SUBMISSIONS | Iskra Books

Submissions
Guidelines

Manuscripts

We accept original manuscript submissions from scholars and writers both inside and outside the academy, with the intent that our publishing mission serves to move intellectual production outside the narrow and often counterrevolutionary confines of academe. Our publications serve the real world, avant-garde, and progressive forces of anti-imperialist movements—with specific focus given to national liberation movements in the global south, anti-colonialism, indigenous liberation, women's movements, disability advocacy, and LGBTQ+ liberation movements. We see these struggles as one, and we know all liberatory movements of the oppressed to be the people's vanguard of working class action against capitalist hegemony, both in the imperial core and beyond.

The majority of our publications are non-fiction, and we do not typically consider unsolicited fiction submissions.

Please limit your proposal to fifteen pages, and work to include of the following:

A page or two providing a general overview of the book's main themes and theses.
A list of contents, with a very short paragraph on each chapter.
A short background on the author, or contributors.
A paragraph on who you perceive as the main audience for the book.
Information about any competing and complementing titles, published or forthcoming, of which you're aware.
The general state of the manuscript. We typically do not offer publications promises on unfinished manuscripts, and all publications decisions will generally be made once the manuscript is completed and able to be reviewed in full by our editorial team.
We receive a large volume of submissions and because of this are oftentimes slow to respond—please have patience with us!

Please also note that we consider only digital submissions, to the email address below.

submissions@iskrabooks.org

For submissions to the Peace, Land, and Bread Journal—both online and in print—please send all pitches and article to the email address above. Please include a short description of the piece you wish to write, or have written, along with information about yourself and why it would work for Peace, Land, and Bread, and for Iskra Books more generally. We normally publish articles of up to 7,500 words (although this is negotiable, depending on the piece, as we will consider serializing larger pieces), and smaller pieces are always considered.

We also accept poetry, creative fiction, and literature submissions for the print journal.

We publish in (a mildly adapted version of) Chicago Style, with footnotes preferred over endnotes. Please visit this helpful resource here.

Due to the high volume of submissions we receive, we are oftentimes slow to respond, but aim to respond to all inquiries and submissions as soon as we are able—thank you for your patience.

Submissions for

Peace, Land, & Bread

Style Guide

Peace, Land, and Bread utilizes an in-house style, and we ask that our authors work to get their submissions into our in-house style prior to submittal. We are always happy to help authors and new submitters format their pieces for publication, and if formatting assistance is something you require, please do not hesitate to note this in your submission email. Please see below for the specifics of our in-house style.

A Note on Citations

Peace, Land, and Bread utilizes a modified Notes-Bibliography (NB) system drawn from the Chicago Manual of Style. NB uses numbered footnotes in the text to direct the reader to a shortened citation at the bottom of the page. This corresponds to a fuller citation in a Bibliography section that concludes the document.

All in-text citations should appear as bracketed, numbered endnotes, as opposed to superscripted notations. For example, the first reference would occur as [1], the second as [2] and so on. This version of the NB system allows our editors to easily convert between online and print format for your article.

Please include only author, work title, and page range in the Endnote, and the larger reference, inclusive of publisher, year, etc. within the Bibliography.

Peace, Land, and Bread utilizes the following note and bibliography style for our in-house NB system:

Endnotes (N)

[1] Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume III. pp. 43 - 45

[2] Katz, Claudio J. "Karl Marx on the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism." p. 363.

[3] Berger, John. Ways of Seeing.

Bibliography (B)

Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume III. Penguin Classics, 2004.

Katz, Claudio J. "Karl Marx on the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism." Theory and Society. Vol. 22, no. 3, 1993, pp. 363-389.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. BBC Two, 1972.

General PLB Guidelines

Text should be consistently double-spaced, except for block quotations, notes, bibliography entries, table titles, and figure captions.

For block quotations, which are also called extracts:

A prose quotation of five or more lines, or more than 100 words, should be blocked.
We recommend blocking two or more lines of poetry.
A blocked quotation does not get enclosed in quotation marks.
A blocked quotation must always begin a new line.
Blocked quotations should be indented with the word processor’s indention tool.

Page numbers begin in the header of the first page of text with Arabic number 1.

Subheadings should be used for longer papers.

Supplemental Guidelines

We encourage writers to utilize a scholarly voice (i.e., refraining from an overuse of contractions, colloquialisms, biased language, rhetorical questions, and second person pronouns), critical engagement with primary, secondary, and tertiary source materials, as well as comprehensive references, citations, and endnotes where applicable.

While we encourage writers to utilize the style of voice most appropriate to their field and topic, we do ask that authors follow the formatting and submissions guidelines on this page.

Margins should be set at no less than 1”.

Typeface should be something readable, such as Times New Roman, Arial, or Courier. The font used in print issues of Peace, Land, and Bread is generally Antwerp.

