Editorial Guidelines

Topology is an online magazine coordinated by a volunteer editorial board. We specialize in essays, poems and images that tell stories about the places where we find ourselves.

Our publishing schedule is organized around monthly, three-week-long themes, with other material published during in-between weeks. We welcome unsolicited submissions that fit with upcoming issues themes, as well as timely pieces that respond to current events and proposals for in-between weeks, ranging from an individual piece to a series of five curated pieces on a particular theme.

If you are interested in submitting to Topology, please spend some time with our content to develop an idea of what our editors are looking for, and then join our contributor’s e-mail list (to the right) to receive information about upcoming themes and deadlines. Please include the theme and form (essay, poem, image, or etcetera) in your submission.  Recommendations for various forms include:

  • Longer format writing: Topology welcomes pieces that tell stories in a variety of creative non-fiction forms, including personal narrative, interview, theological/philosophical essay and DIY essay. Strong submissions will allow readers to see the story of the author or interviewee through the lens of Topology’s focus on place. The recommended word count is 500-1,500 words and submissions should be attached as Word documents.
  • Poetry: We publish good work in any poetry form, from sonnets to prose poems to free verse. The poems most likely to catch our attention are the ones that see the world in new ways, or that take the issue themes and explore them on more than a surface level. Please send no more than five poems as a Word or RTF document via our submission form (no PDFs). If you have taken a photo or own the rights to an image you would like to accompany your poem, we would love to have it! Please send it in the same form submission with your poem, following the same file format as for submitting images (below).
  • Images: We publish a variety of types of photography, images, and visual art, and we believe that the visual medium has a unique storytelling capacity. Please attach your photo(s) to your submission, along with an artist’s statement in a Word document or in the comment field of the submissions page. The statement may be as brief or as lengthy as you like, but please include a title and the location where the image was created; this gives us a sense of the story of the piece. Images should be high resolution.

Submissions will be reviewed by our section editors and they will notify you about whether or not your submission was accepted for publication. Our editors may make minor copy editing changes to written pieces, but they will seek your permission for any major changes. Please include a head shot and short bio that says something about where you live and why with your first submission.

We do occasionally re-publish material that has appeared elsewhere with permission and attribution, and ask that you secure permission from the original publication before submitting.

Topology contributors retain rights to their work for re-publishing. Please include an appropriate attribution in future publications such as, “This piece was originally published with Topology Magazine (www.topologymagazine.org).”

Please see our upcoming issues page for issue themes and submission deadlines. Inquiries can be sent via our contact form; submissions should be sent through our submission form.

Thank you for your interest in submitting to Topology!