***SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED***

The world as we knew it ended. For a moment, our trust in societal institutions like celebrity culture, the government, and banks eroded, and our collective consciousness turned focus to utopian experiments like mutual aid programs, divesting from overfunded police departments and reconsidering our relationship to work. Now, as time has passed, employers require workers to return to the office, police budgets are relatively unscathed, and Black Friday sales have broken new records. The energy driving societal change has transformed back into a desire for the status quo.

For Issue 3 of Hii Magazine, we’re highlighting the stalwarts of and examining the possibilities for opposing the status quo and constructing alternative futures through the conceptual framework of “PUNK IN THE POST-APOCALYPSE.”

Punk is an ideology heavily associated with music and fashion, but its ethos is widely applicable: “celebrate expressions of individual freedom,” “don’t wait, just do-it-yourself,” and most prominently, “f*ck the establishment.”

Currently, the average consumer’s relationship to “the establishment” is near symbiotic as we’ve tethered ourselves to major corporations and institutions through the phones in our pockets. How can one oppose something that’s so integral to our everyday existence? You know that one scene in the Matrix where they put the bug in Neo’s belly.

The punk that emerged in 20th century Britain has largely become the very thing it was raging against: Doc Martens is now a suburban staple (debuting at the London Stock Exchange at $3.7bn in 2021), major record labels have embraced the genre that once derided the industry’s excess and the subculture’s history has been forcibly churned into mainstream media products like FX’s Pistol and the CBGB food franchise. Poignantly marked by the recent passing of Vivienne Westwood, the profitable punk of today seems to have killed punk as we knew it.

When we extrapolate the spirit of punk, there are many movements that fall under its umbrella, even if their provocateurs didn’t wear spiked hair or studded jackets. Dadaism, noise music, rap, and other efforts to defy what’s above and celebrate who’s below, show us that the punk spirit carries on when we respond to the changing world.

Hii is calling for pitches on essays, interviews, fiction, whatever the f*ck to showcase how and what current efforts in sound are pushing punk during this current dystopian moment.

We welcome broad interpretations of “PUNK IN THE POST- APOCALYPSE.” Just be clear about how your pitch relates to the theme. Pitch us:

• Historical deep dives that pair solid research/reporting with a critical eye

• Transportive, imaginative fiction and fables

• Poetry

• Unexpected interviews

• Personal essays

• Lyric essays

• Cultural criticism (literature, film, art, and pop culture)

• Humor pieces

• Hell, send us “PUNK” recipes accompanied by a short thematic intro

• Underrepresented magazine storytelling formats such as comics, listicles, and historical taxonomies. If it doesn’t fit in another publication, we want to hear about it.
  

Pitches for “PUNK IN THE POST-APOCALYPSE” are due by April 12. Stories will be assigned by April 20.

“PUNK IN THE POST-APOCALYPSE” will be released in late summer 2023.

We are a small print publication with very limited space. All of our pieces go through a rigorous editorial process with multiple rounds of revision over several weeks.

Send pitch emails to hii@hii-mag.com with “WRITING PITCH” or “VISUALS PITCH” in the subject line.

For more specifics on what to submit, take a look at the following guidelines, humbly lifted from our friends at Cake Zine.

Non-Fiction
Include a sample headline (to demonstrate the angle) and estimated word count. Provide a few sentences about your story idea. It’s not enough to share a topic—what is your take on the topic? How does it advance, complicate, or expand what we know or how we think about the subject of your piece? Feel like you have the silhouette of a piece, but don’t feel like you’ve fully nailed the crux of it yet? Feel free to include some reference links to articles/media/content that capture the approach you’re hoping to take and an explanation of how you’ll make it your own. For reported pieces, provide a few sample source.

DIY Projects
Include a sample title, a few sentences about your DIY project and how it adheres to the “PUNK IN THE POST-APOCALYPSE” theme, plus a few sentences about the major components/techniques.

Fiction
Include the complete piece and a brief description of how it supports the “PUNK IN THE POST-APOCALYPSE” theme. Maximum 5000 words. Flash fiction and shorter forms are welcome!

Illustration / Visual Storytelling
Please link to a website, instagram, etc. with work samples. If you don't have work online you want to share, attach 3-6 images to your email. Either as individual image files (no bigger than 3mb each) or a single pdf (no bigger than 15mb).

For all types of content, please tell us about yourself and provide a few links to relevant work that demonstrate your style, voice, and tone, whether your work is shown in a major publication or personal blog. We are committed to publishing burgeoning voices and care more about your talent and ideas than your resume. We also prioritize work by and centering BIPOC, women, and queer people. Please include the entire pitch in the body of your email. If you are pitching multiple pieces, please include them in the same email.

We pay creators. We’re a small, self-funded publication with flat rates based on length. All commissioned contributors will receive a copy of the issue.

Shorter pieces (350 words or less), poems, and DIY pieces: $125 - $175
Mid-length (500 to 1K words): $200
Longform (2K words - plus or minus): $300
Illustrations: $200
Misc content: Based on conversations with editors.

If you would like to be commissioned to create an illustration to accompany an accepted pitch, please get in touch. Not an illustrator? Not to worry, we welcome all visual mediums (that we can print). If you have an existing body of work you think might pair well with the theme of this issue, we would love to see it.

Download pitch deck here.

THANK YOU.