Font size should be no less than 10 pt. and no larger than 12 pt.

Iskra In-House Style Guidelines

Main Text

Titles mentioned in the text, notes, or bibliography are capitalized throughout, meaning all words of titles and subtitles and any important words thereafter should be capitalized.
Titles in the text as well as in notes and bibliographies are treated with quotation marks or italics based on the type of work they name.
- Book and periodical titles (titles of larger works) should be italicized.
- Article and chapter titles (titles of shorter works) should be enclosed in double quotation marks.
- The titles of most poems should be enclosed in double quotation marks, but the titles of very long poems should be italicized.
- Titles of plays should be italicized.
- Otherwise, take a minimalist approach to capitalization.
  - For example, use lowercase terms to describe periods, except in the case of proper nouns (e.g., “the colonial period,” vs. “the Victorian era”).
- A prose quotation of five or more lines should be “blocked.” The block quotation should match the surrounding text, and it takes no quotation marks. To offset the block quote from surrounding text, indent the entire quotation using the word processor’s indentation tool. It is also possible to offset the block quotation by using a different or smaller font than the surrounding text.

References

Label the first page of your back matter "Endnotes" and list your endnotes—inclusive of your citations, references, and note-worthy commentary—sequentially, and as they appear in the text, with bracketed numbers ([1], [2], [3], and so on).
Label the second page of your back matter, your comprehensive list of sources, “Bibliography” (for Notes and Bibliography style).
Leave one blank line between “Endnotes” or “Bibliography” and your first entry.
Leave one blank line between remaining entries.
List entries in letter-by-letter alphabetical order according to the first word in each entry, be that the author's name or the title of the piece.
Use “and,” not an ampersand, “&,” for multi-author entries.
- For two to three authors, write out all names.
- For four to ten authors, write out all names in the bibliography but only the first author’s name plus “et al.” in notes and parenthetical citations.
- When a source has no identifiable author, cite it by its title, both on the references page and in shortened form (up to four keywords from that title) in parenthetical citations throughout the text.
- Write out publishers’ names in full.
- Do not use access dates unless publication dates are unavailable.
- If you cannot ascertain the publication date of a printed work, use the abbreviation “n.d.”
- Provide DOIs instead of URLs whenever possible.
- If no DOI is available, provide a URL.
- If you cannot name a specific page number when called for, you have other options: section (sec.), equation (eq.), volume (vol.), or note (n.).

Endnotes

Note numbers should begin with “[1]” and follow consecutively throughout a given paper.
In the text:
- Note numbers are not superscripted, but bracketed.
- Note numbers should be placed at the end of the clause or sentence to which they refer and should be placed after all punctuation, except for the dash, semicolon, and colon.
In the endnotes:
- Note numbers are full-sized, not raised, and enclosed by brackets.
- Lines within an endnote should be formatted flush left. Place commentary after source documentation when an endnote contains both; separate commentary and documentation by a period.
  - In parenthetical citation, separate documentation from brief commentary with a semicolon.
  - Do not repeat the hundreds digit in a page range if it does not change from the beginning to the end of the range.

Headings

While The Chicago Manual of Style does not include a prescribed system for formatting headings and subheads, it does make several recommendations that we utilize and adapt in Peace, Land, and Bread.

Maintain consistency and parallel structure in headings and subheads.
Use headline-style for purposes of capitalization.
Subheadings should begin on a new line.
Subheadings can be distinguished by font-size.
Ensure that each level of hierarchy is clear and consistent.
Levels of subheads can be differentiated by type style, use of boldface or italics, and placement on the page, usually either centered or flush left.
Use no more than three levels of hierarchy.
Avoid ending subheadings with periods.

Tables and Figures

Position tables and figures as soon as possible after they are first referenced. If necessary, present them after the paragraph in which they are described.
For figures, include a caption, or short explanation of the figure or illustration, directly after the figure number.
Cite the source of the table and figure information with a “credit line” at the bottom of the table or figure and, if applicable, after the caption. The credit line should be distinguished from the caption by being enclosed in parenthesis or written in different type.
- Cite a source as you would for parenthetical citation, and include full information in an entry on your Bibliography page.
- Acknowledge reproduced or adapted sources appropriately (i.e., photo by; data adapted from; map by...).
- If a table includes data not acquired by the author of the text, include an unnumbered footnote. Introduce the note by the word Source(s) followed by a colon, then include the full source information, and end the note with a period.

Submittal

When you submit your materials, please submit them as either a .docx, a .pdf, or a .pages file to submissions@iskrabooks.org, and be sure to include your name, or your preferred pen name, on the document, as well as a short 2-3 sentence author's bio.

Peer Review Process

Our editorial team engages in a thorough peer review process of all submissions. Individual pieces of writing, poetry, and art first pass an initial content review before being passed along to our individual reviewers. We utilize a blind, two-reviewer process, and aim to respond to submitters in a timely fashion.