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Submission Guidelines - Tu Books

At TU BOOKS, an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS, our focus is on well-told, exciting, adventurous fantasy, science fiction, and mystery novels starring people of color. We also selectively publish realism that explores the contemporary and historical experiences of people of color. We look for fantasy set in worlds inspired by non-Western folklore or culture, contemporary mysteries and fantasy set all over the world starring POC, and science fiction that centers the possibilities for people of color in the future. We welcome intersectional narratives that feature LGBTQIA and disabled POC as heroes in their own stories.

Because we are a small publisher working through an extensive manuscript backlog, Lee & Low Books and Tu Books are both currently closed to unsolicited manuscript submissions until further notice. We still accept agented submissions and projects from writers’ conferences that Lee & Low editors have attended. In addition, if you have never been published before, we encourage you to enter your work in our annual New Voices and New Visions award contests, which open every summer. For more details, click here.

Resources for Writers:

For examples of the kinds of novels we're looking for, check out this list of multicultural science fiction and fantasy  novels. Note that there is a gamut of historical, contemporary, futuristic, alternate-world, and other kinds of speculative fiction.

For writers who are writing from a perspective not their own, see Nisi Shawl's excellent article on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America site about Transracial Writing for the Sincere.

For guidance on word counts and other requirements for middle grade and young adult novels, check out Harold Underdown's The Purple Crayon and SCBWI.org, which should lead you to more information. Also keep an eye on the LEE & LOW blog and Tu Publisher Stacy Whitman's blog, and the Web sites and blogs we link to, because these experts have great advice for writers.

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