Get Involved

We are a community led magazine, and want to hear from as many different voices from the community as possible. We want to fill our pages with insights into your practices, your approach to teaching handstands, your artistic process for creating handbalance performances and your anecdotal stories of your life as a handbalancer. We want to hear from total beginners and seasoned athletes, from life-long performers and retirement hobbyists, and everything in between.

We accept submissions for written work, photography, art & illustration and poetry. Full information and submission guidelines can be found below. Check out our behind the scenes page for inspiration about your submissions, find out more about the magazine structure and upcoming topics.

Submission Guidelines

Please use the form below for all submissions. Make sure to select the type of content that best matches your submission.

Please put as much detail about the submission into the email body as possible, and also include a short bio about yourself.

All text and photography/art can be sent via attachment, which is limited to 20MB. We strive to reply to all submissions via email within 14 days of receipt. If you haven’t heard from us within a month, please don’t hesitate to follow up.

General Guidelines & Terms
The Handstand Press sees itself as both a facilitator and a platform for discussion and exchange across the whole wide range of the handstand community. As such, we strive to showcase the full and beautiful diversity. We have so much to learn from one another by sharing and listening to each other’s perspectives on our mutual passion, and we believe one way that can happen is through conversations within our pages. To that end, the Handstand Press is committed to being an inclusive magazine and community, open to all. We are committed to representing people of color, folks of varying abilities, body sizes, and orientations in our pages both in the photographs and artwork representing people in the pages but also through the artists and writers we publish.
Terms for Submission
  • Submissions will only be considered if the artist/author owns the rights to the submitted work
  • For previously finished work, all artists and writers retain the rights to their work
  • For commissions by the Handstand Press, we reserve the right of first publication. Afterwards, the rights remain with the artist or author.
  • We cannot guarantee publication in the Handstand Press. If submitted work is not chosen for publication, this is no statement to the quality of your work but merely indicates that it was not suitable for our current editorial.
The Handstand Press accepts written work of all kinds, academic, theoretical, opinion pieces, poetry, or whatever you can think of. While we want opinion, and want to facilitate room for differing opinions, make sure to keep a respectful tone towards the community at all times. All written submissions are chosen with our readers in mind. Please make sure the piece offers insight and value to our readers. Articles that read like ads will not be considered for publication.

Submission Form

Type of Content *

Articles and Interviews

We are looking for interesting, creative and unique perspectives onto the vast world of handbalancing. Submitted text can be academic, theoretical and super nerdy, or whimsical and anecdotal. If you have a full article already written, we can't wait to read it. If you have an idea, send us a first expose of what you want to write about.

For interviews, do you know someone we should really, really talk to? Or do you yourself have experiences and insights to share, but prefer not to write? Fill out the submission form below with “Articles and Interviews” selected. In the comment field, please give as much detail about your proposed interview topic as possible, and why the proposed person has a unique story to tell.

How to Submit Written Work and Interviews
If you would like to submit a pitch for an article, please give us as much detail as possible about what you would like to write about. We cannot guarantee all submissions to be selected for print, so before you begin writing the full article, please send us an expose of your article first. If possible, also send us some writing samples of previous written work. If the article idea is a good fit for the Handstand Press, we’ll get in touch to discuss further. If you are submitting an already written piece for consideration, please attach a document with the text (google drive, word or other) to the email. In the email body, please write a short summary of the article, including its title and total word count.
  • Please also attach any photography or illustration you would like to go with the article in our magazine (please reference the photography and/or Art & Illustration submission guidelines before submitting)
  • If you have no visuals for the text yet, please write us a few lines about what you envision would complement your text well, we’ll see if we can match it with any of our photography or art on file
Artists Rates
The Handstand Press is a young, independent publication, and our rates reflect that. As we grow, we strive to pay rates to all collaborators involved, which will be done on a sliding scale per issue. Every contributor will receive a printed version of the Handstand Press issue their work appears in.

Submission Form

Type of Content *

Photography

We’ve got an ongoing call for submissions for handbalance photography of all kinds. Are you a handbalancer that has worked with interesting photographers, or are you a photographer that has worked with interesting handbalancers? We want to hear from you! We are especially interested in photography that showcases the unusual, the gritty, the artistic, the absurd and the human side of handbalancing. Give us colours, seasons, shapes and backdrops - give us handstands, through your eyes.

If you have a handbalance related photography series or project you’d like to share in its entirety, please select the "Articles and Interviews" button instead in the Submission Form.

How to Submit Photography
To submit photography for consideration, please attach regular .jpg pictures to the submission e-mail. In the email body, please give us information about both the photographer(s) as well as the model(s) shown. If you have specific ideas about how to place the photography within the pages of the Handstand Press, or feel like it would complement a certain article or interview theme well, please give as much detail as you can. We can’t promise anything, but in collaboration with our designers we’ll try to come as close to your vision as possible. If your work is selected for print, we will ask you to provide the high resolution images via upload to Google Drive.
  • Only submit pictures to which you own the rights, either as the photographer or photographed
  • Please name each file with the photographers AND the handbalancers names so we can credit them
  • Only submit pictures of which you have high resolution files (a minimum of 300dpi, preferably in .tiff or .raw format
Artists Rates
The Handstand Press is a young, independent publication, and our rates reflect that. As we grow, we strive to pay rates to all collaborators involved, which will be done on a sliding scale per issue. Every contributor will receive a printed version of the Handstand Press issue their work appears in.

Submission Form

Type of Content *

Art and Illustration

Has your passion for handstands spilled over into your other creative outlets? Do you find yourself scribbling or sketching bodies upside-down? Or are you an artist fascinated by the capabilities of handbalancers bodies? Wherever you draw your inspiration from, if you have some handstand related art work up your sleeve, share it with us so we can share it with the handstand world!

We welcome any medium of art that can fit into a print magazine. It can be ink, watercolour or mixed media, screen printing, pencil or digital art and graphic design. We even welcome 3D art such as photography of sculptures, mosaics and much more.

How to Submit Art and Illustrations
To submit illustrations or art for consideration, please attach regular .jpg images to the submission e-mail. In the email body, please give us information about both the artists as well as the model(s) shown. If you have specific ideas about how to place the illustrations within the pages of the Handstand Press, or feel like it would complement a certain article or interview theme well, please give as much detail as you can. We can’t promise anything, but in collaboration with our designers we’ll try to come as close to your vision as possible. If your work is selected for print, we will ask you to provide the high resolution images via upload to Google Drive.
  • Only submit illustrations to which you own the rights, either as the artist or the model shown
  • Please name each file with the artists name AND the reference/handbalancer (if applicable) names so we can credit them
  • Only submit illustrations/art of which you have high resolution files (a minimum of 300dpi, preferably in .tiff or .raw format
Artists rates
The Handstand Press is a young, independent publication, and our rates reflect that. As we grow, we strive to pay rates to all collaborators involved, which will be done on a sliding scale per issue. Every contributor will receive a printed version of the Handstand Press issue their work appears in.

Submission Form

Type of Content *
A handstand magazine.