Submissions to outwardlink.net (the "website")

• Please do not submit your work unless we are accepting submissions.
• Please read our entire submission policy carefully to avoid having your work rejected due to it not meeting our requirements.

Subject Matter

• We are looking for high-quality, short works of poetry and prose where the author's experience or perspective contributes to a "dialog of diversity," a quest to expand the relationships that people of different groups have with each other and with the rest of the world. "Groups" may refer to ages, backgrounds, capabilities, cultures, ethnicities, faiths, genders, nationalities, orientations, or any other designation that society uses for labeling or categorizing people.
• The mission of outwardlink.net is to use writing to illuminate and deconstruct these labels, categorizations, stereotypes, and misinformation that prevent communication. We are looking for works that will further this cause. The ways in which we can address this mission are diverse, and only some of them are represented in our collection. We encourage "thinking outside the box" in approaching our theme.

Specifications

Writing

• Writing must be primarily in English. You may use an occasional word or phrase in another language as long as we can determine that the word or phrase does not violate any of our restrictions (see Rights and Restrictions).
• Writing must be well-formed, edited, and proofread. While everyone makes mistakes, and we will make corrections for a typo here and there, we cannot accept work that does not appear to be properly reviewed and edited.
• Poems must be approximately 100 lines or fewer. An empty line or break between verses counts as one line.
• Prose must be approximately 2000 words or fewer.
• "Approximately" means we need you to submit writing of the appropriate length, but will not reject your submission solely for being a few lines or words over the limit.

Images

• You can also submit artwork or custom borders (the borders that appear on the left edge of our pages) to accompany your writing. We do not accept artwork by itself.
• Images must be high-quality and add meaningful value to your work.
• Artwork must be 480 pixels by 480 pixels or smaller.
• Custom borders must be exactly 36 pixels in width. We recommend that they be no more than 144 pixels in height or they will not work well in a repeating border.
• Artwork and custom borders should generally conform to the color scheme of the website (see our style sheet).

Accepted Formats

Writing

• Writing must be in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or plain text (.txt) format. For Word or RTF documents, font should be sans-serif. We publish using the Arial/Helvetica/sans-serif font family.
• We can accommodate any of characters in the UTF-8 set, including standard letters, numbers, symbols, letters with diacritical marks, Greek, Cyrillic, and other characters that work in both Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 7 browsers.
• If your writing contains unusual characters and symbols, please provide the decimal Unicode character entity number for these (for example, the decimal Unicode character entity number for the l in outwardlink.net is 8467, and we have verified that it works in both Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 7 browsers).
• Please do not include characters or symbols that do not have a Unicode character entity number or do not work in both Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 7 browsers.

Images

• Artwork must be in JPEG (.jpg), Graphics Interchange Format (.gif), or Portable Network Graphics (.png) format.
• Custom borders must be in Graphics Interchange Format (.gif) format.
• Image resolution must be 72 pixels/inch (Web resolution).

