New Prism & Pen Submission Guidelines

Last updated April 25, 2024

Typewriter photo by Pereanu Sebastian on Unsplash. Prism & Pen logo superimposed by author.

Welcome to Prism & Pen, new writer!

If you’re here for the first time, let’s talk about who we are. P&P exists to amplify LGBTQ+ voices through the art of storytelling. Our editors/writers are LGBTQ+ people from all stripes of the rainbow living all over the world. We’ve published stories from every continent, including one from Antarctica.

Whether you’re an established novelist, an online influencer, or an everyday queer person with a story bursting to come out, we’re here for you.

We consider and publish writers from all backgrounds, both LGBTQ+ people and cisgender/straight friends, family, and allies.

What we publish

• We are looking for stories that have a clear LGBTQ+ focus.
• We may accept work that has been published outside Medium (e.g., blog, magazine, newspapers). This will be at the discretion of the editors.
• We do not accept stories that have already been published on Medium, barring exceptional circumstances in which you have substantially improved a story.
• We do not accept AI-generated stories, even if they meet Medium’s criteria for publishing AI-generated content.

Categories of story we publish

P&P seeks to amplify artistic excellence and enhance understanding through fiction, poetry and personal and non-fiction essays.

We aim to reach the general reader rather than the specialist, so we prefer stories that are clear, accessible, and relatively free of technical jargon.

Stories we most prefer possess a certain indefinable essence that reaches for people’s hearts and minds.

• Short Fiction: Short stories exploring LGBTQ+ lives or issues should be engaging, compelling and self-contained.
• Serialized Fiction: We accept novels and novellas as serialized fiction so long as the author commits to publishing the entire work one chapter at a time, at least once per week. Aspiring novelists may find this process useful for developing an audience and engaging beta readers. Our editors can help you with tips on how to get the most out of your experience.
• Personal essays: Narrative-focused nonfiction that illuminates the LGBTQ+ experience by sharing lives and lived truths.
• Non-fiction essays: Articles that comment on current events or provide readers with new perspectives and information about LGBTQ+ lives and culture. (We are not looking for pure journalism, but we make exceptions sometimes.)
• Film, literature, and music reviews: We prefer reviews to include an element of personal or nonfiction writing. How did a movie affect you as an LGBTQ+ person? What does a novel or piece of art say about wider LGBTQ+ politics and culture?
• Poetry: See poetry-specific guidelines below.

Guidelines for content and style

Before submitting your story please make sure you have followed these guidelines.

Title

• Titles should tell potential readers what the story is about, specifically. Given that subtitles don’t show up in many Medium feeds, the title needs to do all the descriptive work.
• Titles should be 75 characters or less so they don’t get cut off in Medium feeds. (This is an approximate maximum guideline because character pixel width varies, but your title should be safe if you keep it at 75 characters or fewer.)
• No ‘clickbait’ titles, i.e. no unfair surprises or titles that “rage-bait” people into reading. Your article should deliver what the title promises.
• Please include at least one LGBTQ+ key word so readers know what aspect of Queer culture your story is about.
• It can be helpful to pull a key sentence or phrase from the article itself to use as your title.

Word limits

• For all story types (except poetry) we prefer submissions over 750 words and less than 2,000.
• We may make exceptions if a low or high word count is justified by the quality of the story, but assume we won’t and try to stick to the word limit.

Grammar and style

• Either American, Canadian, or British English grammar and spelling styles are fine.
• Try to use shorter paragraphs, keeping in mind that longer ones that look fine on your laptop can feel like walls of intimidating text on mobile devices, which can discourage readership. Tip: If you haven’t already, try to familiarize yourself with what your stories look like on phones.
• Please proofread your work for grammar and typos before submitting: the more polished and professional your stories, the less time it takes us to edit and publish.
• If possible, run your finished article through a spellchecker or grammar checker — there are various free resources available online (e.g. Google Docs has a spellchecker, with the added bonus of backing up your articles.) Also, if you enable “enhanced spell checker” in your Chrome browser, Google will highlight spelling/usage problems directly in your Medium draft. This isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s a great start!

Content and topics

• We don’t encourage submissions that are primarily centered on creating sexual arousal, though we pass no judgment on such erotic art. We understand that the line between erotica and personal examination of sexuality can be very hard to define. That said, if we think your erotic piece is unsuitable for us, we can probably help you find an appropriate home for it on Medium.
• We accept stories that contain mention of sex and sexuality (it would be hard for us not to!) but please be aware that Medium has a policy that stories with detailed sexually explicit content aren’t eligible for the Boost program. More on Medium’s policy here.
• Obviously, we don’t accept any content that is racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. We reserve the right to determine what we consider as such.

Poetry-specific guidelines

New to Poetry?: Our poetry editor, Esther Spurrill-Jones, published a very helpful serial on how to write poetry here: Writing Poetry: All About Poetry

• Content: Poetry is a wide-open space, but it has deep roots in rhythm, rhyme, playful, inventive language, and evocative imagery. Well-constructed poetry reveals emotional depth with very few words. Poetry uses effective imagery without becoming cliché or melodramatic. Choose your words carefully. Write from your heart and soul.

