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WELCOME TO issue 7 of fruitslice

FINAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE: April 20

Fruitslice Submission Guidelines

About Us

Fruitslice exclusively showcases work created by members of the LGBTQA+ community. This commitment to providing a dedicated space where Queer voices are centered is fundamental to our mission. While we maintain this policy, we respect that identity is personal and nuanced; we trust contributors to determine whether they align with our community focus.

Publication Schedule & Submissions

  • Publication Dates: Fruitslice publishes quarterly on the solstices (March, June, September, and December).

  • Submission Windows: We only accept work during the first two weeks of every quarter (January, April, July, and October). Exact dates may vary—please check our website and instagram @thefruitslice for current information.

  • Submission Fee: There is no fee to submit your work.

  • Payment: At this time, we are unable to offer payment for published work. For more information about our long-term goals around compensation, please check our FAQ.

What We're Looking For

  • Theme: All work must engage with our current theme. Themes change for each issue and are open to interpretation. Please double-check our current theme before submitting.

  • Editorial Focus: We welcome a wide range of creative work. For detailed information about the types of content we're most excited to receive, please visit our FAQ section. We especially encourage submissions beyond poetry.

  • Word Limit: We recommend keeping written pieces under 5 pages or under 1500 words.

  • Mediums: We accept all printable mediums. If you're unsure whether your piece fits, feel free to submit.

  • No AI Submissions: We do not accept any AI-generated or AI-assisted work. For more information about this policy, please visit our FAQ section. 

Submission Rules

  • Multiple Submissions:

    • Authors may submit up to three pieces per genre.

    • Each piece MUST be submitted using an individual submission form.

    • Multiple pieces in one form will be considered as a series.

  • Cover Letters are encouraged but not necessary. We appreciate hearing how your work connects to our theme.

  • Proofreading: Please thoroughly proofread your work. Submissions with numerous errors risk rejection as we have limited editing resources.

Format Requirements

For All Submissions

  • File Naming: LastNameFirstName_PieceTitle

Written Work

  • Format: .doc or .docx only (NO PDFs)

  • 12pt font, double-spaced for prose

  • Include a note about how your piece relates to the theme in the Submission Form or in a cover letter

Visual and Hybrid Works

  • Resolution: Minimum 300 DPI for print quality

  • Artist Statements: Optional, around 500 words

For Page Layouts/Spreads Only

  • Dimensions:

    • Single Page: 5.50" x 8.50" (Trim Size)

    • Spread: 11.00" x 8.50" (Trim Size)

  • Bleed Area: Extend all edges by 0.13" beyond trim size

    • Total with bleed (single page): 5.76" x 8.76"

    • Total with bleed (spread): 11.26" x 8.76"

  • Quiet Area (Safe Zone):

    • Top: 0.25"

    • Right: 0.25"

    • Bottom: 0.25"

    • Left: 0.50"

  • Gutter: Add at least 0.7" to inner margin for binding

Editorial Process

  • Notification: We confirm receipt immediately.

  • Review Process: Our team reviews submissions on a rolling basis.

  • Response Timeline: First round of responses are typically sent within two days of the submission deadline.

  • Final Decisions: Communicated no later than six weeks before publication.

  • Total Timeline: From submission deadline to publication takes about three months.

Additional Information

Thank you for considering Fruitslice as a platform for your work!

Welcome to Issue 7 of Fruitslice!

To belong somewhere is a luxury that feels increasingly elusive—a sentiment that has always held particular weight for Queer people. There's something (almost) comically american about the way we've packaged Queerness into acceptable urban enclaves, as if identity could be zoned like real estate, confined to neighborhoods where rainbow capitalism reigns, and representation has been deemed marketable. 

Meanwhile, in the vast stretches between these designated havens, countless Queer lives unfold in quotidian defiance, claiming space in landscapes both hostile and unmarked.

We’ve been thinking about the perverse theater of recent legislative efforts—the transparent performance of moral panic that serves as a distraction from more substantive collapse. We are literally being legislated out of public bathrooms, school libraries, and medical offices—spaces that, for the privileged, represent mundane infrastructure rather than contested territory.

How do we make home when conventional structures fail us? More importantly, how do we make home... at all? 

The question isn't whether Queer people belong everywhere—they do, they always have—but rather: what can the strategies for creating home under impossible conditions teach us about belonging more broadly? What wisdom resides in communities that have never had the luxury of taking home for granted? These improvised architectures of belonging might offer blueprints not just for survival but for more humane ways of organizing social life.

Consider the intersections that complicate easy narratives—how race, class, disability, and geography create distinctive challenges and possibilities. The privilege embedded in certain forms of visibility. The creativity born from necessity. The unexpected joy that emerges even (especially) when it shouldn't.

For this issue, we're looking for stories that capture ‘home’—Tell us about the space you've claimed despite everything, the community you've built that defies conventional wisdom, and the specific ways you've transformed exclusion into its opposite.

We want to interrogate all ways that home takes shape: its smell, its look, and its texture. 

What does it mean to have a place of safe return: whether that is in one’s own body or in the world? 

We want to embrace all ways home can be defined: how we love our home, how homes become haunted, and the many ways we maintain good housekeeping. 

Home is rooted in memories of comfort and safety, but it is also routed towards growth. Our refuges of rest are often our most powerful tools in building what we need for what’s ahead. They allow us the room to think creatively and think outside of constraints. 

How do we redefine space for ourselves and stretch it so we can have home anywhere and everywhere? Corporeal and grounded in the simultaneity of past, present, and future: home marks a return, and room for change for what is to come.

“With home we find tradition in transition” Tradition in Translation, Quantic and His Combo Barboro.

In gathering these stories, we're mapping possibilities—affirming that the homes we create sustain not just ourselves but future generations who will inherit both our struggles and our innovations in the ongoing project of making space for lives that were never supposed to thrive but somehow, always magnificently, do.

Review our modified AP style guide here:

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