Rights and Restrictions

• You must be at least 13 years of age to submit items to this website. As we are part of the Facebook and Twitter communities, we are following their guidelines in this respect.
• Writing that you submit to us must be primarily authored by you (with proper attributions of any quoted material) and not restricted from publication by another's rights. We cannot accept writing submitted by you on behalf of another person.
• We accept previously published work, as long as you retain the rights to the work and provide the publication acknowledgements.
• Accompanying artwork and custom borders must either be created by you or you must have permission from the creator to submit them to us. For artwork or custom borders depicting real persons, you must have permission from each person depicted.
• We have the right to publish your submissions on our website (http://www.outwardlink.net/) and promote your work on our associated outwardlink.net Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/outwardlinknet/137866829244) and on our Twitter account (http://twitter.com/outwardlink) without compensation to you, any person who contributes artwork or custom borders submitted by you, or any person who is depicted in images submitted by you.
• You retain all other rights to your work, including the right to submit it to others for publication.
• You have the right to have us remove your writing (and any accompanying artwork or custom borders) from our website at anytime. Please contact the webmaster if you need to remove items from our website.
• Due to the nature and accessibility of our website, we cannot accept written or visual content that contains:
  • Libel.
  • Defamation.
  • Personal attacks or flaming.
  • Threats towards individuals or groups.
  • Enticement to commit a crime or engage in an illegal activity. Exceptions to this are depictions of peaceful acts of civil disobedience.
  • Words or language inappropriate for persons 13-17 years of age. We may be able to accept a certain amount of strong language (as with a PG-13 movie rating).
  • Certain specific words that we cannot accept in any quantity. We will describe this more fully in an e-mail to you if we reject your submission for this reason.
  • Written depictions of sex, violence, or subject matter inappropriate for persons 13-17 years of age.
  • Visual depictions of nudity, sex, violence, or subject matter inappropriate for persons 13-17 years of age.
  • Advertisements or commercial content. We are not using advertisements on our website at this time.
  • Chain letters, pyramid schemes, or other similar forms of solicitation.
  • Spam.
  • Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, or other malware.
• Although we will usually let you know why we are unable to accept a submission, we reserve the right to reject submissions without reason or explanation other than a rejection notice. We also reserve the right to remove previously submitted work from our website at any time and for any reason. In the event that we have to remove your work, we will notify you.
• The opinions expressed in the works of the contributors to the website are the views of the individual writers and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of other contributors, outwardlink.net, its editors, its webmaster, or its web host provider.

Facebook Posts

• We permit our Facebook Fans to post and participate in discussions on our outwardlink.net Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/outwardlinknet/137866829244).
• We do not permit fans to post poetry, prose, or artwork items on Facebook. Please use our submission process to send us these items to our website.
• All posts must conform to the same restrictions as submissions to our website (see Rights and Restrictions).
• We reserve the right to remove any post at any time and for any reason.

Privacy

• By submitting your work and a valid e-mail address and having us accept that work for our website, you agree to allow website visitors to contact you through the website's Contact Us form. This form and the scripts behind it partially encrypt and visually/textually hide your e-mail address from visitors and automated e-mail harvesters. If you receive a message from a visitor, you can decide whether or not to respond to it. If you receive repeated messages from the same visitor that appear to be abusive or threatening, contact the webmaster immediately.
• Aside from the Contact Us form, we use your e-mail address only to contact you regarding your submissions or for important notices. We do not sell, trade, or share your e-mail address.
• Any e-mail correspondence that you have with us remains strictly confidential as long as it is not abusive or threatening. E-mail abuse or threats will be forwarded to the proper authorities.

How to Submit Your Work

• Submit your work to our webmaster.
• Webmaster e-mail is: reginedelune at outwardlink dot net. (We have written it this way to avoid automated e-mail harvesters. If you are not sure how this translates into an actual e-mail address, contact the webmaster using our Contact Us form and we will reply with the address that you will need for submissions.)
• Write "Submission" in the subject line of the e-mail.
• In the body of the e-mail, include:
  • Your name as you want it to appear on our website.
  • Your contact e-mail address.
  • Appropriate attributions if you are submitting accompanying artwork or custom borders created by another person.
  • Citations of publications where an item has been previously published (for an example of this, refer to Paulann Petersen's poem Ecumenical).
• If we accept your work, we will send an e-mail to your contact e-mail address. You will need to reply to this e-mail in order for us to confirm your address and proceed with the publication of your work.
• Attach to the e-mail all files pertaining to your submission.
• Do not submit more than 5 items. Items include accompanying artwork and custom borders. The maximum number of items that we can have unprocessed from a single contributor at any given time is 5. Once we accept or reject one or more of your items, you can then submit additional items equal to the number of accepted or rejected ones.
• We will try to send you an acknowledgement of your submission within 3 business days. After that, you will usually not hear from us until we determine whether to accept or reject an item.
• Once we process your submission, we will want to process submissions from other contributors before returning to any additional submissions from you. In general, we are looking for a variety of contributors, so even if we really like your work, we may only be able to publish a few of your items at a time as we balance your work with other contributors.
• Please contact the webmaster with any questions about our submission policy or process.