a link to a publication’s submittable, often you have to hunt the link down yourself or wait until they post it themselves on social media, via a newsletter or blog post.
So if you’ve been meaning to follow some Aussie publications or publishers, here’s a jump start! Please note that for these links to work, you’ll need to already have a Submittable account – otherwise it will just take you to a signup/login screen.
1. Brio Books
Brio Books is an independent Australian publisher of trade fiction and nonfiction under five imprints with a real commitment to supporting emerging authors, particularly through Seizure.
2. Island
Island is a quarterly magazine and welcomes non-fiction, fiction and poetry submissions.
3. Meanjin
Meanjin is a quarterly magazine that publishes, in their own words, “Australian fiction, essays, long-form journalism, poetry, memoir, interviews, and much else besides”.
4. Overland
Overland is a quarterly print journal that publishes essays, stories and poetry. They also have an active online presence, publishing both regular articles and special editions of experimental fiction and poetry.
5. Kill Your Darlings
From their Submittable page: “Kill Your Darlings publishes commentary, essays, memoir, reviews, interviews and fiction online, with a particular interest in writing on culture, politics and society with a personal, accessible approach.”
6. The Lifted Brow
The Lifted Brow is a quarterly magazine that accepts non-fiction, fiction and poetry. It also publishes content on their website and in recent years has ventured into book publishing through the imprint Brow Books.
Of course, if you want to submit to any publication, it is wise to make sure you follow each place’s preferred guidelines on doing so. From font type and size, paragraph formatting etc – they all matter. Some places have a fee involved; others only take submissions from subscribers; and some are only open during certain periods, so it is worth taking note of these to avoid missing out.
I realise this is a short list. I’m sure there are others I’ve missed – and if so, do let me know. That way I can follow them as well and perhaps write a follow-up post to this one. I also want to say that it’s important to support these if you can – as far as the magazines/journals are concerned, I’m either a current or previous subscriber to them all. If you can’t afford to do that, see if you can get your local library to subscribe for the benefit of the reading community as a whole. I know when I teach at the Centre for Adult Education (CAE) in the city, I always pop into the Melbourne City Library downstairs at lunchtime and find someone flicking through the latest Meanjin or another magazine. It’s nice to see.
Finally – do you want another way of keeping up to date on open opportunities without necessarily opening a Submittable account? You could sign up to my newsletter – I include some in each one!
Happy writing to you all!
