Submit your art and writing to Seedlings

Seedlings in 2026 will have two open calls. The first is ANON. The second will be revealed in due course.

Seedlings VIII: ANON

**Open call for art and writing**

ANONYMOUS ISSUE

In the spirit of anonymity that Valentine’s Day invites, we are calling for anonymous submissions for a special issue celebrating complete creative freedom and the wilder side of nature.

We are particularly moved by the boldness that anonymity allows, the freedom to express what might otherwise remain buried.

With this issue, we want to extend that same freedom to our contributors and readers. We hope that those who may feel too shy or hesitant to share their work under their own name might find confidence through anonymity, allowing creativity to surface without fear or reservation.

We invite letters to lovers, unspoken desires, confessions, secrets, and exposing antworks.

No names will be attributed to any submissions. 

All work in this issue will remain completely anonymous. 

Submissions open 14 February and will continue until we’ve gathered enough to craft this intimate issue, creating an ecosystem of nameless human voices.

We’re excited to see what will become of this experimental edition. Will you join us?

With love, from ANON.

~Ongoing deadline~

Submit here

This is the link to the form.

Legal stuff

For Seedlings VIII: Anon, by submitting you automatically accept our full publication agreement. It can be found here. In your submission you MUST give us a password that you can use at a later date to identify yourself as the creator. Text submissions can be fully anonymous, but we are unable to process image/document submissions without an email. This is because of how Google Drive and Submittable work. To submit art or a document anonymously, please create an anonymous email account and submit that way.

As well as a password you may give a pen-name, that will be included alongside the text. When we print the issue, we will share the titles of the selected pieces (and pen-names, where given) and if you are in this list, you may email us with your password and we will help reserve your discounted contributor copy.

We promise we will never reveal the identity of anyone printed.

Submission details

Full guidelines are below and we will have messages soon with other top tips for submitting and what details we love to see.

It’s free to submit, but we would really appreciate a donation of £2 to help us through the process. We'd love the art and literary worlds to be far more nurturing and open for creativity than they are, and so have decided once again not to charge for submissions. If you did wanted to support us though we are accepting donations at the link below. Just £2 would be really welcome as we are running Seedlings alongside our day jobs and the process takes so much work behind the scenes! If you also wanted feedback in this submission round, we'd appreciate a donation too, but we understand some people can't spare the £2 at this time.

We will offer all selected artists and writers a fee if possible, calculated once we know the finances each particular magazine (every issue is different!). We will also sell prints on our site and split those profits 50-50 with the artist.

Writing Submissions

Seedlings is a handmade book and the type is printed using letterpress. Due to the small dimensions of our book we have to be quite precise with word counts in the main. If your piece is longer we could print it, but the content and quality would have to justify the extra pages.

We accept submissions on a rolling basis, and are particularly interested in nature writing, queer pieces, microfiction and interesting use of form.

Poetry - please send no more than five poems. We would prefer poetry to be less than 22 lines (including line breaks). Longer poetry will be considered, but as stated above, it will be less likely to be included in the final edit as it will take two or more pages.

Prose, stories - please send stories up to 1,000 words. We do accept essays and journalism but would like them to be closely associated with our ethos and values, with a touch of the lyrical.

We love analogue forms - typography, typewriting, handwriting and calligraphy. If you’d like to send a physical copy with your work, please email your submission first and we will reply with an address you can send your piece to!

You are welcome to send us things that have been published elsewhere so long as you have full rights over the work. Similarly, please don’t send work derived from any copyright material that you do not have rights to use. If unsure, please research the rights of the material you wish to use or adapt.

To send us your writing please submit your work as a .docx (preferred) or .pdf.

Art Submissions

We are keen to see a wide range of art across a range of mediums and styles. We would especially like to see work using natural and eco-friendly materials. Please send no more than five pieces, but feel free to link your website or portfolio.

Please include in your submission email:

• the name and date of each of your pieces

• the medium and/or creation process

If you have work that you’d like to reproduce with eco-friendly materials but haven’t currently got the funds, then please submit your work as it is, and tell us how you envision recreating it. We may be able to fund you.

To send us your art please upload your work.

What we are looking for

Seedlings is looking for the real, the secret, the sacred, the alternative – what ‘natural’ means to you or the authentically artificial – the wisdom of your years or your teenage attempt at freedom – a portrait of your garden and its own memories of you – what you learnt from humiliation – your grandad’s last forgotten apple core from that holiday in Lowestoft – the alley between the garages where you were foraged brambles – the bench where you sat and listened to the whole of the the whole of the moon – the way your partner clicked their heels when you dropped them home after your first date – which flower means hope and which means hunger – the paw-prints of a fleeing fox – rewarded faith.