Join our Newsletter
Get pop culture chats, confessions, and recs right to your inbox with our newsletter!
Published triannually, we delve into film, TV, music videos, and celebrity culture through essays, conversations, and unconventional forms of criticism like film diaries, poetry, and comics.
Our focus is on the viewer, their viewing habits, highs, and hang-ups. Why can't we stop thinking about the exact shade of pink of Suki’s car in 2 Fast 2 Furious? Or the look on Marnie’s face after she’s fired the shotgun? Tell us what you're obsessed with, we want to hear all about it. But you should know that we’re terrible at keeping secrets.
So… are you in the mood?
Magazine: Submissions are currently CLOSED. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter for when we open them back up late fall!
Newsletter: Submissions are always OPEN. We publish 1-2 times a month, and especially welcome timely pieces on new releases or seasonal topics (e.g. horror in October, summer films).
👇 Please read our full guidelines before submitting:
What We Publish
We’re looking for writers with a distinctive voice, who aren't afraid of getting personal, and who are curious about why we watch what we watch. We appreciate thoughtful analysis but also a playful tone; we want intelligent pieces that aren't too full of themselves. We don't think of ourselves as an authority, but a confidante.
🎬 We publish the following about film, TV, pop culture, and moving image media—click for some examples we love:
- Personal essays, non-academic essays
- Conversations, roundtable discussions, interviews
- Poetry
- Round-ups, lists
- Experimental pieces, fan fiction, spec scripts
- Games, questionnaires
- Visual art, comics
- First-person, on-the-ground pieces about going to movies or working behind the scenes
- Film Diaries (short personal piece about something you've watched lately)
- Anniversary pieces (but try to think beyond "this movie is still great")
- Works on other moving image media, e.g. music videos, celebrities, commercials, filming locations, interesting areas of the film industry
❌ Things to avoid:
- Straight up reviews
- Excessive summary
- Academic or overly formal tone
- Flat-out pans (if something is bad, tell us why that's interesting!)
- We generally focus on media made after 1970
- Clickbait/hot takes
Please explore our past issues and our newsletter to get a sense of what we publish!
How To Submit
We strongly prefer completed pieces, but we understand that writing on spec is not a realistic prospect for many writers. With that in mind, we still accept pitches.
👇 Please include:
- Completed piece (doesn't need to be perfectly polished!)
OR if you’re pitching: a short paragraph on the piece (topic, relevancy, intended word count - 1,000 words max for features, 300 words max for film diaries)
- Why you think this is a good fit for In the Mood
- If pitching: 1-2 writing samples (they don’t need to be published)
- Short bio or link to your website
Send Submissions & Queries to:
What then?
For magazine submissions, we review all of them at the end of our submission period, after which you’ll receive a response from us with our publication decision.
Please keep in mind that a rejection is not necessarily a reflection on the quality of your work! We get a large number of submissions and only have a limited number of spots, which unfortunately means we have to pass on many great submissions.
If your piece is accepted, it'll go through an editing process. As a volunteer-run journal, we pay a modest honorarium of $30 CAD per feature and $20 CAD for film diaries, sent upon publication. We acknowledge that this is not a market rate, and won't be doable for some writers.
Thanks for pitching to In the Mood, we're looking forward to reading your work. And remember, we love surprises! 😈
Get pop culture chats, confessions, and recs right to your inbox with our newsletter!
Here’s our PayPal! We're volunteer-run, and donations will go directly to the mag and contributor honorariums.
Choose a mood on our Film Recommendation Generator and get a curated pick from writers, filmmakers, poets, and artists.