Westerly is published twice a year in July and November.
- July edition deadline: 31 March
- November edition deadline: 31 August
A specific Call for Submissions will be disseminated for all Special Issues (both online and in print). Submission to these issues will be according to the specific criteria set.
Please submit your work online, here.
- Manuscripts and poems should be 1.5-spaced and typed in Times New Roman font size 12, with margins no more than 2.5cm. You must ensure that all titles, headings and textual breaks are clearly marked.
- A cover page should include the name, address and email address of the author. All pages should include the title.
- Please include a two-line biography with your submission.
- You must include an email address for all submissions. As it may take several months for return correspondence, you should use an email address that will be relevant for this period of time.
- If you are submitting an essay, ensure that it adheres to the Westerly style guide.
- No more than five poems (maximum 50 lines each) or one short story should be submitted at any one time. You should wait for a response before submitting future work for consideration.
- While every care is taken with manuscripts, the editors can take no final responsibility for their return. Contributors are consequently urged to retain copies of all work submitted.
When submitting online please collate poems into a single document or file.
If you cannot submit your work online, please submit by post to:
Westerly Centre (M202)
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Hwy
Crawley WA 6009
Australia
Postal submissions should include a covering letter which includes a brief, two-line biographical note and email address for correspondence. If you require your work to be returned, you must include a stamped, self-addressed A4 envelope. (If you are sending your work from outside Australia, you may include an International Reply Paid Coupon. Do not send cash.) Unsolicited manuscripts not accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope will not be returned.
We are bound by our funding arrangement with the Department of Culture and the Arts, Western Australia to pay the minimum set fees for poetry and stories or articles.
Payment rates are:
- Poems: $75 for one page / one poem or $100 for two or more pages / poems
- Stories: $150
- Articles: $150
- Reviews (to be published either in print or online): $75
We aspire to pay professional writers Australian Society of Authors (ASA) rates when possible, given Westerly’s funding. We do not, however, pay for general material published online (with the exception of solicited reviews).
We also expect our contributing authors to be subscribers of the journal, and support the publication which is supporting them! For this reason, we ask that any authors selected for publication who are not subscribers accept a year’s subscription as part-payment for their work.
General
- In submitting, you are declaring the work attached as original, and entirely of your own production. You will retain copyright over your work if published.
- Westerly follows the current edition of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Handbook, using parenthetical documentation and a list of works cited.
- Westerly uses endnotes, not footnotes. Endnotes should be used only where absolutely necessary.
- Single inverted commas are used.
- The name and contact details of the author, including postal address, should appear on a separate cover page. The title of the work should appear on every page of the document.
- Contributions should be saved as a Word file or a .pdf file.
- Work should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration elsewhere. Prior publication will make the work ineligible for any consideration.
Referencing
Westerly follows the MLA style of referencing, with in-text citation. Please conform to author / page citation, with dates only supplied in the case of multiple texts under a single author’s name.
For a referencing guide click here.
Illustrations
If an illustration is to be used it should be scanned to a resolution of at least 300dpi at reproduction size and numbered (for example, ‘author’s name, no 3’). It should be sent as a separate file. The place where the illustration is to be inserted in the body of the article should be marked, with the caption immediately following.
If the illustrations are not scanned, you should send the original numbered in a similar way
Paragraphs
New paragraphs are denoted by indenting the first line. Do not insert line spaces between paragraphs.
Spelling
In general, follow the Australian Government Printing Service style manual.
Use:
‘ise’ rather than ‘ize’
‘enquiry’ rather than ‘inquiry’
‘focuses’ rather than ‘focusses’
‘programme’ rather than ‘program’
retain the mute ‘e’ in ‘judgement’, ‘acknowledgement’,
Capitals
Keep the use of capitals to a minimum. Other than for proper names, use only when lower case would cause ambiguity.
Abbreviations
The use of abbreviated titles in the text should be avoided.
Those in common usage (such as ABC, ACTU, ALP) are allowed (no stops). Lengthy titles can be reduced to a shortened form (whole words) after the first reference. The names of States (Victoria, South Australia, and so on) should not be shortened.
Contractions
Contractions (which are distinguished from abbreviations by the presence of the final letter) do not require stops, for example: ‘Dr’, ‘Mr’, and so on.
Italics
All books, journals and film titles should be italicised, as well as names of ships. Foreign words in common usage (such as ‘elite’, ‘laissez faire’) need not be italicised. Song titles should not be italicised (for example ‘Auld Lang Syne’).
