SUBMISSION CALLOUT: DENIZEN DIGEST ISSUE 2 – MYSTERY

Well blargle Scabies, looks like we’ve got another mystery to solve! Netherworld’s 2nd edition of the Denizen Digest will arrive on the precipice of Halloween, a MYSTERY themed bound black & white zine. We’re on the case to find Brisbane’s best writers of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction to provide us with 4 A5 pages or less of their most gorgeous work. Submissions are open from August 1 to September 8.

Image by Nelson Gibbins @n.g.art

Denizen’s Digest Submission Guidelines 

WHAT WE WANT:

Denizen’s Digest is an extension of Netherworld, so we want submissions to reflect the weird dank corners of our little slice of Brisbane. Format and style are up in the air: we’re chasing everything from genre fiction to poetry to creative non-fic to tabletop games to one-act plays. Given who we (the editors) are, we’ll probably have a bias towards the weird stuff, but don’t let that stop you from saying what you want to say.

Each zine will have a Theme that we want all submissions to speak to in some way. You can take it as all vibes, you can be hyper literal, you can be anywhere in between — so long as you’re in conversation with our theme. If you’re not? Sorry, but we won’t be able to accept your piece. Keep an eye on the Netherworld socials for the theme announcements, or just shoot us a message and we’ll let you know!

HOW WE WANT IT:

You have between one and four portrait A5 pages or two A4 landscape to play with, which can be submitted as prose in a word doc or full page art driven pieces as a pdf if you have a visual flair for presenting your piece – mixed media encouraged! We don’t have a word count, but if submitting straight text please keep the page size in mind.

VISUAL PIECES: Please submit as .pdf files with a 10mm bleed
WRITTEN PICES: Please submit in a Word or Google document. 

Send your submission through to info@netherworldarcade.com, with “Denizen’s Digest” somewhere in the subject line before the cut-off date. That date will be included in the theme announcement post on our socials.

HOW WE’RE DOING THIS:

Denizen’s Digest will be printed as a 50-ish page A5 booklet, entirely in black and white. If you’ve checked out our Boneworld zines before, Denizen’s Digest will be the exact same level of quality. Ultimately, it will look nice, but not be expensive. Just be aware that any visual art you submit will be printed in black and white.

You WILL be compensated for your submission! We’re paying $30 per piece, PLUS a $50 Netherworld voucher, PLUS an exclusive enamel pin (it wouldn’t be a Netherworld thing without a pin). If your piece gets selected for the zine, we’ll reach out for your details.

WHO WE WANT:

Brisbane writers. Beyond that, we don’t mind who you are, or what you do, or how much writing you’ve had published before. Netherworld has always been a space of inclusion, and we’re a part of Netherworld. If you’ve had a drink here, you’ll know the vibe.

If you want to add in a short author bio to your submission, please do! We’ll include it at the end of your piece if possible, so please also double-check that it fits in the space. If you’d like to stay anonymous, or just use your name and no bio, that’s also totally fine, just let us know. 

THE OTHER STUFF:

• By purchasing your piece, we are ONLY purchasing First Australian Rights to publishing the text of your work. This means you’re welcome to shop it around after we’ve finished our print runs — just make sure other publishers know about us. We may reach out in the future about other rights.
• We don’t care about simultaneous submissions like most other lit mags do, but make sure you’re across the rules of any other publication you’re submitting to. They can be grumpy about that stuff.
• Multiple submissions is a no-go. We just don’t have the capacity to manage that amount of work! We’ll only consider your first submission, unless you specifically ask us to disregard it in favor of another.
• We’d prefer it if you gave us something original, but we can chat about reprints if you have a piece that perfectly matches our theme that you wholly own the rights to.
• No excerpts please. We want your story to stand on its own. Serial works may be open to consideration, but would require some serious discussion first.
• Please bring your work up to a publishable standard before submitting. That means no typos, no huge grammar issues, and it should be mostly coherent. Otherworldly jabberings are fun, but it’s nice to wrap them in some narrative.
• It should go without saying, but no AI.