Submission Guidelines

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Story and Poetry Submission Requirements

Authors may submit up to five original stories of 8500 characters maximum, or poems of 7000 characters maximum, including spaces.

Please limit submissions to one story, one short essay, or up to five poems. Poems must be submitted separately.  For example, if you are submitting five poems, each poem must be uploaded individually. Each submission should include a short biography directly beneath the work.

Please do not submit previously published work for themed issues.

Please do not submit additional works until the editorial team responds to your initial submissions. Stories must be fictional or deal with historical or biographical topics in a literary manner. All stories dealing with news or history, that are journalistic, biographical, articles, or essays, or pastiches of current events will not be accepted or published. Submitted fiction may otherwise be of any genre, including but not limited to drama, romance, science fiction, etc. Pornographic or erotic texts are not allowed.

Author Requirements

The author should clearly indicate how they would like to be credited on their work. By submitting an original work, the author consents to have the author’s name appear on the work in print and electronic formats. MSU affiliates making submissions to the Short Édition project agree to share their work and waive any privacy rights granted by FERPA or any other law, policy or regulation, with respect to this work, for the purpose of publication. 

Rights, Guaranties, and Responsibilities

Guaranties and Responsibilities

The author represents and warrants:

• they are at least 18 years of age;
• they are the sole author of the submitted story and that it is an original unpublished work;
• they control the copyright to the work and have never transferred the rights to a third party;
• they have not entered into an exclusive publishing agreement for the work;
• the work does not violate any other right including patent, intellectual property, or other proprietary rights of any third parties;
• the work does not contain any scandalous, libelous, obscene, indecent, pornographic, erotic, or unlawful matter and is not otherwise objectionable;
• the work does not violate anyone’s privacy rights under FERPA (student information), HIPAA (health information), or other privacy laws of the United States.

Copy and Distribution

Subject to the acceptance of the story, the author grants to Michigan State University Libraries the non-exclusive print and electronic right in perpetuity to modify, edit, correct, translate, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and publish the submitted stories on the MSU Libraries Short Édition website and in the Short Story Dispensers and in any other media including the internet, mobile apps, or any other print or electronic form under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license irrevocably permits others to adapt, reproduce, share the original and adapted work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and publication in the MSU Libraries Short Édition project. The author agrees that no royalties or any other payment or remuneration is due in connection with publication with the MSU Libraries Short Édition project either online or in print. The author shall retain the copyright to the work. 

Selection and Publication

The local Editorial Team for the Short Édition project is solely responsible for determining the texts which have sufficient quality, originality, and other criteria for publication. The Editorial Team may decide to refuse or remove a text without any justification or for any reason whatsoever. Authors may request removal of their work from the MSU Libraries Short Édition project by sending a request to the Editorial Team to cease distribution of their story in the project by specifying their name, nickname used (if any), and title of the story. Removal requests are subject to verification and shall not be unreasonably withheld. Children under the age of 13 may not create user accounts or submit stories. Certain areas of the Website are not intended for and may not be suitable for viewing by children under 13. However, access to most areas of our Website is not restricted and if individuals under 13 years of age wish to view any areas of the Website (e.g. children's stories), they should seek the permission of their parent or guardian, who must agree to these Terms on their behalf. Children over 13 but under 18 should not use the Website without consent of their parent or legal guardian. If you believe that your copyright has been infringed, or your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, you may contact the Short Édition DMCA agent with a proper takedown request.