Welcome to the Where Ideas Grow blog, a space dedicated to creativity, individuality and inspiration. We are so excited that you are interested in sharing your voice and connecting with our writing community here at York St. John University!
Our submissions call for the 2025/2026 academic year are now open! We will be accepting your work from 9am on Friday on the 31st of October 2025.
This creative writing blog is primarily for any students studying at York St John University, however submissions from Converge at York St John will also be considered and are more than encouraged as we want to showcase a wide range of work and create an open space for writers everywhere. Submissions from non-YSJ associated writers, will unfortunately not be accepted.
We are looking for all forms of writing, whether this is poetry, non-fiction, short stories, script, a book review, or a tailored excerpt from a longer piece of fiction. There is no theme for this submission, we want to hear your voice and something that excites you and us!
Each piece will be assigned to a specialist editor of the blog team depending on the form of writing you have chosen to submit. Please see our “About Us” page to discover more about our current team of editors.
Submission guidelines:
- The max word count for prose is 1000 words
- The max word count for script is 1000 words
- The max line count for poetry is 30 lines.
- Your submission should be sent as a Microsoft Word document (.docx)
This is currently an open submissions call and will be planning to close in the summer of 2026.
We will aim to contact successful submissions within a two-week period. If you haven’t heard from a member of the team in this time, we thank you for your submission but please assume you have been unsuccessful this time around.
You can submit on multiple occasions, but please only send one piece at a time.
Please also include:
In the subject line of the email: Your name, the name of the piece and the form (e.g. John Smith, “Roses are Red”, Poetry).
In the body of the email: A brief 50–70-word bio in the third person, including your name, location, course of study and your inspiration for the piece.
Your submission can be published anonymously, but please make this clear in your email – either in the subject line or the email body. Please use a York St John email address, or specify in your Bio your association with the university.
We look forward to reading your submissions! Please note not all submissions will be selected for publication on the blog.
All accepted work will be published as a post on the Where Ideas Grow blog and promoted with a post on our social medias (linked below!)
Please email your submissions to: whereideasgrowblog@gmail.com. Please use this contact if you have any questions too!
Thank you and good luck!