Our Queer Histories
An Anthology
We are seeking poetry, creative nonfiction, and visual art for eavesdrop’s first anthology, Our queer histories. what we are looking for, what we hope to accomplish, is a queer intergenerational collection of love, loss, hardship, exploration, and hope. send us your teenage dreams, your messy Mid-Life enlightenments, your coming outs and settling ins, and anything In Between that will make us laugh, cry, and sit long with new perspectives.
We want to bridge the gap between different generational and cultural queer experiences, creating a wonderful collage of what it means, what it’s always meant, to be a queer person navigating the world.
Submission guidelines:
Eavesdrop is a queer-focused multimedia magazine. Our tone is inclusive, playful, and passionate.
Normally, Eavesdrop accepts any and all genres, but for this special anthology we are looking for authentic, lived experiences in CNF, Visual, or Poetry formats only. Please note that we will not accept extremely graphic sexual or other violence. We recognize that violence is, unfortunately, part of our queer experiences, and we never want to censor anyone’s experience, but Eavesdrop wants to create a safe community for our content consumers and fellow artists, many whom are trauma survivors. If your piece does contain violence, please deliver it with purpose and consider including a trigger warning. If you have any questions about this policy, please email us at eavesdroplitmagazine@gmail.com.
This submission period will be from September 12th to December 8th, 2025.
Who Can Submit?
Our mandate is to connect both emerging and established Canadian writers with audiences who care. This anthology is open to writers located in Canada (anyone living in Canada for work, school, asylum, etc, as well as artists living on traditional, unceded territories, is welcome to submit). That said, we are looking for stories that provide insight into queer experiences in so-called Canada.
This anthology is open to writers who identify as part of the LGBTQ2SIA+ community. We will also consider stories written in honour of those lost, stolen, or still with us but unable to submit themselves, from allies who have permission to write those stories.
What We Accept:
Poetry
We accept up to 5 poems in a submission. Each poem should be no longer than 2 pages, single-spaced.
**We also accept pieces in spoken word, and it’s okay just to send the audio, but if you have the written piece, feel free to send both!
Creative Non-Fiction
For this issue, we are seeking short stories of no more than 3500 words.
Visual Art
Paintings, prints, digital and physical art, collages, photos, sketches, we want to see it! We are looking for cover art and pieces to put in the magazine.
Rate of Pay
For this anthology, artists will be paid the following:
$100 per poem
$220 per CNF piece
$220 per visual art piece (we accept digital work, paintings, drawings, photography, collages, anything, really!)
How to Submit:
We strive to make our submissions accessible and meet artists where they are. We accept all literary submissions in written form, but also in spoken word. Our goal is to transfer all of our written content into audio and all audio into written form so your work can reach every eye, limb, and ear. The anthology will become a print, digital, and audio collection, with all audio being read out by either the artist or a member of the Eavesdrop team.
We have been advised that Submittable is inaccessible to screen readers, so we have decided to host our submissions system entirely in-house. With in-house baking and a tight budget comes a bit of a submission shimmy. Please read the following submission instructions to ensure we receive your submission!
Eavesdrop accepts submissions via email or through the file function on the form. If emailing your work, please email us your piece at submissions@eavesdropmagazine.ca with the subject line “(NAME)”, “(QH)” and “(TITLE)”. If using the form file upload, please include your name, title, and QH in the file name. Alternatively, if you are more comfortable submitting audio through another platform such as YouTube or Vimeo, or on a personal website, please provide us with access to a link via email. You can submit to each category.
Upon submission, please also fill out the form to your right (below on mobile). To be considered, you MUST submit your piece AND fill out the form.
Written prose submissions should be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Written poems should be single-spaced, unless you are using unique formatting that requires additional space (if you’re unsure, email us at any time). All submissions should be set in a reasonably legible font (please, don’t make us return your piece because chalkduster font is edgy). Also, please send written submissions in DOC or DOCX files (not PDFs, .pages, or other random files that we can’t open on any computer/leave comments easily, because that makes us sad). Visual pieces should be scanned at a high quality and saved as high-quality PNG, PDF, or TIFF files. Audio files should:
not have background music (unless there are sounds imperative to the performance).
be submitted as a .wav file, as these are higher quality than a .mp3 file.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know as soon as possible via email if your piece has been accepted elsewhere. We will send acceptance/rejection letters and initial editorial notes within two months of submissions closing.
All submissions should be original and previously unpublished. We do not accept any work that has been partially or entirely written by Artificial Intelligence or pieces with computer-generated text or visuals.
There is no fee to submit your work to Eavesdrop.
Submissions close December 8th, 2025
We gratefully acknowledge that this project was made possible due to the generous support of the following funders: