Vanthology: Misfits

Call for Submissions

Summary

Editor: Mark Feenstra
Submissions Open: April 1st, 2026
Submissions Deadline: June 30th, 2026
Expected Publication: Late 2026/Early 2027
Story Length: Up to 10,000 words
Contact: Message Mark on Discord

Details

After the success of our first showcase anthology, Vancouver Genre Writers is proud to announce Vanthology: Misfits to be published in late 2026 or early 2027!

Theme

The theme, Misfits, was chosen in part because it encapsulates the variety and blend of genres our authors represent, but also because it feels like what the world needs right now is unique voices that may not perfectly conform to what’s easily contained in a pithy marketing slogan.

As far as your submissions are concerned, we want to see the theme reflected in the character and culture of your story! Bring us your underdogs, outcasts, punks, and rebels! Celebrate non-conformity! Show us what it takes to go your own way and be a trend setter in a time when blending into the crowd seems the safest option.

As Barry Manilow once said, “Misfits aren’t misfits among other misfits.” So come find your fit with some fellow misfits.

Eligibility

This anthology is open to any and all Vancouver Genre Members in good standing. This means you’re are at least a somewhat active participant in our meetups, online discussions, or workshops. We’re not looking for reasons to exclude anyone, but if we run up against word count limitations and have contributors who seem to only be looking for a publishing opportunity, we will favour our more engaged members for inclusion.

Suitable Content

Ie: Sex, Swearing, & Violence
Swearing, sex, and violence should be tasteful and relevant to the plot. If you have Wolf of Wall Street level swearing in your story, it should probably be toned down for a wider audience. Intimacy and romance are more than okay, but explicit depictions of sexual acts (aka: erotica) are not. Violence is to be expected, but this probably isn’t the place to share your most grisly battlefield shit, mud, and guts story.
 

If we have YA authors submitting work, we’d like them to be able to share the work with mature readers in their target audience without having to worry about what else is in the anthology.

The editorial team will have final authority on what qualifies as unsuitable content.

 

Submission, Editorial, and Publication Process

Work will be submitted to our editorial team during the submission window in accordance with the Submission Format guidelines illustrated below, or it will not be considered for inclusion.

Return to this page between April 1st and June 30th to submit your story!

Once your work has been submitted, it will go through an editorial process that may include subsequent requests for revisions. In order to maintain a standard of the highest possible quality across the anthology, it is a requirement that you be willing accept editorial feedback and consider reasonable revision requests. From this point, the work will be given a final proofread for typos and grammatical issues before being formatted for publication.

Unless you are a member of the editorial team, you will then wait patiently for the anthology to be fully edited and formatted. All contributors will be given an option to purchase print copies at cost, as well as being given a mechanism for sharing a few free digital copies. It is our hope that all contributing authors will participate in various marketing efforts following the publication of the anthology, however this is by no means mandatory.

Rights

We do not require sole publishing rights, however you will be asked to sign a contract granting One-Time rights for digital and print publication. We do not require that submissions are previously unpublished, however authors must disclose if their submission has already been published elsewhere along with verification that they currently hold the rights to said piece.

Submission Format

All submissions should be formatted according to the following guidelines and submitted via the form that will become available during the submissions window. Submissions must include an author biography before the story submission, preferably with a page break before the story. Please name your file something along the lines of StoryTitle-AuthorName.docx.

  • Author name at the top of page 1 with the biography blurb below that.
  • Biography should be in third person and not exceed 150 words.
  • Title and Author Name at the top of the second page with no page breaks before your story content.
  • 12-point double-spaced font.
  • No headers / No footers.
  • Saved in the .docx or .rtf file format.
  • All content should be written in Canadian English.

Please see this Sample Document [google docs link] for reference.

Compensation and Financial Accountability

Because this is a showcase project, there will be no compensation for contributors. Any potential profits from digital sales will be used for marketing (Ads and promotional outlets) and to subsidize print runs. Excess profits will be kicked back into the Vancouver Genre Writers operating budget to pay for things like our meetup.com registration, workshop space rentals, and promotional avenues. If the anthology is wildly successful, we will discuss further distribution of funds as a group, with potential at this time for payments to be distributed to individual contributors. Anthology financials will be kept as transparent as possible throughout the process.

Call for Volunteers

As this is a not-for-profit endeavour, we will have to rely on volunteer assistance with the following tasks:

  • Developmental editing.
  • Proofreading.
  • Cover art.
  • Digital and print cover typography.
  • Print book sales and distribution (potentially).
  • Marketing and promotion.

If you wish to help with any of these tasks, please contact Mark through Discord. If you know someone who is willing to supply original cover art but is not a VGW member, please get in touch and we’ll discuss potential compensation for their contribution; please bear in mind this will be below market rate since we’re operating on a budget of somewhere between nothing and where-did-all-our-money-go? If you would like to help with developmental editing, please provide any previous experience you have in this area. Ideally we’ll have a few developmental editors to break up the workload.

Submit your best work!

The more polished your piece is, the more likely it is to be included in the final anthology. Please make life easy for our volunteers by submitting the best possible version of your story. The less back and forth we have to do with each individual contributory, the sooner we can go to press.

Looking forward to reading everyone’s work!

– Mark