Submit your Work to Room Magazine

Thank you for considering Room magazine for the publication of your original short stories, poems, creative non-fiction, or art. We take pride in publishing arresting, evocative, and accomplished literary experiences by women in these genres. Like a fascinating tale told by a spell-binding guest at a cocktail party, these works should be memorable long after you've turned the page, populated with characters both real and utterly unique, engaged in dialogue you lean in to overhear, and unraveling a sequence of events that add up to more than the sum of its parts.

Room's quarterly issues are edited by a rotating team of editors from our collective, and as such many tastes and interests are represented. Though we publish stories by women, we are not soliciting stories with an agenda, nor do we pretend that issues that affect women disproportionately are ours alone. As full participants in a shared world, we engage as unique individuals, but relate to the broadest possible community. We hope the literature and art you find here expresses the complex, nuanced, and truly rich interior and exterior lives of a broad variety of women.

We strongly suggest you get a sense of our tastes by reviewing material we've published in recent issues—buy newsstand copies, subscribe, borrow from a library, or visit our latest edition online. Alternatively, you can order single copies of specific issues.

Room is committed to discovering new talents and we take this responsibility seriously, so if we are the first step on your journey to creating a portfolio with professional credentials, fear not, we're honoured and still interested. If you're further down this road, don't forget to mention the following details in your cover letter:

if/where you've published previously; published writers you've worked/mentored/studied with;
contests you've won;
grants you've been awarded;
writing programs you've attended;
prizes you've garnered;
and full-length book manuscripts you may currently have under contract or in circulation.
Please also include your name, address, phone number, and email address and an accurate word count of your piece.
To avoid a flood of material by a single submitter or overly frequent submissions, please make only one submission at a time and only submit quarterly.

Fiction/Creative Non-fiction:
Please submit 12-pt typed, double-spaced, single-sided pages of unpublished prose of no more than 3500 words.

Poetry:
Please submit a maximum of five poems at a time. We only review Canadian poetry.

Photos/Art submissions:
Direct us to your work online or send a low-resolution digital file (JPG or PDF, 1 MB max size) to arteditor@roommagazine.com. Since our issues differ in theme, tone, and content, we will keep you on file for upcoming issues.

Now for some stats: We receive over 600 submissions per year and publish approximately 25 pieces in each quarterly issue. We aim to contact you regarding our decision within 2-3 months, but if it takes longer your work is likely under consideration by an issue editor (good news!). We currently accept submissions by mail only (except for artwork, as indicated above), but this may soon change. When it does, we will announce this on our website and in our printed materials. For now, mail your work to:

Room
PO Box 46160 Station D
Vancouver, BC V6J 5G5
Canada.

We pay $50 CDN for 1-5 published pages, $75 for 6+ pages and $100 for cover art. Contributors also receive two copies of the issue in which the work appears and a year's subscription to Room. We purchase First North American Serial Rights only (the work may not have appeared in print in North America prior to publication in Room), and copyright always remains with the author. We may also ask you for non-exclusive electronic rights to publish a portion of your work on our website, but these will be negotiated separately.

We do not return manuscripts so please do not include a SASE. If your manuscript is better suited elsewhere we'll recycle hard copies and promptly inform you of this decision by email.

Thanks for your interest in Room and if you've read this far you're exactly the kind of loyal reader and writer and artist we're looking for!