Submissions are OPEN!
Published four times per year, Grain Magazine is an internationally acclaimed literary journal the published engaging, surprising, eclectic, and challenging writing and art by Canadian and international writers and artists.
Before submitting your work to Grain, we recommend you read a recent issue of the magazine. The latest issue of Grain is available to order by clicking the current issue cover image on the right of this page.
To help Grain support writers of diverse communities and identities, we encourage applicants to self-declare if they identify as a writer who is a member of group(s) experiencing marginalization and underrepresentation. (i.e. Black, Indigenous, or Person of Colour, 2SLGBTQ+, or Disability).
Please adhere to the following guidelines and do not submit more than twice in one submission period (third and subsequent submissions will neither be read nor returned). Due to the volume of submissions, we are only able to publish one submission per author per calendar year. If you have work currently under consideration by Grain, please do not submit again until you have received a response. Grain has a nine-month submission period that runs from September 15th to June 15th. Manuscripts received outside of this window will be automatically rejected.
Send typed, unpublished material only (we consider work published online to be previously published). If work is submitted simultaneously, please let us know as soon as possible if it is accepted elsewhere. Please only submit work in one genre at one time.
Poetry: Individual poems, sequences, or suites up to a maximum of 6 pages.
Fiction: To a maximum of 3500 words.
- If your work exceeds the word limit, consider sending an excerpt.
Literary Nonfiction: To a maximum of 3500 words.
- If your work exceeds the word limit, consider sending an excerpt.
Other writing: Queries for submissions of work in other forms (i.e. short plays, comics, etc.) are welcome. You may submit such queries through Submittable or by mail.
Visual work: Mainly by invitation, though queries are welcome.
All contributors, regardless of genre, are paid $50 per page to a maximum of $250, plus two copies of the issue in which their work appears. Visual work published inside the magazine (in black and white) and on the cover (in colour) is paid at the same page rate as text contributions to a maximum of $500.
Grain purchases First North American Serial Rights and First Digital Publication Rights only. Copyright remains with the writer or artist.
Before submitting, please ensure that your work adheres to the following:
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Submissions must follow industry formatting standards: typed in readable font (ideally 12 point, Times Roman), double-spaced for prose, free of typos, printed on one side only. No staples. Pieces of more than one page must be numbered.
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Please include a cover letter with all contact information, title(s) and genre of work you are submitting, and a total page and word count. A brief bio is highly recommended.
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You may submit your work through the mail or online through Submittable. We do not accept emailed submissions.
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Submissions that do not adhere to the guidelines will not be considered for publication.
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Please note, we do not publish the same author twice in the same year.
- All work must be original, and human-generated, from start to finish. We do not accept submissions of any kind that were written, developed, or assisted by AI tools such as ChatGPT.
Mailed submissions can only be returned if you include a SASE of appropriate size for your writing with sufficient Canadian/International/US postage included. Or, if you'd like to save on postage and paper, we will reply by email if you provide an email address for that purpose only. Submissions that do not include one of these reply methods will not be read nor returned.
Response time is typically within six months.
Please visit https://grainmagazine.submittable.com/submit.
NOTE: We have a monthly Submittable cap, and if we reached the said cap, online submissions will be closed until the following month. If you’d like to submit but our account is full, you can either submit by mail or wait until the 1st of the following month.
Send Mailed Submissions To:
Editor, Grain Magazine, PO Box 3986, Regina, SK, S4P 3R9, Canada
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If you are submitting work from outside Canada, please include a valid email address for reply purposes, as we cannot use non-Canadian postage.
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Please do not send your submission via email. We accept submissions only through the mail and through Submittable. To be considered for publication or to receive a response, you must include either a SASE or an email address.
