Submission Guidelines

NONFICTION

We consider memoir, personal essays, and creative nonfiction with contemporary styles and an attention to language, form, and consciousness. We are particularly interested in essays that challenge established norms for the genre or that don’t seem to fit in easy categories of classification. We also like some more traditional sorts of essays and reportage. Try us. Trust us. We’re normal.

FICTION

We consider literary short fiction and novellas with contemporary themes and styles. Genre fiction is very unlikely to suit us, but if you think you can sell us on it, well, then shoot it on over. We thought we didn’t want sci-fi until we met some particularly compelling fighting robots, after all.

POETRY

We consider poetry of any style. Please limit poetry submissions to no more than five poems. Please limit the number of cat poems (unless, of course, they are really, really good cat poems).

REVIEWS AND CRITICISM

We do not accept unsolicited reviews or criticism. If you would like to submit a review or criticism, please send us a quick query. Please consider our slightly unruly hearts as you formulate your query. We might fall madly in love with a review or critical exploration of just about anything—a book, several books considered together, films, music, television, the internet —if you can make it, well, less of a traditional review or strictly academic work of criticism. If you were discussing the adventures of Jason Bourne with your neighborhood butcher, his apprentice nephew and the hairdresser from down the street, say, and some particularly sage kernel of wisdom emerged from the conversation that then informs your riveting review or critical piece… well, then that would probably get us rather fired up.

RECIPES, and OTHER MISCELLANEOUS CONTENT

We gladly consider unsolicited annotated recipes. Boy, are we ever pining for some great annotated recipes, compelling correspondence, found texts, and story-ish charts and graphs.

VIDEO AND AUDIO ESSAY

The Normal School happily considers video and audio essay, as well as some forms of experimental film for our website. Great mashups with a compelling First Amendment “fair use” argument behind them will also be considered. If it’s nifty, original and short, and does not include anyone waggling their bits and pieces on video, try us. We do consider work that has screened at film festivals but prefer that it not be viewable elsewhere on the web. If you are interested in submitting video or audio content to us, please drop us a quick query—we don’t want to waste your DVDs, CDs or postage if it just ain’t our bag.

FORMAT FOR ALL SUBMISSIONS

Manuscripts are read from September 1 to April 30. Unsolicited manuscripts received between May 1 and August 31 will be printed out, sculpted into a political effigy, and burned ceremoniously in front of an unruly mob. Please address your submissions to the appropriate editor (i.e. Nonfiction Editor, Recipe Editor, Miscellaneous Editor, etc.). Please do not include pictures of yourself unless it is an extraordinarily funny picture of you wearing ridiculous glasses or unnecessarily tight pants with a large gravy stain. Please tuck an SASE in with your submission.

The Normal School accepts submissions at this address:

The Normal School
5245 North Backer Avenue
M/S PB 98
California State University, Fresno
Fresno, CA 93740-8001

All manuscripts must be double-spaced for fiction and nonfiction. Poetry may be single-spaced.
All manuscripts should be formatted in a readable (12 point) font, with at least 1 inch margins.
Please include a brief cover letter. Remind us if we know you.
Be sure your full name and address appear on the manuscript.
Every submission must also include an email address for response.
We regret we cannot accept email submissions at this time.

Simultaneous submissions are accepted; writers must notify The Normal School immediately if the work is accepted elsewhere. We prefer to be notified of such developments by carrier pigeon, but a simple email will suffice. Send it to us at submissions@thenormalschool.com

We consider only previously unpublished work.

We strongly encourage writers to be familiar with The Normal School before submitting your work. But since we haven’t actually published an issue yet, this will be difficult. Do your best.