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Email us at: redrivercreatives@proton.me
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Submissions OPEN September 1st!
DEADLINE: 09/30/2026 – Wednesday, September 30th – 11:59 PM
Call for Entries!
What do we want?
All creative media welcome! 2D & 3D, digital and traditional art and craft. Poetry, prose, and short essays. Film, dance, and music videos. Old & new work accepted.
Feel free to send us information (flyers & write ups) regarding community events & resources, educational opportunities, or other Midwestern happenings of interest. Our publication date is generally a month or so after deadline.
The creative theme and writing prompt for this issue:
Bringing Everyone Along
It means including folks with disabilities, chronic illness and mental illness. It’s meeting people where they are, while addressing problems with liberals & reformists. Tolerance and acceptance while maintaining boundaries. Anti-isolationism. Active listening. Choosing to attempt conflict resolution by meeting in person (it’ll probably take multiple sessions). Acknowledging mistakes and hypocrisy. Granting and accepting apologies. Doing the worksheets, diary cards, journal entries, whatever. Neighborhoodism. Making casseroles. Adventures in daily disabled living (Choose Your Own Adventure style?).
There are billboards in the Midwest that now say, “I voted for Trump. I made a mistake. I’m sorry!” There’s a sign that says “Old Glory” next to an American flag, sponsored by the local gun club, as if the flag isn’t its own sign of violence in itself. It was something of a redundancy.
Ya’ll, what do we do about the rural/urban divide? How do we abolish car culture when the entire country is obsessed and our cities are barely walkable? How do you still get away with working from home, Janice? How do you stop data centers? How do you make people care enough to change?
This theme is meant to be an inspirational guide with which you may base your submission on. It is not meant to be a concrete thing to limit your work. You’re free to interpret the theme and incorporate it into your work at your own discretion. However, we are generally inclined to give preference in selecting those that address the theme, and specifically entries which come from BIPOC, LGBTQIA2s+ or neurodivergent/disabled folks.
Please review the guidelines & find the link to the submission form below.
Thank you!
Content guidelines:
We don’t like a lot of rules, but we do have some guidelines that will make this process a little more streamlined and easier for us to pull together. Please read on.
We aren’t the grammar police. We do not wish to reject a submission based on errors in grammar or punctuation, so long as a point is being made. That said, if you would like proof reading & corrections, we operate on a first come first served basis and will accommodate requests as time allows (you could ask your friends to help with this first before submitting).
Racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, ableist, or other works targeting specific groups of people will not be accepted. We understand artistic freedom and respect groups’ rights to reclaim and repurpose words that have been meant to hurt and oppress them, but bigotry will not be admissible.
Please add content warnings to your submissions if you feel it is appropriate! We accept work that is 18+, which means it might be graphic in nature, sexual, violent or traumatic to some. Context is everything! Use your best judgement.
(Example – CW: This poem contains references to sexual assault & homophobic slurs.)
Formatting:
Visual art/images: our print pages are 5.5″ width x 8.5″ height (A5), with approximately .25″ margins. We only print in black & white. Website is displayed in full color. Keep this in mind as you make your submissions.
- Please limit to no more than four image submissions, preferably in .jpeg format (more images allowable if sending both color and b/w edits).
- If you have trouble resizing/reformatting images, please reach out to us. A good, free, online image editor to use is: Photopea.com
- If submitting multiple images, it is helpful if you name your files with the titles of the pieces, and/or provide a numbering so we know which name goes with which work.
Written submissions: Please limit to no more than 3500 words for fiction and no more than 4 poems. We also accept nonfiction and articles of higher word counts on a case-by-case basis. For ease of formatting, put document pages into landscape format with two columns (this is especially helpful for poem layouts). Traditionally, we use Arial 10pt font. Please don’t send written work as an image file. Our preferred file format for written work is .docx. As an alternative to Google Docs, we’ve been digging Proton Docs and Cryptpad.
Video & audio submissions: Provide links to your work (Vimeo, Youtube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, etc.). Please include video stills, album covers, etc. (see image guidelines) or we will choose for you. A short write up explaining the project is helpful to include in your submission.
Ready to Submit to Us?
→ → → Click here ← ← ←
Or mail submissions to:
THE NORTHERN MIRROR – P.O. Box 1843, Fargo, ND 58107
Alternatively, if you have difficulty using the submission form, just email your files directly to
redrivercreatives@proton.me
RRCC 