This page was last updated on October 21, 2025.
Submissions Are Open
For details about submission periods, see our Editorial Calendar.
- Please only submit original works, written/created entirely by human beings.
- E.O. does not solicit or publish work that is created by AI or LLM software.
- We accept work that has been previously published, but please let us know.
- Simultaneous submissions are fine.
- If we publish original work, we ask you to acknowledge that the work was first published with Exist Otherwise, but we do not require this.
- We require all work to be submitted through our Submission Form.
Our Interests
Identity
We are interested in works about identity, the self, and the personal. How do we, as unique individuals, navigate a world that doesn’t necessarily conform to us? What does it mean to be an individual in a society? How many are you? Are you a single person with a single identity, or do you have the capacity to embody multiple personas? How do you present yourself to the world? To your friends? Co-workers? Lovers? Are you even you?
Gender
We are curious about gender. What is it? How can we move away from the restrictions inherent in gender duality? How important is gender to our sense of self? Is gender fixed, fluid, or subject to change? Why is gender important? Is it?
Trauma & Recovery
What hardships have you endured? How have they shaped you? In particular, how have they shaped your sense of self? What obstacles or challenges have you overcome? What obstacles stand in your way? How has society pushed you down, and how have you gotten back up? Have you gotten back up? If not, what do you seek or need to be whole? If submitting potentially triggering content, feel free to include a warning.
Intuition & Dreams
What are they? Where do they come from? Are these two phenomena related? Do they inform or influence you or your work? Are they integral to your survival as a human being?
Before You Submit
Theme & Prompt
Each issue of Exist Otherwise will have a theme. The theme will often be a quote from Claude Cahun, but not always.
What to Submit
Writing
We accept any kind of written work: poetry, prose, essays, fiction, creative non-fiction, scripts, hybrid, experimental writing, whatever.
500 Words or Less: You may submit up to three (3) per issue.
500-1000 Words: You may submit up to one (1) per issue.
Photography/Art
Note - We keep vacillating. We'd like to publish photography, but we get very few submissions in this format. So, we will also consider any kind of visual art.
We are looking for photography that tells a story. Your photo doesn’t necessarily have to have people in it, but we’re looking for representations of, or responses to, questions of identity, gender, recovery, intuition, dreams, or any other aspect of human existence in the world. We rarely accept purely abstract imagery.
To increases your chance of having your photography accepted, you may want to browse the following archives:
You may submit up to three (3) photographs per issue.
What Not to Submit
- Don’t submit work that you do not have the rights to.
- Erotica is fine, but nothing explicit.
- We appreciate horror as a genre, but it’s not what we’re looking for.
- No hate, racism, sexism, misogyny, transphobia, torture, gratuitous violence, or anything that aspires to cause harm.
How to Submit
What follows are our requirements for submissions of work to us. We will not typically reject a submission if it doesn’t meet these requirements exactly. However, any contributor who consistently submits work that is sloppy or hard to understand, is less likely to receive a notice of acceptance.
We require submissions to come from our Submission Form. This allows us to better keep track of them.
Writing Submissions Format
We accept works submitted in plain text, .rtf, .doc, .docx, or .pdf.
If your work requires any special formatting, pdf is suggested. In some cases, it might make sense to send your work as an image, in which case, jpg is fine.
Style Guide for Writing Submissions
- Typeface – The only thing we care about is that we can read your work with ease and clarity. Serif and Sans Serif are both fine, but please use something common, such as Times or Helvetica.
- Type size – Goldilocks! (Not too small, not too large.) 11-13 points is ideal.
- Page Size – We don’t care, as long as the work is readable.
- Margins – We don’t care, as long as the work is readable.
- Line Spacing (Leading) – We don’t care, as long as the work is readable.
- Type & Background Color – Black on white is preferred.
- Special Situations – Some contemporary writing breaks conventions and incorporates elements of visual art and/or experimentation. This is wonderful. The use of specialized fonts, typefaces, or type sizing, mixed typefaces, special characters, etc. is all the more reason to submit work in PDF or JPG format. We reserve the right to treat some of these types of work as text-based, and some as visual art. But we can’t make any broad guidelines here. These kinds of works will necessarily involve conversations between author and publisher so that decisions can be made jointly.
Written work will be formatted and displayed according to our internal style guide. Any exceptions to this must be negotiated on an individual basis.
Artwork Submissions Format
We prefer black and white photography, but we will consider any kind of art.
All submitted images should be 72-96 dpi and JPG. Please submit images with a MINIMUM long side of 1000 pixels. File size should not exceed 2 MB.
If your art is accepted for publication, you may be asked to submit a High Resolution version through our Artwork Details Form. Assistance with sizing and formatting is available after work has been accepted.
Special Note About Artwork: If your photo is accepted, you will be REQUIRED to provide Alt Text for each image.
Payment
- We pay $15 per published written work.
- We pay $20 per published photograph/art.
- Payment is issued within 1-3 days of publishing.
We can only guarantee payment through Paypal or Venmo. If you are in the US, we can mail you a check. If you are unable to accept any of those, let us know ahead of time and we’ll try to work something out.
Rights
Upon completion of the Contributor Agreement (sent by email with notice of acceptance), we reserve the right to publish your submitted work on this site, and in a downloadable PDF version of the issue. Both of these shall remain available here for a minimum of 60 days from the publish date.
Our right to publish your work is not exclusive. You may publish it elsewhere while it is published here.
After 60 days, you may request that your work be removed for any reason. Absent such request, your work will remain available on the web site and in a downloadable PDF for as long as this journal continues.
We retain no other rights to your work.