How to Submit to The Dodge

The Dodge seeks your best work in eco-writing, writing about animals, and translation on these themes. Surprise us! We might see these categories differently if an especially good piece of writing strikes us as relevant. We’re excited by a wide range of forms and approaches, including hybrid and experimental work. Among other things, we’re interested in broadening the scope of stories, poems, and essays about nature and animals; we hope to see translations across borders, time, and space.

We receive a lot of work focused on dogs, cats, and charismatic megafauna. Obviously, these non-human animals are important in our human lives, and people write great things about them, many of which we’ve published. But we’re really excited to read about other less explicable creatures as well. Eco-writing as we see it can include minerals, fungi, forests, insects, fire, etc.

We’re eager to champion emerging voices and actively encourage writers historically underrepresented in magazine publishing and eco-writing to submit. We want to read writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA+ folks, gender-nonconforming people, people with disabilities, women, and others.

Cover Letters

We encourage you to include a short cover letter with your submission with a brief biographical statement (50-200 words). If your submission is selected for publication, your bio will appear beneath your piece on our website. In your cover letter, please also let us know if you have an association with one of our editors, have corresponded with us, or have been previously published in The Dodge. Cover letters are optional for all genres except translation. 

Manuscript Guidelines & Formatting

• Up to 7000 words prose, typed, double-spaced. For fiction and nonfiction, please send a single longer piece or no more than three flash pieces (under 1000 words each) at a time.

• Poetry: Up to five poems in one document. Single-space poetry is fine.

• Translations: up 7000 words prose, typed, double-spaced, or up to eight poems in one document. (Poems can be single-spaced.)

• Visual Art: Submit up to five pieces of visual art. 

Please include content notes for any material in your submission for which you think readers may appreciate advance notice. Examples include: violence, sexual assault, racism, suicide, self-harm.

Mail Submissions 

We take submissions online through our Submittable. We only accept hard copy submissions from incarcerated writers and those with accessibility needs: The Dodge, Dept. of English, The College of Wooster, 716 Beall Ave, Wooster, OH 44691. 

Simultaneous Submissions

We accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your piece on Submittable promptly if it is accepted elsewhere. (Exceptions may apply to visual art submissions; please contact us at editors@thedodgemag.com with your questions.) If you have submitted multiple works, send a Submittable message to tell us which works you must withdraw. We do not publish previously published work at this time.

Response Times

We aim to respond within six months. If you have not heard from us after six months, feel free to reach out.

Once you have submitted work, please wait to receive a response from our editors on that submission before submitting again. Please limit your submissions to once or twice a year. If your work has been published in The Dodge, we ask that you wait twelve months from your date of publication to submit again.

Restrictions

Submissions that do not relate to the magazine’s eco themes will be declined. Readers and editors of the magazine may not submit work, and we do not consider work from the College of Wooster faculty and staff. We do not consider submissions created with the assistance of generative AI. (We ask that submitters include a statement in their cover letters disclosing any use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in their manuscript.)