Thank you for your interest in So to Speak! The best way to get a sense of what we publish is to read our most recent issue(s), available on our website.
Please note we only accept previously unpublished work for all categories. Please do not send us a piece you have sent us before unless we ask to see another version.
Blog submissions will open periodically throughout the year for themed calls. Please submit book reviews, interviews, essays, etc. See our website for additional submission information. It's always a good idea to read a few of our blog posts (outside of a limited series) for a sense of what we're looking for.
We offer fee-free submissions for Black and Indigenous writers always. This will be available as a separate form when submissions are open.
If you are not a Black or Indigenous writer and the submission fee presents a financial hardship, please email us at sts@gmu.edu for a fee waiver.
Please note that affiliates of George Mason University may not submit their work for consideration until at least five years after their graduation date.
For more information, please visit our submissions page.
The fiction team is looking for short stories and flash fiction pieces that engage, challenge, and surprise us. We particularly love stories that tackle multiple intersections (of race, class, ability, sexuality, and/or gender identity) and allow us to hear points of view that often go unheard.
We’re inspired by many great intersectional feminist authors doing important work—for instance, we’re currently in love with the stories of Carmen Maria Machado, who uses the speculative and surreal to investigate the lives of queer women and the complex stories of their bodies. We also admire novelist Jesmyn Ward, who brilliantly captures complex intersections with beautiful, thoughtful prose and a distinct voice; Celeste Ng, who deftly explores intersections of class, race, and privilege; and R.O. Kwon, who crafts engaging narratives that interrogate the connections between race and religion.
In our time at So to Speak, the fiction team has seen many stories that reflect the perspective of white, cisgender, heterosexual women. While no content area is “off limits” for us, we ask that you submit work that contributes something new to the conversation. Too, we prefer to read stories that come from an "Own Voices" perspective—in other words, we prefer stories that feature characters who explore intersections and perspectives that the writer themself is familiar with. All contributors will receive a $100 prize.
Formal Guidelines
In your submission, please upload and enter the following information:
- A single doc., docx., or pdf. file with a single prose fiction piece. Your submission should not exceed 4,000 words. All fiction submissions should be double-spaced with numbered pages.
- A Cover Letter that includes your name, address, phone number, email address, how you heard about So to Speak, and brief bio describing your background as a writer or artist and any applicable awards or publications.
- A brief statement about intersectional feminism.
You may enter multiple submissions (ex: 2 submission packets each with a single fiction piece), so long as you pay the submission fee each time.
Find more information on our Submission Guidelines here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/submissions
Find more information on our Mission Statement here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/about
To our staff, being an intersectional feminist is a commitment to lifelong learning—an intellectually open acknowledgment that systems, institutions, individual people, and places do not operate the same for every person.
We want to read poetry that aligns with this perspective. Poetry that excites us, that challenges our understanding of form and language. We want poetry that seeks and speaks its own embodied truth. Poetry can be a medium that invites the reader into the poet’s world, and we want to see new worlds, unexplored spaces, and strange landscapes.
We’re interested in poems that dive deep into the varied images, identities, and idiosyncrasies you’re exploring. Right now, we’re particularly engaged with intersectional poetry that also explores themes of film and/or ecology. Some poets we adore are Donika Kelly, Oliver Baez Bendorf, Aracelis Girmay, Natasha Trethewey, and Claudia Rankine. All contributors will receive a $100 prize.
Formal Guidelines
In your submission, please upload and enter the following information:
- A single doc., docx., or pdf. file with up to 5 poems. Your submission should not exceed 10 pages.
- A Cover Letter that includes your name, address, phone number, email address, how you heard about So to Speak, and brief bio describing your background as a writer or artist and any applicable awards or publications.
- A brief statement about intersectional feminism.
You may enter multiple submissions (ex: 2 submission packets of 10 poems), so long as you pay the submission fee each time.
Find more information on our Submission Guidelines here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/submissions
Find more information on our Mission Statement here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/about
So to Speak is seeking nonfiction with an intersectional feminist lens! For work that we admire, look to the work of Julie Marie Wade in our summer 2024 issue, Lindsay Forbes Brown in our 2023 annual print issue, or Billie Ouellette-Howitz in our summer 2022 issue.
