Creative Submissions

Plant Perspectives invites creative submissions that tend to and repair relations of plants, peoples, and places, fostering resurgent co-futures through reciprocal collaboration and embodied encounters with the plant world. We welcome innovative works and experimental forms of expression that embrace diverse perspectives and epistemological orientations emerging through experiential connections and long-term, embodied engagement with plants.

We are especially interested in works that address plants within the context of colonial ruptures between plants, peoples and places and engage with communities defending territories and ecosystems. We encourage works that reclaim languages, epistemologies, relations, and co-futures through plant–human interactions, and works that centre Indigenous perspectives and intergenerational plant relations. We are particularly interested in works that decentre human perspectives and foreground collective emergence, exploring plant intelligence and perspectives.

Our journal embraces LGBTQIA+, disabled and non-binary accounts of vegetal knowledge, reciprocity, desire, kinship and perspectives and contributions from Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other communities for whom plants are central to resistance and resurgence. We invite work that engages plants as co-participants and fosters reciprocal collaboration from conceptualization through publication. 

The Plant Perspectives creative team supports three editorial tendrils:

1. Academic Works: We encourage works that integrate fictional, poetic, or creative non-fiction elements, challenging and expanding academic enclosures, and fostering innovation that contributes to the decolonization and reimagining of plant-human relations. We welcome interdisciplinary collaborations, research foregrounding Indigenous epistemologies, long-term ecosystem engagements, and works engaging plants as co-participants. We invite works emerging from collaborative processes with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) communities, especially those that contribute to projects of resurgence and environmental justice.
   
   
2. Artistic Works: We invite new aesthetic expressions that decentre human perspectives and foster reciprocal plant relationships. We invite works that emerge from long-term plant encounters, collaborate with plants as co-creators, engage Indigenous epistemologies and plant intelligences, and challenge colonial framings. 
   
   
3. Activist Works: We welcome creative documentation of activist actions centered on decolonising human–plant relations and plant justice. We're interested in works from communities where plants are central to resistance and resurgence. Submissions should illuminate plant-centred activism, emerge from a collaborative ethos, and challenge colonial extractivism through artistic interventions.

Submission Guidelines:

     - Poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction (up to 2000 words).

     - Experimental writings (spells, manifestos, recipes, etc. up to 2000 words).

     - Visual art portfolios (10 images max).

     - Short films, video essays (under 20 mins).

     - Audio works (under 10 mins).

     - Multimedia/performance works (under 20 mins).

We welcome works that experiment with form, genre, and nonhuman perspectives. Please provide a contextual statement (under 200 words) for experimental works. 

Our journal is committed to ethical collaboration and respectful representation of diverse perspectives. We provide guidance to ensure respectful contextualisation of all perspectives, following protocols and ethical frameworks determined collaboratively with communities.

General requirements:

• Submissons must be original.
• Submissons must acknowledge all contributors, including plants. 
• Submissons must be about plants or plant–human relations.
• Submissons must adhere to the publisher’s AI policy and the journal's ethics policy.
• Where AI has been used in the creation of works, this must be explicitly acknowledge.

Specific requirements (where applicable)
We welcome submissions that engage with diverse perspectives and contexts. Where relevant to the type of submission, authors should:

• Obtain formal permissions for Indigenous content, ensuring respect for Indigenous authorship, ownership, and intellectual property rights.
• Provide appropriate acknowledgment for non-academic contributors.
• Centre and acknowledge Indigenous communities and contributors when working with Indigenous content or communities.
• Prioritise long-term immersion for activist works over extractive reportage.
• Align with principles of non-violent civil resistance and constructive protest, for activist-related submissions.
• Explore innovative ways to incorporate non-human perspectives and contributors.
• Avoid flattening, diminishing, or limiting the vitality of plant life in creative submissions.
• Ensure photo essays function as self-evident creative works providing context.

Additional Information:

• Video and audio content can be made available as downloadable files on the Plant Perspectives website but cannot be embedded for playback there. For embedded playback, we can link out to freely accessible external hosts such as YouTube or a personal website. In cases where hosting arrangements outside the Plant Perspectives site are required or preferred, it is the author’s responsibility to set up and maintain any such hosting. 

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