LVCAN MAG — A Call for Submissions

Philosophy, criticism, fiction. Good taste

LVCAN MAG used to be called FORVM; it’s been on Medium for a while and is undergoing a relaunch, hence the new name. This other article is basically our About Us page, explaining our editorial philosophy and goals. The article you’re reading is the more workmanlike Submissions Instructions page.

Some guidelines:

• NO commercial writing. This means no writing about SEO techniques, attracting customers, networking, developing effective work habits, etc. etc. Nothing that you would see in an industry or business setting — nothing you would see trending on LinkedIn.
• We are looking for belles letteres of all other kinds, fiction and non-fiction. Give us essays, reviews, short stories; histories of specific philosophies; poems and comic writing. Basically whatever does not fall into the category above. No hard and fast rules about length — just don’t make it a habit to turn in ~500 words of underbaked prose for all of your submissions. You may be asked to split exceptionally long pieces (3,500+ words) into a series of articles.
• Pains will be taken to be as conservative as possible when it comes to the editorial process. Any changes deemed necessary will be communicated to the author before the piece is made public, and all authors have final approval over the wording of their essays.
• Conversely, I am reserving complete dictatorial control over the design of all pieces published in LVCAN — which is to say I get to pick all of the pictures. One of the most important aspects of the magazine, to my mind, is going to be a consistent and recognizable aesthetic. The in-house style I have consolidated uses scans of 18th century engravings and classical statues and busts, overlain with distortion effects, to create an ambience that is like a more reserved Vaporwave, with the 80s Miami Beach aesthetic completely removed. But anyway all of this is to say that I am not going to insist on putting anything remotely embarrassing or controversial on something you worked hard on; we will of course also discuss this aspect of a submitted piece before publication, but here, yeah — the final approval stays with me.

The turnaround time on submissions is going to depend on volume and whether or not I will be able to rejoin the workforce sometime soon. My guess at the time of writing this is that 4 days is the longest anyone should have to wait for their work to be read, commented on, and shown to them for approval for publishing.

If it’s your first time submitting a piece for the magazine, email a link to the draft to lvcanmag@gmail.com. Subject line doesn’t really matter, honestly. If you have submitted before and became a writer for us, you should be able to submit pieces for publication directly from Medium using the features explained in this short guide. The lvcanmag@gmail.com address will still be your point of contact with me and any editors we add, when it comes to direct communication / discussion.