Creative Arts Pages — Submission Guidelines
Although we’re partial to Sonoma Valley writers and artists (“artists” includes photographers), we encourage submissions from anywhere. Our area is rich with creative folk, and The Sonoma Valley Sun is a wonderful venue to spotlight efforts in prose, verse, original art, and photography.
As do all publications, we also have simple rules for submission. If you have questions unanswered by what’s shown here, send them to me, Alyssa Conder [email protected]. All written material must be submitted as Microsoft Word® docs attached to an email, or pasted into the body of your email.
Prose and poetry submissions should show this info at the top left of page 1 only:
• Name or pseudonym
• “Name of the piece,” type of piece (poem, story, whatever it is). If you’re submitting several verse pieces, include each title, separated by commas
• Word count
• ©2017. Legal name. All rights reserved.
Narrative prose fiction or memoir
Short-short fiction, from 100 to 1100 words. Don’t indent the first line. Use tabs to indent new paragraphs, not blank lines. ONE SPACE after a full stop (i.e., a period, question mark, or exclamation point).
Poems, verse
From four to 84 lines. In some cases line length will determine number of acceptable lines. Submit your work and I’ll get back to you if there’s a problem. Present lines exactly as you want to see them on the published page.
Photography
Submit original photos only, or original photos of art in other mediums, in a graphic file format. Acceptable formats are jpg, tiff, or pdf. If possible, submit at 96 dpi or higher. If this doesn’t make any sense to you, I will adjust it here. Please do not send png format. Attach your files to an email addressed to me.
You can send photographs as art, or photographs of other works of art. Please caption each photo, and use caption as the file name.
IMPORTANT NOTE
Do not under any circumstance send art or a photo that you have downloaded from the Internet to illustrate your work. Your definition of copyright-free or public domain may not conform to legal standards and I am a huge supporter of creative rights. I often illustrate stories or verse with legally obtained or paid art that does conform to copyright law. Attribution is not permission to reprint.
How to screw up your submission
You must send a bio about yourself and your work, or a couple of original thoughts, with the submission.
Interestingly, creative types–ordinarily hungry for publicity–hesitate to send this essential paragraph of no more than 50 words. This is not a resume. It’s three or four sentences about you. Do it, or I’ll send you a note informing you I can’t use the work because you didn’t send the bio with it. I may ask you to submit it again, WITH the bio. And I might not.
Thanks!
Alyssa Conder / EDITOR / Creative Arts Pages
The Sonoma Valley Sun
