Submissions Call for January 2025 Edition of Tintreach

Posted on by Ed Moynihan

Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality would like to invite submissions to the January 2025 edition of Tintreach.

From January 2025 onwards, we plan on splitting the Smashing Times Newsletter in two. On the one hand will be the monthly newsletter, including Spotsolas: Smashing Times in the Spotlight, Grants and Opportunities, 10 We Admire, and more. On the other hand will be Tintreach. Published quarterly online, Tintreach is our new arts and literary journal for creative work from across the artistic spectrum. It is a continuation of the Tintreach section of the monthly newsletter. (We welcome feedback on these changes; for more information on this, please scroll to the bottom of this page.)

The theme for the January 2025 edition is the same as that of the Tintreach section within the October 2024 newsletter: In Solidarity: An International Celebration of Arts and Human Rights (Part II). Submissions are accepted until we reach capacity, or until midnight on 30 November, 2024 – whichever comes first. (We will update this page, and our social media accounts, if capacity has been reached before the deadline.)

According to the United Nations, human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and more. Everyone is entitled to these rights, free of discrimination.

The arts are a powerful vessel through which the nature and importance of human rights can be explored. Most works of art have at their core a strain of humanitarianism. They attempt to make the world a better place, improving human welfare through cultural, spiritual, intellectual, or emotional enrichment. Many artists are human rights activists at some level. Art affirms life, and an affirmation of life is also an affirmation of human rights.

Artist Submissions

Artist submissions can be in any genre or form. International submissions are welcome. A few notes:

Shorter-Form Pieces

  • Poems can be any length.
  • Articles should be no longer than 1,500 words.
  • A written excerpt from a play or screenplay should not exceed 1,500 words.
  • If sending a photograph, or an image of a painting, sculpture, or architectural work, please ensure that the images are of a high quality, and provide the work’s label: material(s) used, dimensions, and year. Please include a few lines contextualising your piece and explaining how it relates to the theme. Lastly, please remember to state the title of the piece.
  • Videos, or video excerpts, of plays, should not run longer than 20 minutes. Please ensure that the video is of a high audiovisual calibre.
  • If submitting a song, piece of music, short film, video artwork, feature-film excerpt, or dance piece, please ensure it doesn’t exceed 20 minutes. Likewise, please make sure that they are of a high audiovisual calibre.

Longer-Form Pieces

  • Prose submissions – a short story, non-fiction essay, or novel extract – should be no longer than 3,000 words.

Submissions Per Person

  • We publish four artists per edition. Ideally, we will publish more than one piece by each artist, unless their pieces are longer form (short story, non-fiction essay, or novel extract). The purpose of this is to offer artists, especially emerging artists, more exposure than a journal publication would normally offer.
  • When it comes to shorter-form pieces (everything except for short stories, non-fiction essays, or novel extracts), we strive to publish two works by each artist, while the Featured Artist will have 3–4 pieces included. Therefore, unless you are submitting a longer-form piece, we ask that you submit a minimum of two works and a maximum of three. These can be in two or three different artforms if you wish. (For example, one poem and two paintings, or one poem, one painting, and one song).
  • You may only submit one longer-form piece (short story, non-fiction essay, or novel extract). However, you may submit one shorter-form piece alongside this, if you wish. This makes a maximum of two total submissions if you are submitting one longer-form piece. (For example, one short story and one painting, or one novel extract and one poem.)

General Guidelines

  • Submissions may have appeared elsewhere before, though new work is especially welcome. (If a submission has appeared elsewhere, please state this and include the publication details.)
  • Submissions can be made in English, Irish, or in translation. For Irish language submissions, our preference is that they be submitted alongside English language translations, though this is in no way compulsory. For translations of the work of another author, all relevant permissions must be obtained beforehand. We may also look to publish the original alongside the translation.
  • Themes are always flexible; any subjective response is considered valid.
  • There is no entry fee.
  • Submissions are accepted until we reach capacity, or midnight on 30 November, 2024 – whichever comes first. Please submit to smashingsubmissions(at)gmail.com. Subject lines should read: ‘Tintreach Submission, January 2025’. Please include a max two-line biography to accompany your piece, written in third person and making reference to your previous publications/exhibitions/appearances (if applicable); any social media/website links you would like to be included in case of publication; a headshot or photograph; whether you would like to be signed up to receive Tintreach (in addition to our monthly newsletter), which is free of charge, (so that, if selected, you receive the edition in which your work appears); and how exactly you heard of this submission opportunity. In order to ensure your submission’s eligibility, please make sure that you have included everything we have requested.
  • Our preference for written pieces is that they be sent in a Word document. Please do not send them in a PDF.
  • If we accept a written piece, the editor will contact you with at least one round of suggested edits, so please monitor your email closely.
  • If your work is accepted, it will appear not only in Tintreach but possibly on the Smashing Times website and across our social media channel (always with credit).
  • Contributors will receive a small fee.
  • Not all submissions will be accepted, unfortunately.
  • The edition goes out on Thursday, 30 January, 2025.
  • Tintreach reaches around 1,400 people, including a range of major organisations in the areas of arts and human rights, both in Ireland and across Europe. Previous contributors to the Tintreach section of our newsletter include poets Jessica Traynor and Fady Joudah, Senator Lynn Ruane, 2023 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Narges Mohammadi, rapper-singer Saint Levant, visual artist Erika Diettes, and many more.
  • Submissions are especially welcome from individuals who have been underrepresented historically, such as ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, members of the Traveller community, the LGBTQ+ community, and women. Please let us know when submitting if you belong to any of these or suchlike minorities.

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We at Smashing Times would love to get some input from our readers before the aforementioned changes to our newsletter are made. What are your thoughts on the current format of the newsletter (most of which will remain the same, bar moving the Tintreach section from the monthly newsletter to the standalone journal)? What do you like and not like about it? What are your thoughts on the planned change? What could make it better? And what do you think of the submissions process? Any and all feedback and ideas, however critical, are very much welcome. Please email these to communications(at)smashingtimes.ie