SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

NOTE: The deadline for Lit Fest submissions has passed!

Submissions to our annual issue of the Nomad will be open until April 20, 2025.

We thank you for your interest in our magazine! If submissions are open, you can use the button below to access our submission form.

• If you are submitting audio or video work, please see the “AUDIO & VIDEO SUBMISSIONS” section at the bottom of the page.
• All written work should be in .docx format, in single-spaced, 12pt, Times New Roman font unless your piece requires more specific formatting
• All written work should be in a single document, with each piece starting on a new page
• Ensure your name does not appear anywhere in the submission document(s)
• A single submitter may submit work in multiple or all genres
• Include the genre of each piece in parentheses following the title
• Fiction & Nonfiction: Each piece can be no longer than 2,000 words
• Poetry: Limit 3 poems per author
• Art & Photography: Limit 3 images per author, images should be hi-resolution JPEGs or PNGs using CMYK colors
  

After reading a submission, our staff decides if we will accept it, return it to the author with suggestions for revision, or reject it.

The theme for this year’s issue of the Nomad is:

The Manufactured vs. The Manu Factum 

***Note: Submissions do not have to be relevant to the theme for consideration. Accepted themed pieces will occupy their own section in the final issue.

Besides awakening innumerable new possibilities, both exhilarating and infernal, in every domain of human culture, the advent of industrialization ignited a new tension: a low but persistent hum that now resonates in everything we decide to produce and consume. We speak here of the opposition between what is manufactured and what is hand-made.

By the manufactured, we mean that which has been produced in an efficient, mechanical, and often repetitive way, with special attention given to standardization, uniformity, and ease of consumption. Think styrofoam cups, fast fashion, and the “little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky.” Of course, something that is manufactured can also mean something fabricated, i.e., that which is intentionally constructed to be false.

Opposed to this is manufacture’s etymological ancestor, the manu factum (Latin for “handmade”), that which is produced as a singular object, crafted by a careful, skilled individual who is invested not just in the product of their endeavor, but by the processes and traditions from which it emerges. Artists of the Arts & Crafts Movement, responding to industrialization, held the conviction that anything produced ought to retain and thus reveal the beauty inherent in the raw materials (e.g., wood, stone, or language).

We at the Nomad want to exhibit works of student writing and art which engage with either or both sides of this duality, how they interact and how they manifest in our lives and in our work.

AUDIO & VIDEO SUBMISSIONS

• All audio-only work should be in .mp3 format.
  
• All video content should be in .mp4 format.
• Audio submissions should be no longer than 3o minutes
  
• Video submissions should be no longer than 10 minutes

• HOW TO SUBMIT:
  • From your WCU e-mail account, send your audio or visual file (or a link to where your submission can be downloaded as an .mp3 or .mp4) to thenomad@email.wcu.edu along with the following information:
    • • • Full name (as you would like it to appear with your work if accepted)
        • Permanent mailing address (only if graduating before Spring 2026)
          
        • Title(s) of the work(s)
        • Whether or not your work is meant to align with your issue’s annual theme (see above)