Submissions

What We’re Looking For:

We’re looking for content that doesn’t know where it fits in, for people that don’t know where they fit in. For physical media, we mostly publish books and zines in quarter and half-sized formats. We do not publish a newspaper or an anthology magazine.

We are an independent, queer, anarchist, collectively owned/run publisher based out of Turtle Island (or the so-called United States), which is to say that we each, under various labels and coming from various backgrounds, desire a world without coercive hierarchies such as patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, or state control. This does not mean that you need to be queer or an anarchist, but it does mean that the pieces we publish need to be queer or anarchistic in nature and that these are the themes that guide the work we choose to publish, those which explore life outside the binary, anti-fascism, anti-authoritarianism, radical history, sub-cultural riff raff, queer joy and liberation, mutual aid, and life on and outside the margins. It is not enough for a submission to be well written, it must explore radical themes and culture and feel like it fits in our larger body of work. We are not especially keen on theory or super academic essays and we prefer our nonfiction to be creative in nature.

We publish pieces in multiple formats. If your piece doesn’t feel like it fits nicely into one of these categories, reach out!

  • Word Count: 2–5k words (or 10–30 pages in the case of poetry).

    Every month we publish a feature zine. These are formatted into small, quarter-sized zines which are printed in a limited run and mailed to our Patreon supporters. We also post features to read for free on our website digitally and record an audio feature with a professional voice actor for the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness Podcast. Authors of feature zines are expected to take part in an interview for the podcast as well. Reprints are fine.

    We do not sell our feature zines, but on occasion will turn a feature zine into a Fancy Zine, for which a contract will be negotiated.

    Pay: One time, $240.

  • Word Count: 4–14k.

    Fancy Zines are works that are too long to be Feature Zines, that are not right for the Feature format, or that are Feature Zines we would like to turn into Fancy Zines. Fancy Zines could be of many genres including: short fiction, a series of essays, creative non-fiction, historical articles, a longer poetry chapbook, or a short play.

    Fancy Zines are usually printed in half-letter format with a cardstock covers and various levels of embellishment for which we can provide original illustration and graphic design.

    Fancy Zines are carried in our shop for sale in print and digital form and may be turned into audio features.

    Pay: 15% royalties of sale price. Advances are available and negotiable.

  • Word Count: 2-14k.

    The Live Like the World is Dying Skills Series, an ever-growing collection of zines about basic community preparedness topics. Each explores different essential skills and are designed to be printed and held on to as reference material.

    We mostly produce these internally, but are open to pitches for zines that fit this criteria. Skill Zines could be about anything from tips for conflict mediation to guides for things like building meshtastic radios.

    Skill Series Zines are sold on our website in print form and available for free for download. We also distribute them for cost or free at tabling events. We encourage anyone who wants to, to print and distro them on their own. They are meant to be distributed and sold for the cost of manufacture. As such, no royalties are collected. We do not profit from these zines, but we do pay someone to make them.

    Pay: $70-240. Some Skill Series Zines are used as Feature Zines.

  • Word Count: Over 14k.

    We love to publish a book, but please be aware that we will be exceptionally picky as we only produce a few a year.

    We are especially excited about pulpy sci-fi, fantasy, memoirs, historical anarchism, and creative nonfiction.

    Pay: 15% royalties of sale price. Advances are available and negotiable.

  • We are actively looking for translations into English from other languages and from English into other languages and will pay both the translator and the original author of the work.

    Please contact us for more information.

 

Example Submissions

(a non-exclusive list, just to get a sense of our interests):

  • Recipes–for commonly discarded food, for feeding mass movements, for food that was important to a resistance movement.

  • Memoirs of travelers who come from marginalized positions in society

  • Short plays or vignettes

  • Folk song books

  • Radical folklore

  • Music how-tos that highlight what can be subversive about music

  • Neat historical essays about under-appreciated resistance heroes and anarchists

  • Translated Historical Texts that bring non-English radical thought to English-speaking audiences with contextual and editorial notes.

  • Lifestyle how-tos, such as how to cut down on waste

  • Food distribution, community gardening, mutual aid guides

  • Essays about coming to anarchism or anarchic values from a non-western background

  • Essays about religiosity as relates to anarchism and/or activism

  • History of trans and queer identities

  • RPG content, either system-neutral world zines or standalone adventures for specific systems, the latter probably only as standalone zines rather than features because of length.

  • Short essays about the etymology and history of words and concepts that are part of a larger radical framework.

  • Memoirs of politicized refugees or those who have engaged in militant conflict in the name of freedom

  • Fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, literature, horror, romance, anything written from a radical perspective (but that isn’t necessarily directly about politics!)

  • How-to zines about preparedness skills, everything from gardening to food preservation to DIY electrical grids to wilderness survival to urban caching to lockpicking to armed community defense.

  • Memoirs about prison and repression: how people with radical politics have survived

  • Comics and Graphic Novels

 

How to Submit

Write us at submissions@tangledwilderness.org with the subject “Submission: [name of your submission].”

Include your work attached in standard manuscript format as a .rtf, .doc, or .docx file—and don’t put it in the body of the email. We do not accept submissions in the form of pdfs. Reprint submissions are fine, though please tell us if and where the piece has been published previously. Please no simultaneous submissions or multiple submissions at a time.

To to submit, please include a cover letter that includes:

  • An introduction to you, the author

  • An introduction to the piece your submitting

  • Why your piece feels like a good fit for our collective

  • What anarchistic thought means in your writing


Feel free to brag, briefly, about previous publications you might have. You don’t need to suggest a format for publication. We will decide what your piece feels most appropriate for whether it be a Feature or Fancy zine.

Note that there is no need to include your “legal” name in your manuscript or email, only the name you would like us to refer to you as. If we accept the submission and need to figure out payment and contracts we can talk about names then.

Our turnaround time will vary, but please feel free to follow up with us if we have not responded in two weeks.

Reprints/Already Formatted Pieces

If you are submitting a piece that has already been laid out, you must include a text document of the piece as well. We do our layout and graphic design work in house and like to do our own editions of works if there are other existing editions (like self-published editions). If your work has already been published in another language, you must submit it with a translated English sample and synopsis of the work.


A note on AI

Please note that we do not want submissions created by AI, and that by sending us anything created by AI you consent fully to us publishing it without your further involvement or giving you any form of compensation. This includes AI generated email introductions. You also consent to us publicly making fun of you, and putting you on blast for believing in yourself so little that you think a stupid algorithm is more skilled and creative than you are.