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Policies

Submission Guidelines

Contents

About Voices of Care: Reflections from Nursing and the Health Professions

Voices of Care is a community anthology celebrating the creative lives of nurses and other health professionals in our region.

Healthcare is filled with experiences that exceed the language of charts, diagnoses, procedures, and professional documentation. Art and writing give us other ways to notice what happens in these spaces: connection and loss, humor and exhaustion, uncertainty and discovery, grief and joy, frustration, beauty, injustice, tenderness, and the ordinary moments that stay with us.

Voices of Care creates a space for health professionals to explore and share these dimensions of their lives through art and writing.

You do not need to consider yourself a “writer” or “artist” to submit. We are interested in polished work, experiments, unexpected forms, and creative expression from people at many different stages of their artistic lives.

Above all, we hope to create an anthology that reflects the variety of voices, experiences, and ways of seeing within our healthcare community.

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Who Can Submit?

We welcome submissions from nurses and other health professionals in our community.

We understand “health professional” broadly and welcome the many people whose work contributes to health and healthcare. We primarily publish contributors with connections to Northern California, particularly the Bay Area and the North Coast, including Lake, Mendocino, Trinity, Humboldt, Del Norte, and Siskiyou counties.

Students, trainees, retired health professionals, and people at any stage of their healthcare careers are welcome to submit, provided they meet the anthology’s eligibility criteria. We especially welcome those who have never been published before.

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What Can I Submit?

We welcome creative work in any genre or form, up to 5,000 words for written submissions, including:

  • Poetry
  • Stories (short fiction or nonfiction)
  • Memoir, personal essay, or reflective writing
  • Hybrid and experimental writing
  • Visual art
  • Photography
  • Comics and graphic narratives
  • Original translations
  • Other creative forms that may not fit neatly into these categories

We are not able to accept audio or video files at this time.

Work does not need to be explicitly “about nursing” or healthcare. We are interested in the creative voices of health professionals, including the many experiences, identities, places, relationships, questions, and interests that shape their lives.

We would like Voices of Care to remain open to creative forms we may not have anticipated. If your work does not fit the categories or file formats listed above, please contact us. We will do our best to find a way to consider it.

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Originality and Previous Publication

Submitted work should be your own original creation.

We welcome both previously unpublished work and work that has appeared elsewhere, provided you retain the necessary rights. Please let us know about any previous publication or public circulation when you submit, and confirm that all necessary permissions have been obtained for republication.

Simultaneous submissions—that is, submitting the same work to multiple publication venues at once—are welcome. If your work is accepted elsewhere and you no longer wish it to be considered for Voices of Care, please let us know.

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An Important Note About Ethics, Privacy, and Consent

Creative work may grow from encounters with patients, families, colleagues, workplaces, and communities. We welcome thoughtful engagement with these experiences while asking contributors to take particular care with privacy, confidentiality, consent, and the representation of others.

Before submitting work involving another person, please consider questions such as:

Whose story is this? Is it mine to tell publicly? Could someone represented in the work recognize themselves—or be recognized by someone else? Have I protected their privacy? What responsibilities arise from my professional role or my relationship to this person?

Changing a name alone may not adequately protect someone’s identity. Details such as age, diagnosis, occupation, location, family circumstances, dates, or an unusual clinical situation can make a person recognizable even when their name is omitted.

Please review our full Ethical Guidelines for Contributors before submitting. The editors may work with contributors to address ethical or privacy concerns before publication.

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Content Notes

Healthcare and human experience include difficult subjects: illness, death, grief, trauma, violence, discrimination, disability, mental health, reproductive health, substance use, and many others.

We welcome work that engages honestly with difficult experiences. We do not expect contributors to avoid challenging material.

For work containing particularly graphic or potentially distressing material, however, please consider including a brief content note with your submission so that readers can make informed choices about how and when they engage with it.

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Preparing Your Submission

Written Work

Please submit written work as a Word document (.doc or .docx). Written submissions may be up to 5,000 words.

For prose, please use a readable 11- or 12-point font and standard margins.

Please preserve intentional spacing, typography, or other visual elements whenever they are important to the work.

Visual Art and Photography

Please submit visual work as a high-resolution JPG, PNG, or TIFF file.

Please include the work’s title, medium, and year, if applicable.

If a work depicts an identifiable person, patient information, clinical environment, medical record, or other potentially confidential material, please review our Ethical Guidelines carefully before submitting.

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How Many Pieces Can I Submit?

Please submit up to three (3) individual works. We welcome submissions in more than one genre.

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A Note About the Editorial Process

Every submission will be read or viewed with care.

Selection for the anthology will be based on considerations including the strength and distinctiveness of the work, the anthology’s available space, and our desire to create a collection representing a range of forms, perspectives, experiences, and voices.

For some accepted pieces, editors may suggest revisions. Any substantive changes will be made in conversation with the contributor. We will not intentionally alter the meaning of your work without your knowledge.

Contributors always retain the ability to withdraw a piece prior to publication.

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Rights and Copyright

Contributors retain copyright to their work.

By accepting publication in Voices of Care, contributors grant the anthology and Digital Commons @ Cal Poly Humboldt non-exclusive permission to reproduce, publish, display, and distribute the accepted work as part of Voices of Care in print, digital, and/or other formats associated with the anthology.

Because these rights are non-exclusive, contributors remain free to publish, display, perform, adapt, or otherwise use their own work elsewhere after publication, subject to any separate agreements they enter into.

We ask that subsequent publication acknowledge the work’s previous appearance in Voices of Care when appropriate.

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Accessibility

We want Voices of Care to be accessible both to contributors and to readers.

Please let us know if the submission process creates an accessibility barrier for you or if you need another way to submit your work.

For accepted visual and multimedia work, editors may work with contributors to develop alt text, captions, or other accessible forms of presentation.

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Before You Submit

Please make sure that:

  • The work is your own, and you have the right to submit it.
  • You have reviewed the Ethical Guidelines for Contributors.
  • You have taken appropriate steps to protect patients’ and other individuals’ privacy and confidentiality, and you have obtained permission when identifiable material requires consent.
  • You have disclosed any relevant previous publication of the work.

If you are uncertain about whether your work fits the anthology, we encourage you to submit it.

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Questions?

Questions are welcome. If you are unsure about eligibility, genre, formatting, accessibility, privacy, consent, or whether a particular piece is appropriate for Voices of Care, please contact [email protected].

You may also contact us before submitting if you would like to discuss an ethical concern about a piece.

Please Consider Submitting Your Work!

We are interested in what you notice, what you make, what you remember, what you imagine, and what you have something to say about.

Voices of Care begins from a simple premise: health professionals have creative voices worth hearing.

We look forward to experiencing your work.

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