Outside of our journal, we deeply admire the work of prolific writers like Melissa Febos, Ashley C. Ford, Casey Cep, Jeannie Vanasco, Claudia Rankine, and Eula Biss. These writers embody a commitment to investigating themselves and the world around them in complex, nuanced ways. Get weird. Be reflective. Tell us the gray areas and the ideas, better yet the questions, that you are still trying to unfurl. A wonderful example of that is K Ho in our summer 2023 issue.
To our staff, being an intersectional feminist is a commitment to lifelong learning—an intellectually open acknowledgement that systems, institutions, individual people, and places do not operate the same for every person. We want nonfiction that aligns with this perspective. While no content area is “off limits” for us, we ask that you submit work that seeks and speaks its own embodied truth.
We aim to be a space for voices occupying intersections that are not always heard. We deeply admire complex and sophisticated nonfiction that puts its subject under a tight lens. We appreciate the integration of research as a means of diving deep into the personal. All contributors will receive a $100 prize.
Formal Guidelines
In your submission, please upload and enter the following information:
- A single doc., docx., or pdf. file with a single prose nonfiction piece. Your submission should not exceed 4,000 words. All submissions should be double-spaced with numbered pages.
- A Cover Letter that includes your name, address, phone number, email address, how you heard about So to Speak, and brief bio describing your background as a writer or artist and any applicable awards or publications.
- A brief statement about intersectional feminism.
You may enter multiple submissions (ex: 2 submission packets each with a single nonfiction piece), so long as you pay the submission fee each time.
Find more information on our Submission Guidelines here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/submissions
Find more information on our Mission Statement here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/about
So to Speak is looking for art which is implicitly or explicitly intersectional. Artists of all backgrounds and experiences are encouraged to submit work of any visual medium (though we are not able to publish video or audio art in our print issue). We'd be excited to see everything from digital drawings and oil paintings to sculptural works and comics!
We strongly believe that artists do not have to have classical training to make great art. We love art that challenges us--politically, emotionally, spiritually--through a variety of traditional & experimental mediums. Overtly political or activist themes are encouraged.
All contributors will receive a $100 prize.
Formal Guidelines
- All submissions must be in jpg or tif formats at 300 dpi. Please label each file as LastName_Title.
- You may submit up to 5 pieces of artwork in a single entry. Dimensions if applicable, the materials used as applicable, a brief description of the submission.
- A Cover Letter that includes your name, address, phone number, email address, how you heard about So to Speak, and brief bio describing your background as a writer or artist and any applicable awards or publications.
- A brief description of how you see your piece (implicitly or explicitly) fitting into our intersectional feminist mission..
Find more information on our Submission Guidelines here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/submissions
Find more information on our Mission Statement here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/about
Happy Fee Free Day! All genres can utilize this form to submit work, but please identify the genre of your submission in your cover letter.
To read more about what each genre reads for, please visit our detailed submission guidelines here. You can also read previous issues of So to Speak, for free, here.
Formal Guidelines
In your submission, please upload and enter the following information:
- A single doc., docx., or pdf. file with a single prose fiction piece (up to 4,000 words); a packet of poems (max 5 poems and/or 10 pages); or visual art (no limit, but 300 dpi, please). All pages should be numbered.
- A Cover Letter that includes your name, address, phone number, email address, how you heard about So to Speak, and a brief bio describing your background as a writer or artist and any applicable awards or publications. Please identify the genre of your submission.
- A brief statement about intersectional feminism.
Please limit your submission to one genre at a time.
Find more information on our Submission Guidelines here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/submissions
Find more information on our Mission Statement here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/about
To our staff, being an intersectional feminist is a commitment to lifelong learning—an intellectually open acknowledgment that systems, institutions, individual people, and places do not operate the same for every person.
We want to read poetry that aligns with this perspective. Poetry that excites us, that challenges our understanding of form and language. We want poetry that seeks and speaks its own embodied truth. Poetry can be a medium that invites the reader into the poet’s world, and we want to see new worlds, unexplored spaces, and strange landscapes.
We’re interested in poems that dive deep into the varied images, identities, and idiosyncrasies you’re exploring. Right now, we’re particularly engaged with intersectional poetry that also explores themes of film and/or ecology. Some poets we adore are Donika Kelly, Oliver Baez Bendorf, Aracelis Girmay, Natasha Trethewey, and Claudia Rankine. All contributors will receive a $100 prize.
Formal Guidelines
In your submission, please upload and enter the following information:
- A single doc., docx., or pdf. file with up to 5 poems. Your submission should not exceed 10 pages.
