General
The SFRA Review encourages all submissions, including: special issues; original essays; review essays that cover several related texts; individual reviews of fiction, media, and scholarship; and interviews.
As flagship publication of the SFRA, the Review is dedicated to helping graduate students and early career scholars develop their writing skills.
All contents of SFRA Review are published open access under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Authors retain copyright and may reuse their work as they see fit.
Special Issues and Symposia
In addition to standalone essays, SFRA Review publishes two types of essay collections:
(a) special issues — organized around special themes, topics, authors, works, ideas, etc.; usually, these are prepared around a timely topic. Editors will work to prepare and circulate a CFP.
(b) symposia — papers presented originally at conferences and other in-person/digital gatherings, lightly-edited for publication. The Review published symposia to recognize that graduate students, contingent faculty, and many others gives presentations that, for many reasons, often don’t reach beyond the hotel conference room. We encourage conferences and symposia organizers to partner with SFRA Review to allow presenters an opportunity to put their work in wider circulation; our dedication to open access and the CC license ensures authors can reuse and republish edited versions of their work in longer editions, e.g. a peer-reviewed article or book chapter.
Article Submissions
In addition to regular reviews and collections of essays in special issues or symposia, SFRA Review publishes individual articles in our Features section. Features articles are not peer reviewed in the traditional sense, but submissions—whether ultimately accepted or rejected—are reviewed by two general editors, who provide edits and comments for improvement in order to bring out the author’s best piece.
SFRA Review is happy to work with anyone who wants to write an article, whether a graduate student, professor, adjunct, SFF critic, etc. If a piece is a good fit for the Review and shows promise, we will help the author get it publication ready.
The ideal length of article submissions is c. 5,000 words. Articles should be formatted and follow MLA 8th edition. Notes should be minimal—explanatory, rather than citational—and should be hand-formatted as endnotes (i.e. not created via Microsoft Word or Google Docs’s notes features, but formatted by superscripting the notes number in-text and creating the corresponding endnote at the end of the article but before the Works Cited). In addition to the body of the text, endnotes, and Works Cited, authors should provide a short bio of c. 200 words. Our Style Guide should be consulted and adhered to for all submissions.
How to Submit / Who to Contact
If you would like to write a review essay or review, please see our list of texts available for review and contact the appropriate review editor. If a text does not appear on the list, our editors are willing to consider pitches.
To inquire about editing a special issue or “symposium” (especially one collecting papers from a conference) for the Review, please contact Virginia Conn and Andrea Blatz.
For article submissions and pitches, please contact Ian Campbell.
If you are unsure who to contact, all other queries can be directed to Ian Campbell.
SFRA Review 