Submissions
The Medical Literary Messenger encourages submissions from the VCU Community and from authors outside the organization. We seek original, thought-provoking, and unpublished work related to medicine, illness, and the body.
We consider simultaneous submissions, but please inform us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere. We do cannot consider any work that has appeared elsewhere on the internet or in print. MLM is run by volunteers, who are primarily medical professionals at VCU. Please extend a bit of grace when it comes to response times!
All submissions should be made electronically through Submittable. Please review our guidelines below.
The Medical Literary Messenger does not provide payment for works published in the journal. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication.
General Submission Requirements
- All submissions should be sent through Submittable.
- Submissions may be printed anonymously at the author's request.
- When submitting work, please ensure that all documents are HIPAA compliant. You can read more about this here:
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html - If you are submitting more than one item (e.g., four poems), please submit everything in one document, with each poem starting on a new page.
Submission Requirements by Genre
- FICTION: Submissions should be limited to 3,000 words.
- ESSAYS/NON-FICTION: Submissions should be limited to 2,000 words.
- POETRY: You may submit 1 - 4 titled poems.
- PHOTOGRAPHY/VISUAL ART: Images should be high resolution in .jpg format. Please submit a short description of the image.
When you are ready to submit, please send your work over via Submittable.
When you are ready to submit, just press the button to the left!