Editor Interview: Blank Spaces Magazine

The work of Canadians

My favourite Canadian writer is the late Leonard Cohen. His unapologetic world view encourages tolerance and love in a truly human fashion.

Blank Spaces is a full colour, full bleed, print publication of archival quality. We pride ourselves on being a safe place for aspiring writers to test the waters of publication without the red tape and swagger of large publishing houses. We work closely with our contributors to help them put their best foot forward.

Be yourself, let your voice shine through, and don't be afraid to show your quirks! We love an interesting cover letter much more than a long list of all your accomplishments. Do your very best to submit well-edited, thoughtful work. And it won't hurt you to pad our egos a little bit by telling us why you like Blank Spaces and want to be part of it! Please take the time to understand what kind of writing we're looking for. If you send us something swarming with vulgarity, we'll know you haven't invested the time to get to know us before submitting.

The ideal submission would begin with a cover letter that catches our attention. We believe in building relationships with our contributors, so a cover letter that gives us a glimpse of the kind of person you are gives you a high advantage over a submission that states the bare minimum. We love humour and emotion and honesty and vulnerability and humility. An ideal submission would closely follow our guidelines - from properly formatting the subject line, to including the submission within the email and not as an attachment. We worked very hard to clearly spell out our expectations. Those who pay attention and follow instructions will rush to the front of the queue.

Sometimes, a submitter will skip the cover letter. While we usually still look at submissions without a cover letter, we enter the process with a bias against it. To ignore a simple request from our submission guidelines shows disrespect for the people receiving your submission.

Previous publication credits do not matter to us. We're happy to celebrate your past accomplishments with you, but certainly don't require them. We believe in letting the work speak for itself. If you submit strong writing accompanied by a warm and positive cover letter, we'd be thrilled to add you to our pages, whether it's your first attempt at publication, or your hundredth!

It usually becomes clear within the first few paragraphs if a piece is going to be a good fit for Blank Spaces. We have some firm topics/themes we won't touch which we spell out on our website.

We expect a piece to arrive to us edited to the best of the author's ability. We will change all words to Canadian spelling, add Oxford commas, and do light copy editing when required. On rare occasions, when we really believe in a piece, we request edits by the author before we accept it for publication. Every contributor receives a PDF proof of their work within our layout before we go to print and is invited to offer up reasonable requests for changes. Final approval still rests with myself.

We make nominations for the Pushcart Prize every year.