Submit

Collage accepts submissions of original poetry, short stories, short plays, song lyrics, nonfiction, art, photography, design, music, and videos year-round. All creative work must be submitted online or at the Collage office (HONR 224). 

Submissions made to the Collage office must be made between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. 

1. You can only submit FOUR (4) entries per major category (visual, literary, audio, and video)
2. Don’t identify yourself on either the copy of the submitted work or on the digital file. We want to maintain integrity by leaving off all submitter names as well as having a double-blind grading process.
3. Submitting your work gives Collage permission to publish submitted work in the printed magazine, the online publication, and the MTSU institutional repository.
4. Submitting your work gives Collage permission to edit submitted work. We will not alter your content or artistic intention. For literary submissions, we maintain the right to alter spelling, punctuation, and grammar as needed, while always respecting any intentionally-unique spacing and formatting. For visual art, we may offer to reshoot/rescan the image, if the quality is low. We will never make edits to submissions under the categories of Art, Photography, Audio, or Video. We will, of course, contact you about changes to intentional content before making alterations.
5. Having your work published in Collage does not relinquish or weaken your copyright to your work in any way. If anything, it functions to establish your intellectual property as your own. You do not need to have your work legally copyrighted before submitting. You will retain all rights, and are granting us permission to print your work.
6. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
7. The “We Exist to Promote You” section of the digital submission form is geared toward promoting students and is optional. Type N/A if you would prefer not to fill out this portion.

Click “Submit Online” above and select the applicable category for your creative work. You will then be prompted to create an account – please follow the prompts.

Please address submission concerns by emailing collage@mtsu.edu or calling the Collage advisor at (615) 898-5759.

Fall 2026 submission deadline: Monday, September 14, 2026.

Submissions are accepted from MTSU Students and recent Alumni. 

Submissions are limited to four pieces for each major genre (visual, literature, video, and audio). 

Prose word limit: 2,000 words
Poetry word limit: 300 words
Visual image required resolution: 300 ppi, 5in. x 7in.