Submission Guidelines
Renaissance Café is curated by an editorial team who will select articles, essays, reviews, critiques, book or movie reviews, how-to, poetry, photography, original and digital art, videos and other media you believe would appeal to an audience of intellectually curious but fun-loving adults.
We are based in Sacramento and lean towards a geographic bent but don’t feel limited. We all like to travel – take us on a journey, share a personal story, highlight an experience you want to share. Concerned about issues? Think of this as a special to the local newspaper or an Op-Ed piece.
Work will be reviewed and accepted as is or sent back with feedback on how to improve for publication. We may offer editing suggestions. We do not pay for work. We’re all volunteers, here.
You own all rights to your own work though you can designate it as copyrighted – not available for redistribution or public domain – giving the right for readers to share and redistribute the material; adapt – remix, transform and build upon the material for non-commercial purposes, as long as appropriate credit is provided to Renaissance Café and the original writer/creator.
Submissions are accepted throughout the year to: renaissancecafesacramento@gmail.com. We will notify you upon receipt and provide a timeline for acceptance. Include: a brief cover letter with your genre, a brief bio or artist statement. Share publication credits and/or awards. If you’ve been previously published, share a few of the highlights — three to five publications at most.
- Fiction. We welcome flash fiction or short short stories, running from 6 to 1500 words. If the piece is longer, run it by us anyway.
- Poetry. Submit three to five poems.
- Nonfiction. Provide full manuscript for material that is 150 to 1500 words and accompanied by public domain or personally produced images. Articles can teach a skill, deliver information, profile a person, place, or thing, or any of the other items we listed earlier or that you want to submit.
- Photography: 72 dpi is fine though most photographs look better at 300 dpi (dots per inch). Let us know if we can use the image with another article or if you are submitting multiple images for a Photography Exhibit. Suggest a name for the series and submit a bio and/or artist statement.
- Art – Abstract, representational, watercolor, collage, assemblage, sculpture, prints – doesn’t matter as you have to take a photograph of your original art piece. Again, the higher resolution will serve you well. We change our Art Exhibits once a month.
- Video’s should be no longer than 2 minutes and must be original. However, links to video’s with commentary are welcome as long as you have the right to post them.
- Editorial Cartoons or should we say anything that is funny or insightful or makes us think about the world in new ways.
For more information or to query ahead of time:
Maryellen Burns, Editorial Director
Renaissance Café 