SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

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Thorncraft Publishing is pleased to announce an open reading period for Volume Three of our yoga book series. BreatheYourOMBalance: Yoga and Relationships allows us to discuss how yoga transforms our relationships. How has your yoga practice impacted your partnership with a mate, with your children, grandchildren, pets, friends, your community, your world? We want to hear all about it! Beginning writers are welcome. Open to all women, men, and transgender practitioners of yoga. All levels of yoga practitioners are welcome.

Open Call for Writing: Submissions are officially open on June 1, 2019. To prepare in advance, please, follow the guidelines below. You can submit by email or by attending a writing workshop in the future. Instructions for both options appear below.

BreatheYourOMBalance® is a creative writing journal of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry about yoga. For Volume One, we published writing by women only that focuses on yoga and/or meditation with breath and balance being central themes. For Volume Two, contributors paid tribute to the healing aspects of the yoga practice. For Volume Three, we want writings about how yoga reveals truths about our relationships. 

What kind of writing do we want?

We want deep, expressive work by your creative mind. Your writing can be funny, poetic, heart-wrenching, experimental, but above all, we want you to be thoughtful and speak to our hearts about your particular yoga and how it has transformed your relationships, connections beyond the self and branching out into your partnerships, families, communities, friend groups, and more. How has your yoga practice impacted your partnership with a mate, with your children, grandchildren, pets, friends, your community, your world? We want to hear all about it!

To submit, you should be at least eighteen years old, as we do need your permission to distribute your story worldwide. We do expect some stories and/or poems to possibly contain adult language and/or subject matter appropriate for mature audiences. 

In short, we welcome stories and poems that will choke us up--with laughter or tears or contemplation or all and more. We want to see you in there. Be yourself. 

We are truly honored to read your work and that you would want to share your stories with us in BreatheYourOMBalance. Thank you for allowing us to read your words and stories. We understand the courage it takes to share your words and practice, and we will treat each one as a gift, whether they are chosen to appear in the book or not.

Guidelines for Email & Workshop Submission Process:

1. Email period: We are currently accepting online submissions by email for Volume Three of BreatheYourOMBalance. Submissions open on June 1, 2019.  Submission period closes at DEADLINE EXTENDED: June 31, 2020, Midnight CST.

Writing Workshops: If you have already submitted your writing through a Yoga & Writing workshop or class with Shana Thornton, you do not need to submit your work again. If you plan to submit your work through an upcoming workshop, please see our guidelines below. If you have already submitted your work, we will contact you via email to sign your contract and work on the edits/revisions to your work.

2. For poetry, please submit no more than five poems (we prefer three), for nonfiction two pieces (5,000 words maximum), for fiction two pieces (5,000 words maximum). You can submit in every category and may email them in one email. Fiction and nonfiction may be part of a longer work, but must be able to stand alone.

Please, make no more than two submissions per category. If we want additional writings from you, we will request them.

​3. Work should focus on the theme of Relationships as related to Yoga and/or meditation practice(s). Work should be Creative, Not Instructional.

4. We are only accepting previously unpublished work (this includes public blogs...do not submit work that is already on a public blog).

5. Email your entry in the body of an email or as a word document only (.doc and .docx) to breatheyourombalance[at]gmail.com between June 1, 2019, and midnight CST June 31, 2020, to be eligible for consideration. 

6. Email instructions: In the subject line of your email, include Breathe Journal Submission: Poetry, Fiction, and/or Nonfiction (as appropriate).

Include a title page with your name, email address, title of work(s), genre(s) and word count(s), contact information of an address and/or phone number where we may notify you if you are chosen as a contributor. 

Attach your creative writing to the email or paste into the body of the email. 

Confidentiality: Your personal information will never be shared with third parties.

Notifications: Allow up to three months following the final deadline for a response from us. We will post the announcement as soon as the contributors are chosen and we expect to do so without delay. Please, do not email us any questions about the submission process or ask about the status of your submission(s). We will contact you as soon as possible. Thorncraft Publishing will accept simultaneous submissions, but please in this instance notify us immediately if your work has been accepted by another publication. Contributors whose work is selected for the journal will be notified and asked for a biography (contributors can opt not to include a biography). All contributors' biographies will be printed in the book and their names (and/or pen names) will be listed on all platforms and websites that allow for full length listings. Their names or pen names and biographies may be posted on the website: http://www.thorncraftpublishing.com

RIGHTS and Permissions: If your work is chosen for inclusion in the journal, Thorncraft Publishing acquires first North American publication rights, which means that after publication, the rights of your work revert back to you. As a courtesy, we ask that you wait one year before seeking subsequent publication of the same work and that you include a credit to Thorncraft and BreatheYourOMBalance journal if your work from this journal is included in subsequent publications. In our permissions, we require the option to share and promote selections from the work you have contributed on our social media and website. After all, if we like your work, we want to share it. If your work is chosen, we will mail two complimentary copies of the book to you upon publication. We will offer you a discounted rate to purchase up to 20 copies from the publisher. All specificities will be listed in the contracts to the chosen contributors.
Good luck, and we look forward to reading your submissions.