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Footnote: A Literary Journal of History

About Footnote

Footnote is our annual literary publication dedicated to historical and contemporary views on history. It contains poetry, images, fiction, and nonfiction by various authors, both contemporary and historical, about any topic of history. We are excited by pieces that give an author’s intimate or emotional take on historical places, people, events, or ideas.

We are looking for pieces that have heart, curiosity, purpose, and bravery. We want to be moved, and we want to learn. From our accepted submissions for each year, we take each piece and find its place in the whole, creating a conceptual feel from cover to cover that digs deeper than just chronological order. We couple those submissions with public domain pieces that comment on the same topics, so readers get to see modern perspectives on what is old, juxtaposed with old perspectives on what was then considered modern. Alongside that, we feature photographs, maps, illustrations, interactive QR codes, footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies, and supplemental material, so you can learn more about each topic.

There is no set theme per issue. We collect and compile a conceptual arc based on the pieces we accept and the topics they cover. This means that each issue is completely fresh, has a different feel and atmosphere from start to finish, and could cover any topic of history in the known world. We’re not just here to entertain; we’re here to educate. It is our hope that you will learn and get curious and go do some research … but rest assured that if you’re just here for the good writing, our highly selective submission and editing process will give you that, too.

Acceptance Rates & Current Interests

We currently average around 500 submissions per issue and accept about 40 pieces total per issue (8% average acceptance rate per issue). Issue #6 (our last completed acceptance list, as we are still reading for #7, #8, and #9) received 491 submissions and accepted 40 pieces (8.15% total acceptance rate). Of those 40 pieces, 4 pieces were creative nonfiction (10%), 9 pieces were fiction (22.5%), 5 pieces were hybrid or cross-genre (12.5%), 19 pieces were poetry (47.5%), 1 piece was a play script (2.5%), and 2 pieces were straight nonfiction (5%). There was 1 Featured Writer selected.

We have received a lot of American Civil War and World War II pieces lately, so we are not currently as interested in those subjects (though they will still be read and considered fully). We have a hard time with problematic POVs that are from Confederate or Nazi quote-unquote protagonists, so if you are sending in something meant to make us feel empathy for racists, it had better have some mighty fine writing and have a very finely chiseled point. We are generally rather turned off by Stockholm Syndrome stories where captives, enslaved people, and prisoners of war fall in love with their captors, masters, or guards. We would currently love to see more Native American Indigenous (United States and Canada), Ukrainian, and Asian history pieces, told from Own Voices.

Sneak Peek (scroll inside box)

The Coil: An Independent Online Literary Magazine

The Coil is a daily literary magazine that features essays, book reviews, interviews, shelfies, columns, articles, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, artwork, historical writing, literary recipes, booklists, soundbites, and more. We always have something new and electric, and we post Monday through Friday, so follow us on Medium and on Twitter, and check back often. We welcome diverse and underrepresented voices and are an LGBTQUIA+ safe-space. We pay for all the pieces we accept. #CoilMag.