Submission Guidelines for IN QUEER LOVE

Hello,

In Queer Love is a little magazine edited by Wree and published by Daxayoni Publishing House that features writings and artwork on the themes of Love and Rebellion in queer lives. We accept fiction, non-fiction, poetry, political pieces, opinions, and artworks. We are open to submissions in Bengali, Urdu, English, and Hindi. We follow purvanagari alphabet for Indic Languages, and the Roman Alphabet for English Languages. We don’t have any prompts generally for the issues, but sometimes we like to curate an issue over a particular theme. Details of which will be notified well in advance. We collect submissions on a rolling basis.

Kindly use the following link to submit your work: https://tally.so/r/3N0Bgb

The following is a small guideline for best practices while writing in English only. Since there are numerous formats for writing in English, we want to stick to a particular format. As such, this guideline is not really a suggestion for what to write, but more about how to write.

We are also adding technical specifications that we use for the production of the magazine, so that if you are looking for test printing, it is easier. The specification is scheduled to change with our third issue.

Typography Specifications

Font Guidelines:

• Body text: Baskerville Regular, 11 pt size, with a leading of 13.2 pt (1.2x line height).
• Titles: Helvetica Neue LT Std Bold Extended, 30 pt size.
• Subtitles: Baskerville Bold Italic, 16 pt size.

Layout and Margins:

• Margins: 12.7 mm on all sides.
• Gutter: 4.23 mm.
• Single-column width: 81 characters in Baskerville 11 pt.

Writing Guidelines

Titles

• Capitalise all words in titles except articles, prepositions, and possessive adjectives.
• For French or Italian titles, only the first letter is capitalised.

Formatting

• Titles of works of art must be in italics.
• Foreign words should always be italicised.
• Use a new line for speech.
• Use single spaces between ellipses.
• Initials should have a full stop and space (e.g., A. B. Chowdhury).
• Em dashes should have a space on either side (e.g., word — word).
• All quotations use single quotation marks. For quotes within quotes, use double quotation marks.
• Breaks within a line of quoted text should be indicated by three spaced dots ( … ).

Style & Usage

• Spell out dates, decades, and centuries. Avoid numerical figures (e.g., “the nineteenth century”).
• Prefer British English spelling and usage over American.
• Do not use contractions, unless in fiction or poetry where essential to the style.
• Avoid starting sentences or paragraphs with “and” or “but”.
• Avoid ending sentences with a preposition.
• Do not capitalise the seasons.
• Compass points are only capitalised when referring to a political or conceptual bloc (e.g., “the West”).

Word Choice

Avoid common pitfalls:

• Say “as fascinating as” instead of “fascinating as that.”
• Use “appreciation of” rather than “appreciation for.”

(A more complete list will be provided later.)

Punctuation Guidelines

• Do not hyphenate prefixes (e.g., “nonessential”, not “non-essential”).
• If you can substitute “and” with a comma, use a comma.
• Coordinate adjectives require a comma between them (e.g., “long, winding road”).
• Cumulative adjectives do not take a comma (e.g., “old wooden chair”).
• If an introductory clause is restrictive, do not separate it with a comma.
• Use an Oxford comma (e.g., “red, white, and blue”).
• Do not use a comma after “so”, “in”, time signifiers, or before “but”.
• Noun compounds should not be hyphenated, except in compound modifiers (e.g., “well-known artist”).
• Do not use relative pronouns to introduce a non-restrictive clause unless it preserves the meaning.

These guidelines are for our editors’ benefit, as they will be editing the submissions.

Artwork Guidelines

• All artwork must be black and white.
• Artwork should not contain gradients—use block colours only.
• Artwork size:
  • Page size is A5 (approximately 6 x 8 inches).
  • All artwork sizes and aspect ratios are accepted, but will be fit proportionally to the page.
  • We do not rotate artworks to fit the page layout.
• Along with your artwork, please provide:
  • Name of artwork
  • Artist name
  • Year of completion
  • Medium
  • Artist statement
• Currently accepted artwork types:
  • Any standalone artwork in any medium, following the above criteria
  • Comics
  • Graphic novellas (will be serialised)

Note:

We are not accepting photographs at the moment until a proper print process is finalised.