An independent, ad-free leftist magazine of critical essays, poetry, fiction, and art.

Your work is worth it.

If you’re interested in submitting to Protean, we would be happy to consider your work for publication on our website or in our annual print issues. We offer fair pay in exchange for all criticism, journalism, essays, reviews, interviews, poetry, fiction, and artwork that we publish. (Rates are posted below.) We believe in recognizing the labor involved in the craft of writing, and we do our best to compensate our freelancers fairly, at competitive and negotiable rates. We also consider it essential to pay promptly; Protean’s web and print contributors are all paid in full before publication.

Send it to us!

We accept both drafts and pitches on a rolling basis for our online content. Submissions for print are open during a yearly submissions call. Please understand that in evaluating work, we must be extremely selective—to the point of rejecting good pitches.

Please carefully read and adhere to all guidelines—both those found below in the list of general requirements and those in the content-specific requirements farther down this page. Read this entire page, and make sure you’re submitting to the correct inbox.

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CALL STATUS

PRINT  
Criticism & Essays CLOSED
Poetry CLOSED
Fiction CLOSED
Illustration OPEN (rolling)

ONLINE  
Criticism & Essays OPEN
Reviews OPEN
Interviews OPEN
Poetry CLOSED
Fiction CLOSED

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GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

Read all of the following guidelines before submitting:

  • Print submissions for Protean Magazine Issue VI are closed. See the section below for detailed instructions.

  • We do not charge a submission fee.

  • You must submit to the appropriate email inbox. Work that is submitted to the incorrect inbox will not receive a response. Scroll down and review all relevant section guidelines at the bottom of this page.

    • Criticism, essay, news analysis, review, and interview submissions (in other words, any and all prose content), for print or online, should be sent to submissions[at]proteanmag[dot]com.

    • Poetry submissions, for print or online, should be sent to poetry[at]proteanmag[dot]com.

    • Art portfolio submissions should be sent to illustration[at]proteanmag[dot]com.

  • All submissions should include a writer bio, past bylines, and/or other relevant work in the pitch email. 

  • We publish work geared explicitly to the anti-capitalist left. Please take this into consideration before submitting.

  • Simultaneous submissions are fine—just let us know in your initial email. Likewise, if your pitch is time-sensitive for any reason, please inform us about the relevant context and the timeline.

  • Our required format for sending all essay drafts, all fiction, and all poetry is a single, separate document (.doc or .docx) attached to your pitch email. (Please don’t send work in .pdf format.)

  • We will gladly read complete drafts, but we do not ask contributors to write on spec.

  • We typically do not accept republications of works already published elsewhere. We make exceptions for poetry that has appeared on social media and excerpts from upcoming books, rights permitting.

  • If your longform submission is accepted, please anticipate multiple rounds of revisions, as well as intensive edits for both style and content. We may request substantial or total rewrites. We reserve the right to make final editorial decisions on all works that we publish. We reserve the right to determine final copy, headlines, cover images, promotional copy, and other relevant text. If the editing process is unusually laborious or extended, we will offer increased compensation to reflect the additional work involved.

  • Due to the high volume of submissions, we are not always able to respond individually. We cannot guarantee individual responses to any pitches, poetry submissions, or follow-up emails.

  • Under no circumstances will we accept any work that has been written, in part or in toto, by any generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool, or for which AI has been employed in any capacity. This policy extends to the usage of AI tools in background research, editing or feedback, email communiqués, and any and all other forms of written content involved in the editorial relationship.

  • All questions (not submissions) should be directed to editorial[at]proteanmag[dot]com.

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PRINT SUBMISSIONS

PRINT ANNOUNCEMENT (December 10th, 2025):

All print submissions (criticism and essays, poetry, and fiction) for Protean Magazine Issue VI are now closed. Please do not submit work for print to any inbox until we announce that submissions have reopened.

All guidelines listed above and below still apply—read these carefully.

We will not be exclusively accepting or denying pitches based on adherence to a specific theme. Before submitting, it would serve you well to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the work we publish online—please prepare your pitches with a sense of our style and coverage areas in mind.

Again, we must be extraordinarily selective; from thousands of entries, we will be choosing no more than six essays and under ten poems. This means we must regularly reject excellent work.

The type of essay writing that we’re seeking must be incisive and rigorous without losing a sense of lyricism; polished prose, compelling and well-mounted arguments, and effective composition are essential. We will consider and potentially accept pitches on a wide range of subjects, but again, please refer to our online publications to gain a sense of our typical subjects.

NOTE: We are not currently seeking reviews or interview for print, as these formats only appear online, though we will consider uses of hybrid formats—for instance, an essay that includes a critique of a book or incorporates transcriptions of an interview—if doing so serves the purposes of the article.

To be considered for print, the subject line of your pitch email must begin with “PRINT:”.

Remember, for print as well as online, you must submit to the appropriate inbox—essays should be sent to submissions[at]proteanmag[dot]com, while poems should go to poetry[at]proteanmag.com. Interested illustrators should submit portfolios to illustration[at]proteanmag[dot]com; see below for more details on the latter.

The only consistent differences between print and online submissions are the subject line prefix that you must use (“PRINT:”), and the final pay rates, which are higher for print. The base rate for essays that are published in print is $400; the base rate for poetry is $50 per poem. 

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ONLINE SUBMISSIONS

Criticism, Essays & Reviews

If you’re interested in submitting criticism, news analysis, essays, or film or book reviews for publication online, send your pitch or your draft to submissions[at]proteanmag[dot]com. Drafts should be sent as an attached .doc file. 

Word counts should stay within a particular range—ideally, your article will fall between 2,400 and 3,800 words. Very short pieces (under 1,800 words) will be rejected. We won’t necessarily reject a draft that stretches beyond that range for reasons of length alone, but we’re much more likely to view an excessive word count as a hindrance rather than an advantage. If a higher word count is absolutely essential to do justice to the subject, exceptions can be made—but nevertheless, we would prefer that submitted drafts fall within the span above.

The base rate for criticism, news analysis, reviews, and essays that are published online is $300; the base rate for interviews is $200. We will offer increased compensation for pieces that require extra revisions, reporting, research, or other labor. Rates are negotiable.

Online fiction submissions are currently closed.

Fiction

If you’re interested in submitting fiction, send your work to fiction[at]proteanmag[dot]com as an attached .doc file. Fiction submissions should be between 1,000 and 3,000 words. Fiction need not be explicitly leftist, but it’s preferable.

The base rate for fiction pieces that are published online is $200. Rates for print will be included in print announcements—see above. 

 

Online poetry submissions are currently closed.

Poetry

If you’re interested in submitting poetry, send as many as five poems in a single attached .doc file to poetry[at]proteanmag[dot]com. Poems need not be explicitly political, but we do often publish poetry with political aspects.

The base rate for poetry that is published online is $30 per poem. Rates for print will be included in print announcements—see above. 

Portfolio review for illustration is open year-round on a rolling basis. Entries will be reviewed and further inquiries sent during our annual period of print production.

Art & Illustration

If you’re interested in having your visual art featured in Protean Magazine, send an email that includes a bio and a link to your portfolio to illustration[at]proteanmag[dot]com. We will review your work and may consider it for either print publication or appearance online. If we are interested in licensing existing work or commissioning an original piece, we will reach out to you. Otherwise, we do not send individualized replies or confirmations of receipt to portfolio submissions.

Rates vary per project and are negotiable; we’ll ask for your quote.