C Mag
Submission Timelines
- C issue 158 (Fall 2024)
Pitches: 1 March
Letters: 25 June
Publication: 15 August
- C issue 159 (Winter 2025)
Pitches: 1 July
Letters: 25 October
Publication: 15 December (2023)
- C issue 160 (Spring 2025)
Pitches: 1 November
Letters: 25 February
Publication: 15 April
- C issue 161 (Fall 2025)
Pitches: 1 March
Letters: 25 June
Publication: 15 August
C Magazine welcomes writing on contemporary art and culture that is lively and rigorously engaged with current ideas and debates. C is interested in writing that addresses art and its various contexts, through emerging perspectives and a mix of editorials, columns, in-depth essays, interviews, artist projects and reviews.
Writers at all experience levels are invited to express interest in working with us, and to tell us a bit about themselves, without pitching a specific piece, by adding themselves to our writer directory.
How to Pitch
Each issue includes articles and reviews commissioned directly by the editors, as well as pieces originating from pitches. We accept pitches on an ongoing basis up until the deadlines indicated for a particular Call for Pitches. We may have already fully commissioned the issue before a pitch deadline; please write to us as soon as you can if you're working on an idea you'd like us to consider.
Send pitches to pitch@cmagazine.com, with a subject line that starts with the word PITCH and goes on to indicate the submission type (review, essay, interview, One Thing, for example). In your pitch include a short summary of your subject and how you'll approach it, any relevant hyperlinks, and a proposed estimated word count. If you have not written for us recently, include a link to your website—or a copy of your CV—and one or two writing samples.
With the exception of short online reviews, we do not accept unsolicited, completed manuscripts. Submitted work must be original; we do not publish reprints nor adaptations of any kind. Thank you for understanding that we are unable to reply to all unsuccessful pitches. Press releases should not make use of the PITCH subject header, and can be sent to editorial@cmagazine.com.
Submission Types
Features
Taking a variety of stylistic forms—profiles, experimental texts, thought-based essays incorporating works by a number of artists—features explore some aspect of the issue's theme in relation to ripe and ripening ideas in contemporary art and culture.
1,200 – 3,500 words, accompanied by a series of images.
Conversations
Ranging in number of participants and length, conversations may take the form of a traditional interview, a collaboratively written conversation conducted by correspondence, or a moderated roundtable. These must be thematic.
Reviews
We publish reviews of exhibitions, publications, moving image works, performance art and more. Reviews cover events that have occurred within four months of the pitch submission for an exhibition or performance and within two years for publications and moving image works.
Print Reviews 800-1000 words. Flat rate of $410. Writers may only submit pitches.
Online Reviews 400-500 words. Flat rate of $210. Writers may submit pitches or completed texts.
Artist Project
The Artist Project provides an opportunity for emerging artists to explore, experiment, and grow within the site-specific parameters of the magazine format. Each is curated by a guest curator who commissions a new work, writes the accompanying text, and hosts a public program with the artist. Curators begin new working relationships, receive editorial support, gain insight into magazine production, and expand their thinking about the possibilities of print. Spanning the first six and last two pages—effectively bookending each issue—all the projects engage with the issues’ respective themes.
Curators may submit proposals to commission new work, providing the name, website, and a brief statement of rationale for each artist they'd like to work with. The curator may not propose working with an artist they are already actively working with for another platform. Artists may also submit an idea for a project, which may be forwarded to the appointed guest curator.
The Artist Project is supported by RBC, who defines "emerging" as: being in the early stages of their career, self-identifying as emerging; being enrolled in, or having recently graduated from, a related degree/diploma program; being involved in their creative community; having not yet been showcased beyond their primary country of residence; having a small history of presentation or publication.
Composition
A space for creative writing practices that are adjacent to art writing, but which may engage or address the forms, styles, and contexts of it.
800 – 1000 words.
One Thing
As the name suggests, this column gives the writer an opportunity to indulge the contours of one specific thing—an artwork, memory, garment, text, document, encounter, film, person, object, building, historical event, etc.—in relation to the given theme. The thing likely has, or has had, some kind of impression, effect or pull on the writer or their practice, either in a longstanding, deep way, or in a fleeting, flash-in-the-pan way. This column makes space for curiosities, obsessions, and musings on things that productively complicate our notion of what constitutes thinking about art, and allows the writer to explore things that aren't beholden to the "new."
