Submissions

Share your story with us!

Friends Advocating For Mental Health of Young Persons is a weekly Mental health literary magazine interested in material exploring the stories that address mental health awareness in young persons. The Initiative is run by a group of passionate creators and mental heath activists who are aimed at creating/being a safe place for everyone we come across.

We understand the importance of telling your own story and how doing that gives a sense of freedom. This is a place to rant, to talk about your fears and successes in using whatever form of art you like.

With this publication, we are interested in telling new stories from everyday life as told by the people that are living it, through voices that have not yet been heard and want to be heard. We are interested in works from both the continent and the diaspora.

We hope to push the limits and expose the world to aspects of mental health not often shown — both the positives and the negatives.

You can find more information about us on instagram and twitter!

Please take time to enjoy the content on the site and get an understanding for what we publish before submitting.

This is a web-based publication and as such, there are no word count restrictions and no deadlines (except in the case of specific contests.)

The FAM-Initiative is always open for submissions. We are all friends here!

Compensation: Unfortunately, at this time we are unable to pay our contributors. However, our goal is to be able to provide a place where everyone can receive proper compensation for their work. A space where everyone can share their truth. We are working very hard to acquire advertisers and sponsorships. When we have proper funding we will change our policy on compensation.

We usually respond within 1–5 days saying we have received your submission and then respond to if it is good fit or not with 2–3 weeks.

Thank you for being a part of the FAM family and good luck.

All submissions should meet the following guidelines:

All submissions should be emailed to: faminitiative@gmail.com

The subject line of the email should state the artist’s name and title of the work.

Kindly attach to the mail, a query letter. In the query please include: an explanation of the genre your submission is (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, personal essay, photography, visual art — etc.) as well as contact details, country of origin, your Twitter handle if you have one, a link to your blog or website and a short bio written in the third person.

Then attach your work according to the genre specification below.

(If you are unfamiliar with query letters — there is an excellent guide on submitting to literary publications that will help you: here.)

We read all the submissions and should respond that we have received it and are putting it into our submission cycle within a week of receiving your submission. If you don’t hear from us after a week’s time feel free to contact us and confirm we received it.

Each new submission should be sent on a fresh email chain to avoid confusion with previous submissions.

Please do not submit more than one submission at a time.

Simultaneous submissions are ok, but we do not accept work that has been published elsewhere already.

All rights to the works revert to the artists on publication. However, we do request that if it is published elsewhere that The FAM-Initiative is noted as the original publisher.

Genre specific requirements:

Fiction, essays, humour pieces, articles, profiles, memoirs, interviews, novels etc: Should be single-spaced format and be attached as a Microsoft Word document and should be accompanied by a proper query letter in the body of the email. Please include any photos or graphic illustrations that you feel would help your piece.

Poetry: Poems should be submitted in collections of 1–4 poems — attached as a Microsoft Word document and should be accompanied by a proper query letter in the body of the email. Poetry unfortunately can not have advanced typesetting. Due to the nature of HTML, word wrap changes and the changes in type as a webpage scales from desktop to tablet to phone screens, it is not possible to guarantee the typeset from screen to screen. (So while we may be able to replicate your typesetting on a full desktop screen, it would be a jumbled mess as readers of smaller screens find it.) Because of this poems should be submitted left-aligned.

Photos, paintings, digital art, illustrations, cartoon portfolios: Should be sent in collections, as Jpeg attachments and should be accompanied by a proper query letter in the body of the email.

Important Note: Please thoroughly check your submissions for proper formatting, grammar and punctuation. Gross errors in these areas will seriously damage any work’s consideration for publication.