The Clearing Submission Guidelines

The Clearing is an online journal, published by Little Toller Books, which offers writers and artists a dedicated space in which to explore and celebrate the landscapes we live in. Our contributors are encouraged to go forth and find distinctive, original visions of the urban, rural, suburban, modern or prehistoric, industrial, post-industrial, fantastical, natural. But each must be meaningful, surprising, felt. We’re interested in work from people at all stages of their careers – new, emerging or established, and from all backgrounds.

We publish original prose, poetry, photo-essays, art, graphic work, podcasts and film. We occasionally run extracts from appropriate new books. We do not publish book reviews.

Please see below for submission guidelines.

Prose. We publish non-fiction, and are keen to explore territory beyond the contemporary idea of ‘nature writing’. Essays should be up to 2,000 words long, submitted as Word documents only. We are only interested in original work which has not previously been published. Please also supply a short bio of the author and any other contributors. We also ask that you supply an appropriate photo or illustration to accompany the essay, in landscape format. If this is not your own photograph or illustration you will need to seek permission from the copyright holder for us to use it. We credit all images used. We can also include links to artist and writer websites, to partner organisations where appropriate and to social media handles. The author retains the copyright to the work, but we ask that if the essay appears elsewhere subsequently then reference is made to it first appearing on The Clearing. If it is to be used by a commercial organisation, we may ask for a fee, to be shared with the author.

If we’d like to publish your work we may make editorial suggestions, but will work with you.

Poetry. We are not currently accepting submissions for poetry as we have a large pile of submissions which we are working through. It’s worth bearing in mind that we find that poetry less widely read on The Clearing than prose, probably because Little Toller is a prose publisher.

Photo essays/art/graphic work. Please contact us first with your idea before sending images.

Podcasts. Please contact us first with your idea before sending sound files or links.

Films. Please contact us first with your idea before sending us video files or links.

We will contact contributors if we would like to publish work. We have one editor, who works on The Clearing as part of their wider work for Little Toller, so inevitably we take some time to get back to contributors. If you have submitted work which is later accepted elsewhere, please let us know. Please do not chase us as this adds to the amount of work we have to do.

Unfortunately we don’t make money from The Clearing and consequently have no budget to pay contributors, but we hope that the experience of being published in this forum gives writers and artists a wider recognition of their work and is a suitable platform for growing and developing their practice.

If you would like to contribute work for the first time please email theclearing@littletoller.co.uk . Those who have published with us before should email the editor directly.

Please do not use this email address for book submissions.

Thank you very much. We look forward to reading your work and hope to be able to publish it.