Upcoming Submission Deadlines - Jolicoeur & VMH
Jolicoeur
With the recent passing of D’Angelo, a few friends & I started a dialogue, focusing on how terrible of a time it has been the last few years, losing so many talented musicians (some of them, so very young) I was wondering about the best way to honour them & their contributions to us, & I felt the best way to show our gratitude, would be to help children & youth who only needed the time, patience & opportunity to become musicians themselves, by removing the financial obstacle.
There are initiatives in Toronto that focus on helping kids in underserved communities that specifically offer access to instruments & lessons at no cost. Our focus is to help those kids and those who wish to help them in this fashion. An anthology that focuses on the theme of music feels like the best way to proceed.
You don’t have to write about any of the artists who have passed away recently. You have the freedom to write about anything related to the theme of music.
Proceeds of all sales will go directly to local initiatives in Toronto dedicated to providng free instruments & music lessons/ongoing study to kids in the Regent Park & Jane & Finch neighbourhoods. For full transparency & to be CRA compliant, a mechanism will be in place for anyone who makes a purchase of the book to see all their dollars be received directly by the initiatives we’re working with. Plainly, anyone who purchases a book will receive confirmation that their purchase directly goes to this cause & nothing else.
I would like to thank all the donors who stepped up quickly to cover the cost of the honorariums to contributors & the printing expenses & those who were willing to match their contributions to our writers, to the initiatives we are raising money for. It’s no small expense & it’s deeply appreciated.
Submission Guidelines
Submission Guidelines will parallel the guidelines for the ongoing publication, except we won’t be accepting any audio submissions, there is no word count, & payment will still be on acceptance of $300 per piece plus 2 contributor copies.
Submissions must be previously unpublished.
VMH will read any simultaneous submissions, but we encourage you to let us know if any of your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
You are allowed to submit 1-5 poems per inquiry & a maximum of 3 other pieces of prose, works of fiction, non-fiction or essay.
Once you submit work in one email, we won’t accept any more pieces, so we encourage you to gather together the pieces you wish to submit and send the one email. Do not ask us if we are reviewing your work - you will receive an editorial response in 4-8 weeks.
The author is the sole copyright owner of the work, and retains all rights to the work except for those expressly granted to VMH. To the extent that a separate copyright attaches to the anthology as a collective work, VMH is the copyright owner of any such copyright on the anthology as a collective work, provided that no collective work copyright will limit or prevent you, the author's rights to exploit, publish, and profit from your work separately from or in addition to the anthology except to the limited extent provided in the agreement.
The deadline will be left open until we feel like we’re nearing a limit of pieces we can accept and then we’ll inform everyone who’s submitted work or has written to us about submitting work that a deadline is approaching, and we will publish word of this on our socials. We do encourage you to submit your work no later than January 3rd, 2026.
You’ll receive word of whether or not your piece has been accepted to be part of the anthology 4-8 weeks after submission.
To submit any work for consideration to the anthology, or for any questions, email rahim at rahim@viciousminuteshour.com.
Publication
VMH is open for submissions for at least the next year, beginning November 1st, 2025.
If we accept your work for publication, we’ll speak with you to determine when you wish for your work to be published.
Your work will appear in a new section of our site dedicated to original work. We encourage you to submit your bio and any links where others can either read or contribute financially to your work (website, patreon, substack etc)
It will also go on a new section of our website promoting the work of others to hopefully help you financially, should you wish it.
We are also open for audio submissions of any literary work, if you have a theatre-of-the-mind/audio drama piece for us to consider.
We consider all work from writers at any stage of their career.
VMH encourages writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, queer, trans & non-binary folk, & Deaf, and/or disabled individuals, to submit their work.
Submissions must be previously unpublished.
VMH will read any simultaneous submissions, but we encourage you to let us know if any of your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
We are publishing on an ongoing basis, You are allowed to submit 1-5 poems per inquiry & a maximum of 3 other pieces of prose, workof fiction, non-fiction or essay & no more until you receive an editorial response.
Please do not submit work over several emails. One should be sufficient & you are allowed to send five poems and three other pieces of any other genre in one email (it might just take awhile to get back to you, if you do)
We will also prioritize work that is under 5000 words in length.
You will receive a response to your submission in 4 to 8 weeks.
VMH will pay $200 for any published piece, regardless of genre.
We are given first Canadian Serial Rights (so your work should not appear in any publication, print or digital, before we publish it) Upon publication, all rights revert back to you, the author.
Payment is made by e-transfer upon acceptance, not publication. If you are outside of Canada, alternative arrangements for payment can be made, but you’ll still receive funds upon acceptance.
To submit work for consideration to the anthology, or for any questions, email rahim at rahim@viciousminuteshour.com
Funding for Literary (& Other) Projects
You can find me here & we can have a conversation about it.