Short ‘n’ sweet guidelines

Based out of Wadham College, Kindred Spirits is a literary magazine dedicated to providing a space for people of colour to be exactly as they are, no questions asked. Interject words and phrases from another language into your prose, muse over niche rituals from your culture in your poems, share recipes from family members back home— wherever home is. We take fiction, personal essays, poems, artwork, recipes. Tell us the things you think other people just won’t get. 

Please keep prose (fictional and non-fictional) within 2000 words. Be careful when formatting poems; we may not be able to preserve any shapes or quirks when uploading it to the website. Artwork should be in JPG/JPEG format, though we will accept creations of any medium (with a maximum of two pieces per submission). Just take a good photograph or scan it in and send it to us!  

All submissions are via Google form. If you have any trouble with your submission, please contact us.

The submission guidelines and submission form for The Kindred Spirits Cookbook are slightly different. Please refer to those guidelines when submitting to the Cookbook.

Submissions are rolling.*

*Submissions are open from Sunday of first week until Saturday of 7th week.

The longer form…

The full submission guidelines and some reminders:

  • Please submit to one category at one time. (We have rolling submissions, so feel free to submit at another time during the term!) 

  • Please omit all names from submission files. 

  • Please label the files accordingly:

    • Writing: title.docx

    • Images: title.JPEG 

    • Music: title.mp3

  • Edits, if necessary, will be minor and with your consent. 

  • We reserve the right to accept or reject your work.

    • All AI-generated submissions will be automatically rejected. 

  • Please do not email us about the status of your submission, but feel free to email about anything else. We will reach out first about your submission!

  • Submissions open on Sunday of 1st week and close on Saturday of 7th week. The Kindred Spirits Cookbook submissions open on January 5, 2025. They close on January 31.

    • 1 piece per submission with a maximum count of 2,000 words.

    • Excerpts (within the word count) are accepted. 

    • Submit as a .DOCX.

    Fiction

    • Auto-fiction, short stories, flash fiction, among others are acceptable. 

    • We will not accept fan fiction.

    Nonfiction

    • Memoirs, opinion essays, interviews, and media reviews are accepted.  

    • We will not accept journalistic reports of events on campus (i.e. “news”). (Please submit them to The Oxford Blue, The Oxford Student, or The Isis.)*

    *You may submit opinions (“op-eds”) on current events on/off campus.

    • Maximum of 2 poems per submission.

    • Submit all poems in 1 document.

    • All work must be titled (“untitled” is still a title!). 

      • Title the file according to the following: Title.JPEG. 

        • If part of a series, title them this way: # Title.JPEG. 

    • All images must be submitted as a JPEG. 

    • For print media (collages, film strips, etc), please submit it as a JPEG. 

    • We cannot accept any form of videos, unless they are submitted as a YouTube/Vimeo link.

    Studio Art & Photography

    • Maximum of 2 works per submission. 

    • Submit a brief 2-3 sentence artist’s statement to accompany each piece.

    Film/Dance

    • Submit 3-4 stills (as a JPEG), a blurb about the project, and if applicable, a link to view it.

    Music

    • 1 piece per submission. 

    • Send 3-5 min. of your piece in .MP3. Excerpts are welcome! 

    • Please send lyrics, if applicable.

  • Submissions open January 5, 2025. They close January 31.

    • 1 recipe per submission (including visual arts, music, etc.)

    • Recipes are included but not limited to: food, drinks, emotional remedies. 

    • Title files according to standard submission guidelines. 

    Written

    • Format all written submissions in standard recipe format (include ingredients, steps, and category—breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, emotion, etc). See an example here.

    • Please submit as a .DOCX.  

    Visual Arts

    • All aforementioned mediums accepted—photographs must be sent as JPEGs, music submitted as MP3, links to outside media are limited to YouTube and Vimeo. 

    • All submissions must include an artist’s statement of 2-3 sentences about the piece.