MUSED Submission Guidelines

Welcome to Mused - the BellaOnline Literary Review! Our mission is to showcase original work of talented women and men in traditional and experimental modes. Submissions are sought to support BellaOnline's missions of women, empowerment, charity, the environment and of course artistic/literary merit. We publish quarterly - on the equinoxes and the solstices.

Subject Matter
We are open to pretty much any topic you wish to write about! Stories about trips you have taken, poetry about your last relationship, photos from your back yard - they are all fair game. That being said, we strongly believe in the reputation and friendly atmosphere that BellaOnline has created. For that reason, we need to avoid certain topics - erotica, rape, nudity and profanity. For legal reasons we need to avoid fan fiction and article reprints. Whatever you submit, please make sure it is your own creation!

Submission Details
All BellaOnline review submissions are done online, using our online form. No other submissions shall be accepted. For legal reasons, all authors/artists must be 18 years of age or older.

Response Time
We auto-reply for receipt of all submissions. If you do not immediately get an auto-reply, check your anti-spam filters and contact us to let us know. It might be that your entered email address has a typo in it, which would mean we couldn't contact you using it. We send a follow-up email on acceptance or rejection of a submission. We will reply to all submissions within 3 months. We typically respond during the 2 weeks after the submission deadline for that issue. That is our voting period, where we make final decisions on all entries for a given issue. All decisions of our editorial board are final.

Editorial Calendar
We publish on each solstice and equinox. Our submission deadline is 45 days before each solstice and equinox. This gives us time to vote on all submissions, proofread the final copy of accepted works, get the bios and photos of the authors, and do the layout for the issue. Because of this lead time, if you submit content to us within 45 days of a release that content is being submitted for the subsequent issue. That is, if we are going to release a Spring Equinox issue on March 21st, and you submit content on March 20th, your content is not being considered for that Spring Equinox issue. It will be considered for the Summer Solstice issue. The issue we are drawing in submissions for will always be indicated on the submission form.

Rights
All written submissions should be unpublished elsewhere on the web, as we will acquire first, worldwide electronic rights. Images may be previously published images. Artists / writers understand they are submitting their work at will and thus the submissions are always their property. Rights revert to the author immediately after publication.

Editing
All accepted works are subject to minor editing for length and appropriateness. The vast majority of the time all we do is fix typos. We contact the author if we have to go beyond that (remove a pornographic word, etc.).

Entry Fee
Mused is a charity project. Because of that, we do not ask artists for any reading / entry fee. Overall, we do not make any money from Mused. We do not run any ads in Mused, or on the Mused webpages. We do not make any money from printed copy of Mused. For those reasons we do not offer payment for submissions. However, each person featured can submit several sentences promoting their background, and link to their personal website. BellaOnline is the second largest women's website in the world, so that link can result in thousands of visitors for you!

Main Submission Guidelines
Visual Art Submission Guidelines & Form
Fiction Submission Guidelines & Form
Non-Fiction Submission Guidelines & Form
Play Submission Guidelines & Form
Poetry Submission Guidelines & Form