700 - 900 words, accompanied by a single image.
Tilling
This column is a dedicated place to focus in on individual and organizational efforts being made in the name of equity within the Canadian arts community, acknowledging that this work is freckled with missteps, disappointments, failures, surprises, joys, and teachings. We’re looking for run-downs on specific initiatives, projects, and programs, to see how they’re shaking out—in the attempt to invite more complexity, sensitivity, and nuance to this crucial discourse. Consider this a place for deep, substantiated writing on specific case studies by folks supporting the development of more just infrastructures.
1500 words.
Letters
Each issue features a small selection of letters to the editors (and to C Magazine readers) printed at the front of every issue. Letters engage the previous issue—its theme, articles, images—and related things beyond the magazine’s pages. They may be informal, informative, creative, inquisitive, speculative, critical, or any other number of things imaginable in the epistolary form. The column is intended to create space for dialogue on and around contemporary art, and to continue conversations between issues, themes, and writers.
Letters are selected for publication from those submitted and may be edited for length and clarity. An honorarium will be paid to each writer whose letter is selected for print.
200 – 400 words.
Policies
Conflicts of Interest
- Being employed by or sitting on the Board of Directors of the museum, gallery, festival, publisher, or entity presenting the subject under review.
- Being the curator of the subject under review, or curating a forthcoming project of the artist(s) under review that will be publicly mounted in the six months immediately following the publication date.
- Being represented by the entity presenting the subject under review (ie. artist by gallery, author by publisher, filmmaker by production company).
- Presenting any public programming related to the subject under review.
- Writing for any other publication about the subject under review
Fees and Copyright
We currently pay all contributors between 35-45 cents/word. All material published in the magazine remains the legal property of the contributor, subject to the following terms: C Magazine is licensing First Serial Rights and Internet Rights for the contribution. The contributor has the right to resell, republish, and make other use of the work no earlier than 180 days after the Publication Date. C Magazine retains the right to publish, archive, distribute, publicize, and reproduce the work and associated image information, in all media, within the context of the magazine. Republication, in any format, of material originally created for publication in the magazine should be accompanied by the acknowledgement: "Originally published in C Magazine, issue # (Toronto: C The Visual Arts Foundation, year)."
Notes on Style
- Lively, compelling non-fiction prose on contemporary art.
- Original insights into ideas within contemporary art as they relate to culture at large, not exclusively in relation to art history or specialized debates.
- Cognizance of recent, salient discursive activity related to one’s topic/s.
- Balance of description and uniquely conceived observation, dissection, interpretation, speculation, and analysis.
- Mindfulness of structures: galleries, museums, post-secondary schools, residencies, audiences, social communities, donors, sponsors, economies, geographies, histories, and communication systems that constitute and exert influence in the art world.
- Argumentative pieces deftly weave the personal and the political not only with rich anecdotes but deep research—substantive, investigative, rigorous.
- Healthy caution of jargon, buzz words, clichés, generic concepts, and lofty adjectives.
- Endnotes accepted for features and columns, but lengthy discussions of academic theory discouraged.
- All drafts written as cleanly as possible, with attention to structure, organization, and grammar. We will reject submissions that require more editing than our resources allow, and writers will not be eligible for a kill fee if the work does not meet our minimum standards.
Living Style Guide
Final submissions of content should generally conform to the Canadian Press Style Guide, the Chicago Manual of Style, and the Oxford Dictionary.
In acknowledgement of the ways that orthographic conventions have the potential to perpetuate colonial thought, expression, and ways of knowing, C Magazine maintains a Living Style Guide. While the Canadian Press Style Guide, Chicago Manual of Style, and Oxford Dictionary inform our editorial work broadly, this guide allows for a more porous, sensitive, and receptive approach to the politics of language as they continually evolve. In many instances, we’ve opted to establish looser baselines, which function as entry points for conversations with our authors. We remain open to feedback about this process and the choices that follow from it.