Are you a UBC student looking to be published? If you’re a writer, an artist, photographer, musician, or film-maker interested in showcasing your latest creations, The Garden Statuary welcomes your work! We are always excited to receive and share our peers’ contributions.
We have two submission deadlines: one for our Winter Issue and one for our Spring Issue. Both issues will be published online (in December and April respectively) and all of the literary work from both issues will be published in a combined end-of-year edition in April.
Our 2024/2025 Winter Issue submissions are closed. Please check back next term for our Spring Issue deadline.
Accepted Genres
We look for academic essays (in the field of English), fictional prose, poetry, nonfiction, stage/screen play, visual art, photography, music, and film. Please consult us if you wish to submit work in a genre outside of these categories. If you are new to TGS, we suggest you survey our past issues before you submit to get a sense of the kind of work we publish.
Submission is open to all UBC undergraduate students from both Vancouver and Okanagan campuses — we are dedicated to publishing all excellent undergraduate work! However, we are also mindful of the traditionally exclusive nature of academia. Therefore, TGS is especially excited to receive submissions from traditionally underrepresented voices, including those from Indigenous people, people of colour, LGBTQIA+ people, people from low-income backgrounds, neurodiverse people, and people with disabilities. If you identify as one or more of the above, we strongly encourage you to submit!
How to Submit
You may submit up to five works in any genre or combination of genres of your choosing.
Send your work to thegardenstatuary@gmail.com with your name and the word submission in the subject line (e.g. Your Name – Submission).
If you plan to submit more than one piece, please attach each one as a separate document. Do not put multiple pieces in one document (it saves us a lot of trouble with the paperwork!). Please send us your documents in .docx (Word document) format. If you do not have Word, please submit your work in a format that allows us to copy-paste with the formatting intact.
The genre of your piece should be included in the document’s file name or stated within the body of your email. (e.g. “Your Piece’s Title (PROSE)”, “Poetry Submission 1”, etc.)
Be sure to remove your name from all pages of your submission(s). In order to prevent bias during the selection process, we keep authors’ identities anonymous to our editors. After the editors have made their final selections, we will reveal the successful authors’ names and, of course, credit these authors in our publication.
Submission Guidelines
Please make sure your work adheres to the following guidelines before you submit. All submissions must also follow UBC’s procedures regarding academic integrity.
Academic Essays should be in .doc or .docx format, a minimum of 3 pages and a maximum of 15 pages per submission (excluding bibliography). Formatting must be double-spaced, Times New Roman 12pt. font, with 1 inch margins. The topic should pertain to English literature or language studies. We ask that you cite your sources in MLA style in order to facilitate the assembly of the print issue.
*If your work falls under the minimum word count for academic pieces, please consider submitting it as a blog post to the ESA (English Students’ Association). As our affiliated student organization, they would love to publish your work on their website. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about this!
Creative Literary Work (prose, poetry, nonfiction, stage/screen play, etc.) should be in .doc or .docx format and a maximum of 15 pages per submission in 12pt. font. Prose must also be double-spaced, Times New Roman font, 1 inch margins.
Visual Art and Photography should be in .jpg or .png format. We accept and welcome a series or body of work. Please include an artist statement (200-500 words) per submission.
Music and Film should be in .mp3 or .mp4 format. Alternatively, it can be uploaded to a media-sharing platform (e.g. Google Drive, YouTube, SoundCloud) and sent as a link in the email. Clips can be a maximum of 15 minutes. Please include an artist statement (200-500 words) per submission.
**Our anonymous, no-bias policy also applies to music and film. We kindly ask that you ensure your full name is not included within your clips or their associated media-sharing accounts. For films, this may mean removing your credits sequence. If your submission is selected, we will be sure to publish the original version of your work with your name attached.
***Please note: all literary work must have not been published before; however, we do accept visual art, photography, music and film that have been previously published if the previous publication date was at least 90 days before our own publication date. See our copyright section for more info.
Copyright
If your submission is accepted to The Garden Statuary, we will ask for different kinds of copyright permissions depending on your genre of submission.
For all literary work:
- We ask for First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) which means that the author grants the journal the right to be the first in North America to publish the author’s particular piece. Since our journal publishes both in print and online, we ask that this right apply to both these mediums.
- We will also ask for the right to archive the author’s work on our website for at least three years, after which the author may choose to remove the work from public access. Some authors may feel that leaving their work up online detracts from its value. For instance, if they happen to republish their work in a marketable format (like a book), they may want to limit access strictly to that format.
- Copyright reverts to the author 90 days after publication. This means that the author retains the right to the work and can republish it in whatever format they would like 90 days after its first appearance in The Garden Statuary. We do ask that the author cite The Garden Statuary as the first place of publication when the author republishes.
- Why 90 days? Because we want readers to know they are reading something original on our pages – not something that might be published simultaneously elsewhere!
- In granting us FNASR, the author guarantees that their work has not been previously published. We do not accept literary submissions that have been published before, but please let us know if you feel you are an exception to this rule.
For all photography and visual art:
- We ask for One-Time Rights to publish both in print and online – which simply means the right to publish an author’s work once in both formats.
- We also ask for the right to archive the author’s work on our website for three years, after which the author may choose to remove the work from public access. See reasons for this in “literary work” above.
- We accept photographs and visual art that have been published before, but not if they have been published within the last 90 days.
- The author retains the copyright to the work and may republish it in any format 90 days after its first appearance in The Garden Statuary (again, see reasons in “literary work” above). You do not have to cite The Garden Statuary in subsequent publications.
For all film and music submissions:
- We do not by any means consider ourselves a music label or film company, so our publication agreement will simply be a request for the One-Time Right to publish your work.
- We ask for the right to archive the author’s work online for at least 2 years, but a shorter time period can be negotiated if necessary.
The Garden Statuary does not ask for the full copyright to any work (and you should be suspicious of publishers that do!). Those rights remain with you. If you have any questions or would like more clarification, drop us a line at thegardenstatuary@gmail.com.
Any Lingering Questions?
Please reach out to us at thegardenstatuary@gmail.com; we will get back to you as soon as we can.
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