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” — Rita Dove

• Form: Poetry can be in a form or free verse. Don’t rhyme merely for the sake of rhyming. Concentrate more on rhythm and being inventive and avoiding clichés.
• Formatting: Poems must be formatted using single-spaced lines. To get a single-spaced line instead of a double-spaced one in a Medium draft, hold the <Shift> key at the same time as you hit the <Enter or Return> key.
• Alternatively, if you are copying and pasting a single-spaced poem from a word processor into the Medium editor, simply right click and select “Paste as plain text” or “Paste without formatting.”

Images

Please include at least one hi-res “header” image relevant to your content, preferably located directly below the title and subtitle.

• Your header image should be bright, colorful, or otherwise easy to see when auto-shrunk to fit into Medium feeds. Black & white or dark images don’t work well as header images. However, such images can work well within your story.
• Ideally, header images should be at least 1,200 pixels wide by 700 pixels high. (1200x700)
• Images should convey the focus of the article — they work along with the title to draw readers in.
• Please do not use a square or vertically aligned (portrait) image — Medium and social-media feeds do not cope well with displaying such images. We reserve the right to edit any portrait/vertical images to landscape/horizontal format — though we’d prefer not to have to!
• You must have permission to use the image. Royalty free images (images that the owner has allowed anyone to use for free) can be found via Pexels, Unsplash or Wikimedia Commons.
• Images pulled off Google Images or other websites without the owner’s permission are not acceptable and could get you in a lot of trouble.
• You can use AI-generated images — however Medium rules stipulate that you must attribute them as such, e.g. ‘AI image generated by [Author] using Midjourney’.
• All images must include an attribution in the caption section, e.g. Image by Josh Hild via Unsplash.com. See the header image of this article for another example.
• Images should usually contain captions describing the people or places in the image, unless the image clearly describes itself.
• Please provide ‘alt-text’ by double-clicking the image and entering a short description of the image contents for readers with visual impairments. This helps with boosting too.
• If you’re struggling to find a good image let us know, and we can help.

Tagging your article

Tagging is key! It determines who Medium distributes your story to. Poor tagging can mean no one reads your story.

• Please use all 5 tags available.
• When tagging your article try to use keywords from high-traffic Medium topics. If you’re not sure what they are, click here.
• Don’t be too specific with tags, for example use ‘Politics’ rather than the name of a specific politician or bill.
• Try to include one LGBTQ+-related tag: ‘LGBTQ’ (not ‘LGBT’, ‘LGBT+’ or ‘LGBTQIA’, as these aren’t high traffic Medium topics), ‘Queer’, ‘Equality’ ‘Transgender’, ‘Gay’, ‘Lesbian’, ‘Asexual’, ‘Pansexual’, ‘Intersex’, etc.
• Other tags you might consider are ‘Family’, ‘Relationships’, ‘Gender’, ‘Feminism’ and so on.
• The tag ‘Sexuality’ might result in your article not being distributed as widely by Medium (so avoid it).

How to submit your stories

Done all that? Okay, now it’s time to submit!

1. If you are a prospective writer, please send an email with the subject line “FIRST SUBMISSION” to prismnpen@gmail.com. Please try to include a link to a Medium draft rather than a Word or Google Doc. We will try to reply to your email within 10 days. If you have not received a response by then, feel free to contact us to ask about the status.
2. If a Prism & Pen editor has asked you to submit stories and has already added you as a writer, please do NOT send an email.
3. If you have already been added as a P&P writer, please submit your draft when you feel it’s reasonably well polished — see above guidance.
4. To submit, select the three dots (…) at the top right of your article draft, then select add to publication, then select Prism & Pen. Once you are ready, click submit in the top right and your draft will be sent to us to review. (Remember, this is a two-step process! We will not see your submission until you have clicked the green button the second time.)
5. If we accept your piece, we may work with you to make sure it’s the best it can be: this includes editing for spelling, grammar and sentence structure, and editing your title and subtitle to meet our guidelines. We will not publish any piece we have edited unless you agree to the edits.
6. Our editors will use notes to communicate with you. Please DO ensure you have enabled the private notes function in Medium settings by going to: Settings → Publishing → Allow readers to leave private notes on your stories.
7. Important: Because our editors sometimes work as teams, please do NOT delete any notes until after the story is published. Don’t worry, nobody except you and P&P editors can see them.
8. We will normally publish within 3 to 5 days, or send you a note letting you know our reasons for refusal and any suggestions for improvement.

Provided the above guidelines are followed, we read, consider, and respond to every submission sent to us.

What we ask of you as a P&P writer

If you become a writer for Prism & Pen, please be generous in support of the publication and your fellow writers by:

• Subscribing to the Prism & Pen publication to receive updates and notifications.
• Being generous with claps, responses and highlights of other writers’ works. We are not asking you to blindly recommend everything we publish. We are asking you to be mindfully generous of work written by your peers.
• Engaging with other writers and encouraging them. Creating community is a key goal of this publication and our community thrives on active engagement.
• Following us on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Mastodon, or Bluesky.

Thanks for considering Prism & Pen for your stories, we’ll see you in the pub!