GENERAL SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and audio-visual submissions are closed for the summer and will open again in fall 2018.
Submissions are open year-round for The Loop, Disagreements, Economy, and the Politi-cultural department.
ACM is now online only. If you feel so moved, please "like" and follow ACM on Facebook and Twitter.
When submissions are open:
Submit only one prose piece at time. We will respond to it as quickly as we can, and as soon as we do, you’re free to submit again. Unless submissions are closed.
Yes, you can submit your work here and elsewhere simultaneously, but please let us know as soon as possible if your work has been accepted for publication.
No previously published work, thank you.
We publish reviews and review-essays of books that are of interest to curious generalists (not academic specialists): fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, history, politics, sociology, art, biography, and more. We also publish reviews of other arts. We encourage creativity in reviews. They can be in almost any format: list, personal essay, collage, etc. If you'd like to review for us, please use this form to tell us what genres you prefer. If you have a specific book in mind, please let us know of your relationship, if any, to the author. Just about all of the books we review are published by small presses. We rarely review books published by large commercial presses.
ACM staff and contributors are unpaid but you can change that!
ACM seeks a business manager/grant writer to handle (minimal) finances, apply for grants and apply to re-gain our non-profit status (which ended when ACM was a subsidiary of the indie publisher Curbside Splendor). So far, our only income is from Submittable fees. ACM is unaffiliated with any institution, and in the past has received national and local grants. We will publish a Riot! issue in 2019, and seek specific funding for that as well as ongoing funds so that we can pay writers and staff. Again: This is a non-paying position. The business manager/grant writer will also have an opportunity to take part in editorial decisions. This position could be divided between two people.
Please send a resume/cv with a note telling us what your experience is with literary magazines (reading them, publishing in them) and creative writing, managing finances, and writing grants. Let us know why you're interested and what you would like to gain from the (volunteer) job.
ACM recognizes the power of a diverse community and encourages applications from individuals with varied experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds. ACM is committed to diversity and all qualified applicants will receive consideration and will not be discriminated against based on citizenship status, age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. We are proud that Chicago is a sanctuary city.
ACM was founded in 1977 as a print magazine and began publishing online only in fall 2017. We've always been a lit mag with a political edge, and we're deepening that aspect, with art, creative work, and reviews about immigration and activism. ACM has always valued work that pushes boundaries. We're based in Chicago but have published work from around the world, including many translations and interviews. We've published the early work of David Sedaris, Ira Sukrungruang, Jenny Boully, and Emily Raboteau. Other notable contributors: Samantha Irby, Joe Meno, Stuart Dybek,Campbell McGrath, Virgil Suarez, Kathy Acker. Kim Addonizio, Sterling Plumpp, Robin Hemley, David Trinidad, Joshua Marie Wilkenson, Joe Meno, Jim DeRogatis, Stuart Dybek, Beth Ann Fennelly, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Lindsay Hunter, Jac Jemc, Ben Loory, and more and more.
We publish thumbnails with each work of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and welcome all sorts of media. Please query with a link to your web site or attachments.
Please query. We believe that the best interviews are done in person, to allow for liveliness and spontaneity. Second-best is via telephone or Skype. We appreciate your providing us, with your interview, a photo of the person, taken by you or the subject's PR empire. We appreciate it even more if the interview is timely; see Cara Suglich's interview with George Saunders about his winning of the Booker Prize. When you query, please let us know your relationship, if any, to the subject.
We welcome translations of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
In between our semi-annual issues we publish The Loop (Art/Power), which features nonfiction of most kinds, accompanied by art of most kinds. We welcome reportage, oral histories, review-essays, meditations, collage essays, political ruminations, travel pieces, your weird experimentalisms, interviews, critiques, and forms we haven’t thought of. The combination of art and text is important for The Loop. You can include your own photos/art work or those in the public domain; it’s fun to search digital collections such as those offered by the New York Public Library, National Gallery of Art, The Met and Pexels. The site 99designs contains links to 30 free-access image web sites, including The British Library and the delightful Public Domain Review. Or you might favor Medieval woodcuts or Victorian clipart. You might prefer a roundup of vintage clipart sites. Just don’t get lost in the art. Or if you do, write about it. Feel free, also, to include video and sound art.
Guidelines to come.
“Disagreement is not the conflict between one who says white and another who says black. It is the conflict between one who says white and another who also says white but does not understand the same thing by it... What makes an action political is not its object or the place where it is carried out, but solely its form, the form in which confirmation of equality is inscribed in the setting up of a dispute...Political activity makes understood as discourse what was once only noise.”
― Jacques Rancière, Disagreement
Are you tired of partisan politics that go nowhere? If so, submit to ACM's new year round column -- Disagreements. "Disagreements" seeks to publish essays and Letters to the Editor which can qualify as real disagreements as defined by Jacques Ranciere. For Ranciere, most of what passes for "political" or as a "disagreement" is no such thing because it does not grant the people with whom one disagrees fundamental equality as a speaking being. Arguments by the "left" are heard as whining and complaining by those on the "right," and arguments from the "right" are heard as angry and incoherent by the "left." Whether "left" or "right" in your politics, you can only disagree when you have truly heard and can explain your opponent's argument. It is only disagreement when your opponent is heard as speech rather than noise. Any polemic lacking this feature merely perpetuates the current system. Create change by bringing back real disagreement. Submit today!
