A Gathering Together welcomes previously unpublished essays, short stories, poetry, reviews, visual art, and film. If you have other kinds of submissions in mind please let us know. The journal is published bi-annually, with special features published between issues. Our deadline for submissions for our spring issue is March 1st and for our fall issue, September 1st. Please take some time to review our content so that you can get a feel for what we would like to publish. The About Us page is also a great starting point for determining if your work is a good fit. As well, the essay, “” in which our founding editors frame what we are trying to accomplish with this space.

A Gathering Together is unable to compensate writers at this time.

All submissions will undergo a blind review. Please remove all identifying information from your submission—with the exception of the title page, which should include your name, a brief bio, and any other information you would like the editorial team to know. Please submit all text in .doc or .docx format, double spaced, size twelve font (unless your poetry or other creative submission requires otherwise).

We welcome simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if your work has been accepted elsewhere during the process of reviewing.

Special Features

Features are generally published January-March or July-September. Our interviews usually consist of a conversation with the artist whose work illustrates the immediately preceding issues, but we are interested in featuring projects, initiatives, and works of all kinds. 
Artists: Artists who want to be featured in our upcoming issues are invited to send us a letter of interest, brief bio, and a sample portfolio. See additional guidelines below.
Interviews: Writers who want to conduct interviews are welcome to send us pitches letting us know how the interview and interviewee (artist, performer, community initiative, archive, etc.) would be a good fit for our journal. 

General Submissions

Essays and Creative Nonfiction: Essays should address issues of relevance and import. We are looking primarily to use this space to engage ideas that are not normally considered in popular media or ways that they might be considered differently. If necessary, we encourage the use of either footnotes or hyperlinks. If you would like to skip these, please add a further reading list, so that our readers can engage your ideas in depth. We do not impose a word count, as long as there is a convergence between the idea and its proper elaboration.  

Poetry: Poetry submissions should engage issues of enduring consequence. Please submit between three and five poems that reflect your style. We will choose up to three if we accept your work for publication. Submit all poems in one document using a page break between each poem.

Short Stories: The short story form continues to represent an important format for intellectual production. We seek compelling narratives that tell stories that rebel against master narratives of our existence be it by use of plot, narrative structure, characterization, or another device. Tell us a story we've never heard before, or an old one with an ending we've not yet dreamed.

Reviews: William Cooper Nell once wrote that “we must be a reading people.” A Gathering Together is above all a place guided by the written word. We are interested in books that may not have gotten the attention they deserved. Less concerned with engaging the “hot new book,” the reviews section will feature works that strike us as necessary reads, regardless of the date of publication. In addition to books, we offer space for reviews of music, independent film, museum exhibitions, and theater. We will accept both essay reviews and standard reviews. There is no word limit—so the same principles about length outlined in the guidelines for essays holds here.

Visual Art: There are limits to words. Art submissions must do the same kinds of work that we expect in other forms. We accept all kinds of submissions. Please ensure that whatever you submit is of publishable quality. Image resolution should be a minimum of 72dpi and the file should be no larger than 2MB. We prefer that they be submitted in .eps, .jpg, .tiff, or .png file formats.

Film: The moving image, too, is a striking way to articulate meaningful ideas. Films should be no longer than 30 minutes. If we decide to share your work, we will require you to upload it to a third-party site, such as Youtube or Vimeo, so that we can embed it on our site.

Submissions Protocol

All submissions should be sent as attachments to submissions@agatheringtogether.com. In your email, please briefly indicate the nature of your submission and whether you would like it to be considered for our biannual issue or for a special feature.