- A Cover Letter that includes your name, address, phone number, email address, how you heard about So to Speak, and brief bio describing your background as a writer or artist and any applicable awards or publications.
- A brief statement about intersectional feminism.
You may enter multiple submissions (ex: 2 submission packets of 10 poems), so long as you pay the submission fee each time.
Find more information on our Submission Guidelines here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/submissions
Find more information on our Mission Statement here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/about
So to Speak is seeking nonfiction with an intersectional feminist lens! For work that we admire, look to the work of Julie Marie Wade in our summer 2024 issue, Lindsay Forbes Brown in our 2023 annual print issue, or Billie Ouellette-Howitz in our summer 2022 issue.
Outside of our journal, we deeply admire the work of prolific writers like Melissa Febos, Ashley C. Ford, Casey Cep, Jeannie Vanasco, Claudia Rankine, and Eula Biss. These writers embody a commitment to investigating themselves and the world around them in complex, nuanced ways. Get weird. Be reflective. Tell us the gray areas and the ideas, better yet the questions, that you are still trying to unfurl. A wonderful example of that is K Ho in our summer 2023 issue.
To our staff, being an intersectional feminist is a commitment to lifelong learning—an intellectually open acknowledgment that systems, institutions, individual people, and places do not operate the same for every person. We want nonfiction that aligns with this perspective. While no content area is “off limits” for us, we ask that you submit work that seeks and speaks its own embodied truth.
We aim to be a space for voices occupying intersections that are not always heard. We deeply admire complex and sophisticated nonfiction that puts its subject under a tight lens. We appreciate the integration of research as a means of diving deep into the personal. All contributors will receive a $100 prize.
Formal Guidelines
In your submission, please upload and enter the following information:
- A single doc., docx., or pdf. file with a single prose nonfiction piece. Your submission should not exceed 4,000 words. All submissions should be double-spaced with numbered pages.
- A Cover Letter that includes your name, address, phone number, email address, how you heard about So to Speak, and brief bio describing your background as a writer or artist and any applicable awards or publications.
- A brief statement about intersectional feminism.
You may enter multiple submissions (ex: 2 submission packets each with a single nonfiction piece), so long as you pay the submission fee each time.
Find more information on our Submission Guidelines here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/submissions
Find more information on our Mission Statement here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/about
The fiction team is looking for short stories and flash fiction pieces that engage, challenge, and surprise us. We particularly love stories that tackle multiple intersections (of race, class, ability, sexuality, and/or gender identity) and allow us to hear points of view that often go unheard.
We’re inspired by many great intersectional feminist authors doing important work—for instance, we’re currently in love with the stories of Carmen Maria Machado, who uses the speculative and surreal to investigate the lives of queer women and the complex stories of their bodies. We also admire novelist Jesmyn Ward, who brilliantly captures complex intersections with beautiful, thoughtful prose and a distinct voice; Celeste Ng, who deftly explores intersections of class, race, and privilege; and R.O. Kwon, who crafts engaging narratives that interrogate the connections between race and religion.
In our time at So to Speak, the fiction team has seen many stories that reflect the perspective of white, cisgender, heterosexual women. While no content area is “off limits” for us, we ask that you submit work that contributes something new to the conversation. Too, we prefer to read stories that come from an "Own Voices" perspective—in other words, we prefer stories that feature characters who explore intersections and perspectives that the writer themself is familiar with. All contributors will receive a $100 prize.
Formal Guidelines
In your submission, please upload and enter the following information:
- A single doc., docx., or pdf. file with a single prose fiction piece. Your submission should not exceed 4,000 words. All fiction submissions should be double-spaced with numbered pages.
- A Cover Letter that includes your name, address, phone number, email address, how you heard about So to Speak, and brief bio describing your background as a writer or artist and any applicable awards or publications.
- A brief statement about intersectional feminism.
You may enter multiple submissions (ex: 2 submission packets each with a single fiction piece), so long as you pay the submission fee each time.
Find more information on our Submission Guidelines here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/submissions
Find more information on our Mission Statement here: https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/about
An all-new collection of intersectional fiction, poetry, CNF, and visual art!
Our Spring 2024 Issue of So to Speak is available for purchase as a digital PDF for $4!
To receive a print hard-copy of the contest issue, you can select the add-on of "mail me a print copy!" for just an extra $5! (We'll even throw a back issue or two in with your order, free of charge.)
Fill out this form to receive two back issues of STS!