Guidelines
Unless otherwise stated, Island welcomes submissions from Australia, New Zealand and Australians living abroad.
All submissions are via Submittable.
We do not accept work previously published in print or online, including on blogs.
We accept simultaneous submissions; however, if your work is selected for publication elsewhere, please withdraw it from Island Submittable.
Contributor Policy
You do not need to be an Island subscriber to submit or enter any of our prizes. However, we believe that writers ought to be readers of the literary magazines in which their work is published, so for this reason, if your work is published either in print or online, and you not already a subscriber, your total payment will be less the cost of a 4-issue subscription.
For a small not-for-profit literary magazine, this is a necessary step in a long-term strategy to build circulation. This, in turn, will allow us to increase the amount we can afford to pay our writers. For background information on our contributor fee policy, see here.
Payments
Contributor fees are currently:
Fiction and nonfiction for print - 40 cents per word, with a minimum of $600 and a maximum of $1500.
Poetry for print and Island Online - $175 per poem.
Island Online - $600 for short-form fiction, nonfiction and graphic narratives.
All fees are less the cost of a 4-issue subscription if you are not a current subscriber. For background information on this policy see here.
In additional to core funding from Arts Tasmania, 2025 contributor fees have been supplemented by the Australian Government through the Creative Australia its arts funding and advisory body and the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
We continually strive to increase author payment rates through grants and fundraising.
PROCESS
You will receive an automated acknowledgement of receipt of your submission.
All submissions will be read by at least one member of the editorial team.
Once decisions are made, you will be contacted (either via Submittable or direct email) regarding the outcome. Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to provide individualised feedback on submissions that are not selected.
The expectation is that the selected works will require little editing. However, any editing involved will be undertaken by Island’s editorial team, in discussion with the author. The author will have final approval of the work.
A licensing agreement will be sent to the author prior to publication (see T&Cs below for further details).
TERMS & CONDITIONS
A licencing agreement outlining the contributor fee and full terms and conditions will be sent to authors prior to publication. Please be aware of the following:
- Copyright remains with the author; but Island requires an exclusive licence for three months from publication. Following the exclusivity period, authors must continue to license the work to Island on a non-exclusive basis. Any further reproduction should publicly acknowledge Island as the original publisher.
- Authors must warrant that their work is an original work, that their work does not infringe any copyright and that they are the sole owner of the copyright in the work. They must also warrant that the work contains nothing obscene, indecent or libellous.
A draft of the full licencing agreement is available on request from admin@islandmag.com.
Thanks to four year investment from Creative Australia, we are thrilled to be able to continue our commitment to graphic storytelling by publishing an eight-page graphic narrative in each print edition of Island. We are also delighted that the curator for recent Graphic Narrative Project, Joshua Santospirito, will be selecting and editing works for 2025.
We invite you to submit your pitches for this exciting opportunity.
What to include in your pitch:
Your pitch should be about two paragraphs, and should include some idea of how you’d like to approach the art. You can attach up to five image files. Acceptable file types are .pdf, .tif, . jpg, .doc
Note: Please do not submit previously published or completed pieces; we want new work.
Contributor fee: $1600 will be paid for each successful piece on completion of the work.
Timelines:
Submissions are now open and close at 5pm AEST on 17 February 2025.
Selected works will be published throughout 2025.
Production timelines and specs will be discussed with the selected artists.
Process:
You will receive an automated acknowledgement of receipt of your submission. After that, you will generally not hear from the editorial team until after the submission period has closed.
Finalising selections and notifications could take up four months. We appreciate your patience as we carefully consider all work received.
Once decisions are made, you will be contacted (either via Submittable or direct email) regarding the outcome. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide individual feedback if your submission is not accepted.
If your submission is selected, our expectation is that there will be curatorial discussions about your pitch, and a collaborative editing process will be part of the workflow to ensure there are minimal corrections late in the process. You will be consulted on all changes and will have final approval of your work.
For further information on Island visit islandmag.com