Brick Mag

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Is Your Work Right For Brick?

Brick prides itself on publishing the best literary non-fiction in the world, and we are eager to read your freshest, most impeccable, most compelling non-fiction submissions. We welcome diverse voices charting broad imaginings, current conversations, rich ideas, urgent passions, and beautiful, thoughtful, difficult, or irreverent art. Underrepresented writers—including but not limited to writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, queer, non-binary, Deaf, and/or disabled—are especially encouraged to submit their literary non-fiction.

What is literary non-fiction, you ask? It’s a wider label than you might think. We are guided by the following tenet, which appears on the masthead of every issue of Brick:

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Love has led Brick to publish essays of every description: on reading, the writing life, literature, art, ideas, travel, science, photography, the perfect ending, dance, sport, music, city-building, food, bathrooms, history . . . and we are always looking for new terrain. We are interested in the singular obsessions that compel you to write. We welcome humour, we welcome depth, we welcome the unclassifiable, and we welcome playfulness with the non-fiction form.

An average issue of Brick will contain essays, reviews, interviews, belle lettres, memoir, translations, and all manner of incidental ephemera. (Brick also contains the odd story or poem or piece of art or photography, but we sadly do not accept such submissions and will return them to you unread.)

Do take the time to familiarize yourself with a recent issue of the magazine or the work we post on our website before you submit to Brick. We do not consider queries, so ordering a few back issues or tracking Brick down at your local library is the best way to see if your finished work might suit our pages. You may also take advantage of the opportunity to pre-order an upcoming issue at a discount when you submit through Submittable.

Brick pays its contributors upon publication and offers $55–660, depending on the length of accepted work, plus two copies of the issue the work appears in and a one-year subscription to the magazine.

 

Submission Guidelines:

* We welcome submissions both by mail and online through Submittable.

* Brick is open for submissions twice a year: from September 1 to October 31, and from March 1 to April 30. Mailed submissions that come to us postmarked outside these dates will not be read or returned.

* We consider only finished, polished non-fiction submissions.

* Submissions must be previously unpublished.

* We will read simultaneous submissions, but please let us know as soon as your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere.

* Please only submit one piece at a time. Please wait for our response before sending us other work to consider. Multiple submissions will be automatically rejected.

* While Brick does not set a word limit, we tend towards a range of 1,000–5,000 words. Of course, rules like this were made to be broken. Whatever the length, the piece must be exemplary.

* Please allow up to six months for us to respond to your submission.

* If you would prefer to send your submission by mail, please mail it here:

Brick
P.O. Box 609, Stn P
Toronto, ON M5S 2Y4
Canada

* Please include an email address with your submission. If you would like us to respond by regular mail, or to return your manuscript, you must include a self-addressed envelope with sufficient Canadian postage.

* If you are submitting to Brick from the United States or from elsewhere outside of Canada, we will not be able to return your manuscript unless you include a cheque for $5.00 to cover the cost of Canadian postage.

* Submitters are welcome to state demographics such as race, age, gender, etc., in their cover letter if they so choose.

If you’ve read our guidelines above and are ready to submit your best non-fiction to Brick, please send it through Submittable (or by mail) during our submission periods. We look forward to reading your work.