The following guidelines are provided to prospective writers for Sinister Wisdom to aid the editors in the selection process and to facilitate the journal design if work is selected. We appreciate the attention of potential writers for Sinister Wisdom adhering to these guidelines.

All fiction and non-fiction should be submitted in a standard font 12 pt font i.e., Times Roman, Arial, Tahoma. Double spaced.

Poems should be submitted in standard font, 12 pt.

American English punctuation, i.e., periods and commas inside quotation marks.

Serial commas (e.g. a comma immediately before the coordinating conjunction as in lesbians, lesbian-feminists, and women.)

No extra spaces between sentences.

When referencing a quote or statement, please use present tense, i.e., Eileen Myles asserts; Mary Hartman complains; Ophelia maintains (that Hamlet was an asshole).

Hyphenate compound nouns and modifiers: cyborg-tech; American-feminist Judy Punch;

No comma in year, i.e., 1990s not 1990’s.

Be consistent in style: If you use 1980s stay with 1980s, don’t switch to nineteen-eighties.

Spell out numbers one to twenty.

Numbers (including dates) at the beginning of a sentence should be spelled out; Nineteen-hundred fifty-four was a bad year for American communists. Sixteen dykes played ball last night.

Titles of books, movies, plays, works of art etc., are italics; titles of poems, short stories, papers, etc., in double quotes. For example

· The Trouble with Angels(movie)

· Handmade Love (book)

· “The Night I Met Bill Casey” (short story)

· “Red Prayer for a Nun” (poem)

· “The Body Politic: female sexuality and women artists since 1970” in Framing Feminism: Art and the Woman’s Movement 1970–1985. ed. Rozsika Parker and Giselda Pollack. London: Pandora Press, 1987. (article in a book).

Bios should be between 25 and 125 words.

Book reviews should include bibliographic data in the following format: Full title by Author (Publisher’s City: Publisher, Year of publication).

The Chicago Manual of Style is referenced. See this link for citations:

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.

Submit to Sinister Wisdom