“This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

What are the rituals that anchor us? The daily practices that keep us tethered to ourselves, to our ancestors, to each other?

For this quarterly issue of Isele Magazine, we are seeking submissions that explore rituals – both the quiet, personal habits that shape our days and the communal, cultural ceremonies that bind generations. Think of the incense in your grandmother’s kitchen, the whispered prayer before crossing a threshold, the choreography of grief at a burial, the routine of a morning coffee. How do rituals keep us alive? How do they change when we do? What happens when we break them or when they break us? How do they shape our identities, and how do our identities shape them?

We welcome fiction, nonfiction, poetry, photography, visual art, and hybrid works that explore this theme. Daily routines and meditative habits. Spiritual practices. Ancestral ceremonies and cultural traditions. Queer, diasporic, neurodivergent, or body-centred rituals. Invented or imagined rites (speculative or surreal). 

Submission guidelines:

  • All submissions for the quarterly issue should be submitted to quarterly@iselemagazine.com. The email subject line should read Genre: Lastname (e.g. Poetry: Angelou).
  • We DO NOT accept multiple submissions. Please submit to one genre only.
  • For fiction and nonfiction, submit max. 5000 words of prose. 
  • For poetry, submit max. 3 poems in a single document.
  • For photography and visual art, submit max. 5 images in JPEG or PNG format and include a brief note detailing the concept and relevance of your work. Only submit work that you still retain the rights to. We DO NOT accept AI-generated images or artwork. 
  • For prose (fiction and nonfiction) and poetry, we DO NOT publish previously published works (by this, we mean any piece that has appeared on the web or in print, including your personal blog). However, we will consider a translated version of the work if the original language wasn’t English. For photography and visual art, we may publish works that have been previously published, posted, or exhibited as long as the artist still retains the rights.
  • We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us as soon as your work is accepted elsewhere so that we can withdraw it from consideration. 

Submission fees and payment of contributors:

  • We DO NOT charge submission fees. All submissions are free of charge. 
  • Isele Magazine pays all its contributors a modest token

Rights:

  • Isele Magazine requests the first serial rights of your published piece. However, all rights will revert to you after publication. If your work is republished elsewhere, please indicate that it previously appeared in Isele Magazine. 

The Isele Prizes 

  • All accepted submissions are automatically considered for The Isele Prizes. 

Deadline: 30th June 2025

We will respond to every submission no later than two months from the submission deadline. If you have not heard from us within two months, please feel free to send a query to quarterly@iselemagazine.com.

*Feature image by nay W on Unsplash