Submission Guidelines
The Submission Process
So you want to submit a piece for Cerise? Awesome! Here’s everything you need to know:
What We Want
Cerise is a magazine aimed primarily at women gamers. We are interested in work that engages with gender while addressing various facets of gaming, including the following:
- Reviews of games, systems and gaming supplements
- In-depth critiques, essays and opinion pieces about gaming
- Interviews with industry professionals
- Gamer Stories: personal narratives about gaming experiences
- Modules and mini-adventures for tabletop games
From artists:
- Interior illustrations – women playing games, female RPG characters, etc. No fanart, please.
- Short, one-page-or-smaller comics dealing in some (preferably humorous) way with gender and gaming
If you have a great idea that you think would be a good fit for the magazine, but which isn’t represented in this short list, please send a query email with a brief description of what you’d like to produce for us. Chances are good that we’ll be interested.
The Back Page:
- Game-inspired artwork and writing. No fanart or fanfic, please.
- Opinion blurbs, shout outs, thoughts on gaming, etc.
- Whatever other fun and silly things we can come up with
Unlike the regular submissions, The Back Page is where we publish the odds and ends that our readers send in and therefore doesn’t need to be polished like an article or something sent in for the interior design. If you have something you want to show off to the rest of our readers, submit it and we will publish it.
What You Get Out of it
Cerise is not at this time a paying publication (although we hope to be in the future). You won’t get any money for your submission, but you will get exposure. And massive geek cred, of course.
How to Send it
You’re welcome to query or send completed submissions. Queries may include a brief article proposal and optional clippings of your other work. Cover letters are welcome with submissions and queries.
Please email submissions to submissions@theirisnetwork.org. Written pieces should be in the form of RTF or DOC attachments. Art can be in JPEG, GIF, or PNG format. Put “Submission for Cerise” in the subject of the email, along with the title of your piece, and which issue you are submitting for, if applicable. In the body of the email, please include your name and any penname or handle you would like your piece to be credited to. Please use an email address that you check frequently – it will be the method that our editors use to get in contact with you about your work.
You must tell us if your work has been published elsewhere, including online.
Themes for each issue, and the deadlines for submission to that particular issue, are listed below. Feel free to submit work written outside a particular theme for consideration at any time, however.
Issue Themes and Deadlines
Spring 2009 Issue
Submission deadline: April 5th
Theme: Open!
Our Spring issue is theme-less, which means that anything to do with gaming is on-topic. If there’s something you’ve been wanting to write about and you’ve just been waiting for the opportunity, this is the time!
Summer 2009 Issue
Submission deadline: July 5th
Theme: Retro Gaming
Our Summer issue is going to be devoted to retro games, systems and culture. Are you all-time favorite games from the systems of years past? Tell us about them! Got fond memories of The Wizard with Fred Savage or Captain N’s weekly cartoon adventures? Write a review! If you ever find yourself dusting off your NES Zapper for a round of Duck Hunt or pulling your copy of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons down from the bookshelf, then now is the time for you to submit!
