Publishing
Thanks to the generosity…
of several donors, VMH will be able to publish work on an ongoing basis & a limited edition anthology celebrating & honouring musicians we’ve lost, through our words.
Submission Guidelines for VMH
VMH is open for submissions for at least the next year (beginning November 1st, 2025) for any piece of poetry, prose, work of fiction, non-fiction or essay. 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 to your work (website, patreon, substack etc) if you feel it will help your submission (& so we can promote you should we publish your work)
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Submissions must be previously unpublished.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, so there’s no submissions cap, but if you submit several pieces, it may take a lot longer to go through & we will prioritize individuals who submit 1-2 pieces for consideration. Our preference is that you submit a maximum of three pieces per 30 days.
We will also prioritize work that is under 5000 words in length.
VMH will $100 to $200 per piece, depending on the length & nature of the work.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.
Jolicoeur - An Anthology Celebrating & Honouring The Musicians We’ve Lost, Through Our Words
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.
Proceeds of all sale 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.
Submission Guidelines will parallel the guidelines for the publication, except we won’t be accepting any audio submissions, there is no word count, payment will still be on acceptance of $200 per piece. 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.
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.