Submissions

“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.” 

Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

bioStories welcomes creativity and originality in your approach to your subject and maintains no clearly recognizable editorial biases. We do, however, encourage you to consider that by the inherent nature of written expression, we find that a well-wrought passage that narrates a specific story or a finite moment within a life is far more effective at presenting something essential about that life than volumes of generalizations or summary. Similarly, we encourage you consider the frequent value found in getting out of the way of your subjects and allowing them to speak for themselves. But of course we value your voice as well and ask that submitting writers honor the uniqueness and innovation of their original, natural narrative voices every bit as much as they strive to present their subjects with honesty and candor. The smell of dishonest representation always penetrates. We react to such smell with the same reprehension as we do to work that appears focused on accomplishing an agenda. Present yourself and your subject as they are, part of the diverse, complex, and unruly citizenry of the universe, complete with warts and moles, hangovers and hangnails. Real life is messy, filled with broken plumbing and coagulating bacon grease, unmade beds and imperfect comebacks. Real biography recalls that sometimes you have to change the dressings on healing wounds and sometimes you have to add a little starch as you iron the shirt. Human nature is idiosyncratic and frequently contradictory, and, quite often, when you look close enough, it is downright graceful.

Share a life. Introduce us to someone we don’t yet know.

Editorial Suggestions, Processes, and Policies:

While we frequently publish writers with previous credits, we are equally interested in less experienced or unpublished writers with exceptional promise. All accepted pieces are subject to editing and galleys will be shared with authors for approval prior to publication. Essays first appear on our “featured essay” page. After about a week, the essay will be moved among other featured content where it will remain prominently accessible for several weeks. All published pieces are permanently archived and linked on our contributors/archives page. We acquire first rights for published material; copyright then reverts to the author. In the future, we may contact you requesting permission to include the material in a print anthology. As a general rule of thumb, biographical material is preferred over autobiographical material.

We strive to make timely editorial decisions, typically within six to eight weeks. Because bioStories is produced largely as a labor of love by a limited staff, please do not contact us to inquire about the status of a submission until eight weeks have passed.

Art Submissions:

We are always on the look-out for art that is representative of our mission and that fits well with essays we feature on the website. We also seek out cover art for digital issues and digital/print anthologies. We’re open to considering most anything that feels reflective of the nonfiction we publish, including, but not limited to paintings, pen and ink, photography, and mixed media. Please contact us by email with some sample images if you think you have work that might be a fit.

Payment:

At present, we are unable to pay authors for their material, however, when funding allows, we are committed to compensating writers.

Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice
This privacy notice discloses the privacy practices for (www.biostories.com). This privacy notice applies solely to information collected by this website. It will notify you of the following:

  1. What personally identifiable information is collected from you through the website, how it is used and with whom it may be shared.
  2. What choices are available to you regarding the use of your data.
  3. The security procedures in place to protect the misuse of your information.
  4. How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

Information Collection, Use, and Sharing
We are the sole owners of the information collected on this site. We only have access to/collect information that you voluntarily give us via email or other direct contact from you. We will not sell or rent this information to anyone.

We will use your information to respond to you, regarding the reason you contacted us. We will not share your information with any third party outside of our organization.

Unless you ask us not to, we may contact authors we publish via email in the future to tell them about upcoming contests, calls for submission, or anthology releases.

Your Access to and Control Over Information
You may opt out of any future contacts from us at any time. You can do the following at any time by contacting us via the email address or phone number given on our website:

  • See what data we have about you, if any.
  • Change/correct any data we have about you.
  • Have us delete any data we have about you.
  • Express any concern you have about our use of your data.

Security
We take precautions to protect your information. When you submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and offline.

If you feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, you should contact us immediately via email: editor.biostories@gmail.com

Submission Guidelines:

We welcome your submissions of original work. Please read some of the published pieces linked from the homepage and from the archives and contributors menu tabs for a better sense of what we publish and a view of our editorial sensibilities. We offer no restrictions on approach to material or format, but we do require that you kindly adhere to the following guidelines:

nonfiction prose submissions only
• 500 – 7500 words; our typical piece runs an average of 2500 words (please contact the editor in advance should you have material that exceeds our length restriction and exceptions may be made)
• submit by email to editor.biostories@gmail.com and paste your submission within the body of the email. Please make certain the words “biostories submission” and your last name appear in the subject line; we do not open attachments
• we accept submissions year-round
• simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please notify us immediately if your piece is accepted elsewhere
• we accept multiple submissions but ask that you wait at least a month between entries
• work submitted must be previously unpublished in print and online
• submissions that fail to follow these guidelines will be discarded without response.

Unlike many peer publications, we continue to resist charging submission fees and, because of the cost associated, have chosen not to use a submission manager. There are, of course, significant expenses associated with maintaining a publication, so we do encourage writers submitting to the magazine to consider a nominal donation (say, for instance, what a submission would cost if we all went back in time and submitted by regular mail rather than email.) There is no obligation to donate and donations have no bearing on the acceptance of work.

Please use the PayPal donate button in the right hand  sidebar to help support the magazine.