Submissions policy

Submissions to Granta

The main guideline for submitting work to Granta is simply to read the magazine and website thoroughly and ask yourself if you feel your piece meets our criteria. We receive many submissions every day, many of which are unsuitable for Granta (however well written).

Here is a list of things that Granta does not publish:

• Academic essays
• Book reviews
• Straight reporting or feature articles whose primary interest is immediate, i.e. stories whose relevance will not last the three-month lifespan of the magazine. The pieces we publish should outlast that period by several years (as the issues themselves do)
• Genre fiction: that means no romance, crime, science fiction or fantasy or historical writing
• Travel writing without a story. There should be a narrative focus, a point, a reason for you to tell us the story

Any issue of Granta will reveal stories or non-fiction that breaks one or the other of these rules to some degree, which is why it is useful to familiarize yourself with the magazine before submitting work.

Here is a list of practical things that will help us deal with your submission:

• Do not send more than two stories or five poems at a time
• Submissions should be made by post only. Emails are not accepted
• Because of the number of submissions we receive, we regret that we cannot acknowledge the receipt of submissions. We aim to read every manuscript within three months, and will respond to the submission, stating whether or not we would like to publish it, after that time. For this purpose, make sure to include a current email address with your submission. If you do not use email, please enclose a SASE so that we can respond to you
• Cover letter: a brief intro is fine
• Length: we have no guidelines on length

Photographic submissions to Granta

Granta includes at least one photo essay in each issue, as well as individual photographs to accompany the written pieces. We welcome all kinds of photographic work, in colour or black and white, but for the essay we favour work that lends itself to being published sequentially, either as a series of photographs on the same theme, or as a series that tells a story or reports on a social or political situation somewhere in the world. We are not restricted to traditional photojournalism, or to purely photographic work, but would consider, for some issues, paintings, drawings, film and video stills and graphics.

In submitting pictures, a short description of the idea behind the pictures is helpful, though it is not always necessary to include text with the pictures. Similarly, captions are helpful where appropriate.

In the first instance it is best to email your idea to photosubs@granta.com, including not more than six low-res jpegs as an example of the kind of work you do. This can then be followed up by a request for more images and, eventually, full-res images on CD.

We do, on occasion, commission sets of pictures, but a proposal for a commission should be very detailed, and the cost of any travel expenses and processing should be given at the outset.

Please do not send any prints by post as we cannot guarantee to return them. If you prefer to send images on paper, please, in the first instance, send laser copies or even photocopies: so long as they give a good sense of the final project, then they will serve as working images.

The address for submissions is:

The Editor
Granta Magazine
12 Addison Avenue
London W11 4QR
United Kingdom