Publication Schedule for Appalachian Heritage
Appalachian Heritage is looking for Artists, Photographers, and Writers!
Guidelines for Contributors
Appalachian Heritage is abjectly dependent upon unsolicited literary manuscripts and visual art, and we are enormously grateful to those who send us the fruits of their literary and artistic labors.
Our publication is a quarterly literary magazine of the Southern Appalachians. As such, we limit ourselves to material about our region or universal material by writers with strong connections to our region. Work may be historical or contemporary in nature.
Sure, we are Appalachian Heritage and we do appreciate the past, but we are a forward-looking contemporary literary quarterly, and, frankly, we receive too many nostalgic submissions.
Please spare us the "Papaw Was Perfect" poetry and the "Mamaw Moved Mountains" manuscripts and give us some hard-hitting prose, some innovative poetry, some inventive photography, and some original art. Help us be the ground-breaking, stimulating kind of quarterly we aspire to be.
Please only submit original work that has not been/is not being submitted elsewhere and that has never appeared in a printed publication. If you wish to submit material that has previously been published electronically, please inform us of where and when it was published.
We are seeking poetry, short fiction, literary criticism and biography, book reviews, and creative non-fiction, including memoirs, opinion pieces, and historical sketches. We recommend that prose pieces, do not exceed 3500 words. We only have room for 42 lines of poetry. One-page poems cannot exceed 42 lines, and two-page poems cannot exceed 84 lines. We almost never publish poems that are more than two pages long. Book reviews are generally only about 500 words in length. Please send only one prose piece at a time, but feel free to send up to eight short poems.
Please send a paper copy of your submission by mail. If we accept what you have mailed, we will request it as a Microsoft Word attachment via e-mail.
Submissions may be sent to:
Appalachian Heritage
Berea College
CPO 2166
Berea, KY 40404
A query or proposal is not necessary. We’re happy to look at any manuscript or batch of visual images you consider worthy. However, if you wish, you may contact us to see if any similar effort is already under consideration. This may be particularly appropriate for book reviewers.
Please send only one genre at a time, and please include a cover letter that specifies the genre of your work and the titles of the pieces. Also, in the cover letter, indicate whether or not you wish your art, photos, or manuscript to be returned. If you wish to have your work sent back, please include an appropriate self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE). We ask that you number your pages and put your name and contact information on all pages. Along with your work, please feel free to send us the Contributor’s Information Sheet, which you can download from this site, but there is no obligation to do so.
We consider submissions year-round, and we will send an acknowledgement letter to notify you that we received your submission. If you do not get this within a month, feel free to inquire. Because we take submissions so seriously, it may take as long as three to six months for us to make a decision about your work. You are welcome to contact us after a few months, if you wish.
You retain all rights to material you submit to us. We simply utilize first publication rights and the right to reprint in future issues of the magazine. Unless you request otherwise, we may include your works or portions of them on our website with appropriate acknowledgment. We do request that, should you re-print the text or images we use in the magazine, you acknowledge us and send us a copy of the publication in which your work appears.
Rewards
As a contributor, you will receive three copies of the issue
in which your work appears.
Unless you request not to be considered, all poems, stories, and articles published in Appalachian Heritage are eligible for our annual Plattner Award. All honorees are rewarded with a sliding bookrack with an attached commemorative plaque from Berea College Crafts and First Place winners receive an additional stipend of $200.
When/if work that originally appeared in Appalachian Heritage is reprinted in other publications, we will be glad to publicize
your new publications on our website as we become aware of
them.
Reprinted
Work
Visual Art
Since we are a publication of the Appalachian South, we are
only looking for images that depict this region.
Please note that our four quarterly issues correspond to the seasons of the year, so please send either a Spring, a Summer, a Fall, or a Winter portfolio of images. Of course, we realize that most images aren't seasonal. We just don't want snow pictures in Summer or Fall colors in the Spring. We love barns and churches, but we want to be on the creative cutting edge.
We are looking for all kinds of artwork that can be clearly reproduced on paper, including block prints, pen-and-ink sketches, etchings, some watercolors, and some oil paintings.
On the back of each piece, please pencil your name, phone number, other contact information, and your caption for the image. If the image is of a particular person and/or place, or if the date is significant, include that information as well.
Color Artwork and Photographs
The front and back covers are reserved for full-color work only. Only vertical images will be considered for the front cover while horizontal images are needed for the back cover. Please submit two works of art so that the images
on the covers are consistent. Feel free to submit up to
four pairs of compatible pieces so we have more images
to choose from.
Interior Photographs
The space within the margins on the inside of the magazine is 7.5" tall and 5" wide. Therefore, we need most of your images to be vertical. For some issues, we can afford all color; for others, we can use only a handful of color images. All images need to be 300 dpi at 7.5"x 5". Please submit thirty to fifty images for consideration.
Digital Files
Feel free to send images on a CD. If you choose to send digital
files, they do not need to be the exact dimensions we seek,
but they should have a 300-500 dpi resolution when reproduced
at a maximum size of 6”x9".
Prints
Please send the artwork itself or photographs of it, not
photocopies. If you send prints, please send images between
5”x7” and 8”x10,” and be sure to
include your name, contact information, and caption on the
back of the image.
