Isotope Writers’ Submission Guidelines

We are interested in lyric and short narrative essays, short stories, microfiction, prose poems, poetry, and artwork that engages in and meditates on the varied complex relationship among the human and non-human worlds, with a special interest in moving beyond merely laudatory descriptions of natural beauty and elegies on loss of the same.

We are interested in “the beauty of things”—to use Robinson Jeffers’s phrase—but seek to complicate typical modes of nature writing with a wide range of emotion and subject.

We are especially interested in work engaging fields, subjects and concerns that move beyond traditional nature writing—including urban ecosystems, astronomy, physics, chaos theory, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, restoration ecology, earth sciences, cartography, sexuality, medicine and the body.

We accept submissions from July 1 to October 15. We ask that poetry submissions be limited to 1-5 poems, totaling not more than 10 pages. Please submit no more than 20 pages of double-spaced prose (fiction or nonfiction), in a standard font with 1-inch margins. For all submissions, include contact information, a bio and enclose a SASE for reply. Please let us know how you heard about Isotope. Response time varies with staff size and budget. Manuscripts will not be returned; those not accepted will be recycled. Simultaneous submissions are okay, so long as they are identified as such and we are notified immediately if work is taken elsewhere. We do not accept submissions of previously published material.

Pay Scale: $50 per poem, $100 per prose piece

Isotope Artists’ Submission Guidelines

When it comes to the images published in the magazine, we are interested in the same sort of edgy work we look for in written contributions. In other words, artwork that also seeks to complicate typical modes of nature photography, drawing or painting with a wide range of emotion and subject. Work that moves beyond the expected. 

We have published lyrical photographs of dead animals found rotting in the desert; starkly lovely images of starless star-scapes; paintings of Scott tents in the Antarctic; frankly sensual works celebrating the body, nature and science by a California group of artists known as the Post-Surrealists and eerily beautiful work by a Utah artist that symbolizes the effect of toxins in the environment.  

We accept artwork submissions year-round. We ask that you submit artwork by e-mail, preferably by sending us a website link where we can go to peruse your work. If there are particular images or a series you would like to draw our attention to, include those specific links in your email as well. If you must send images as attachments, please send no more than 10 low-res images (pdf, jpeg or tiff) at a time. If you have a statement of artistic purpose you feel will enhance our understanding of your particular artistic project, please feel free to include it. Please also let us know how you heard about Isotope. Response time varies depending on staff and budget. Simultaneous submissions are okay, so long as they are identified as such and we are notified immediately if an image is to be published elsewhere. We sometimes print previously published artwork depending on copyright.

Artwork submitted on cd or in hard copy by regular mail will NOT be returned. 

Pay Scale:  $200 for Cover/Portfolio artist    $50 for images published elsewhere in the magazine 

Send artwork submissions to:   leslie.brown@usu.edu

Or:

Isotope
Department of English
Utah State University
3200 Old Main Hill
Logan, Utah 84322-3200