Mission | Goals | Contact | Staff | Get Involved | Sponsor | Donate | Legal | F.A.Q.

Supraterranean.com is a new kind of online magazine where writers, filmmakers, photographers and artists can self-publish their creative work, including fiction, nonfiction, essays, poetry, video, audio, photography and art. The basic idea is to post all submissions without applying a selection process, and then let the audience respond, recommend, and comment. Items will be featured in the sidebar based on number of views, comments, recommendations and emails.

The site was created by Nick Meador in summer 2008, as an independent study project to finish a Masters of Journalism program at Michigan State University. This is an experimental project, and its success will require the participation of both contributors and the community. For more information, please read the mission statement and goals, as well as the Submissions page.

Watch this intro video by David Meador!

Mission Statement

Our mission is to provide a place for you to publish your creative work without having to surpass any external barriers such as editorial selection or membership fees. The website combines certain aspects of a traditional literary journal, the design of a print magazine, and a load of interactive web features. Our goal is to promote the spirit of creativity in a professional setting, taking advantage of the wide berth of material and interconnectivity provided by the Internet. Supraterranean is an attempt to stray from various publishing models (both printed and online), and its future will be shaped by the ideas and actions of contributors and the audience. The website will never exist in a solely fixed state, and at some point we hope to pursue other types of collaborative publishing, including print anthologies, mobile media, and more.

Goals

In order from modest to…unconventional:

• To explore the artistic potential allowed by the Internet and associated technologies.
• To provide a “writers circle” type environment where aspiring and established artists of many disciplines can get constructive feedback on their work.
• To break down categorical barriers between journalism, literature, poetry, music, film, and art.
• To emphasize the importance of personal experience and expression in all of these media.
• To showcase the artistic and cultural advancements taking place all over — from Michigan to California, from Germany to Australia — and transfer online interaction into real world networking.
• To connect creative minds around the world who were meant to live, work, and play together, but who have been prevented by geography, language, and other barriers.
• To encourage the excessive use of material in the public domain or partially protected under Creative Commons license.
• To promote fair use of copyrighted material to the extent that is legally allowed.
• To transform, remix, and recreate culture in a way that suits the expressive needs and desires of modern society.
• To evade the pretentious nature of existing literary journals.
• To lessen the selective editor role in publishing (for journalism, literature, etc), and return control to those who create and consume culture.
• To undermine the power of major content corporations who distribute most of the media to which people are exposed.
• To fight the disease of anti-intellectualism rampant in the U.S. and around the world.

Contact

Report a problem with the site or ask a general question: admin[at]supraterranean.com
Submit your creative work: submit[at]supraterranean.com
Questions about blogs, or inquiries about starting your own blog: blogs[at]supraterranean.com

Staff

Nick Meador (nick[at]supraterranean.com) — Nick created Surpaterranean and currently fills a variety of roles including publisher, moderator, contributing writer and blogger. So far he has also handled art direction, web development, copy editing and digital marketing.

Kaliptus (kaliptus[at]supraterranean.com) — Kaliptus is curating the Tryptophanatic Netvision video podcast, and he’ll be the primary contributor to the upcoming Supraterranean audio podcast. He also runs the Prana Genius blog.

Tyler White (tyler[at]supraterranean.com) — Tyler will be helping with a variety of administrative duties on the site. (More info coming soon…)

Get Involved

In addition to seeking new contributors and submissions, we’re also looking to add blogs to Supraterranean. If you’d like to run a blog here on the site, please contact Nick Meador at nick[at]supraterranean.com. Make sure to include your idea for blog name and focus, a brief bio (your resume would help as well), and writing samples (or a sample blog post, if your blog would feature mostly visual content like photos or videos).

Sponsor

Supraterranean is dedicated to maintaining a clean presentation that is free of unnecessary intrusions or distractions. However, we do have operational costs to cover. If you’d like to help sponsor the site, please click here for more information.

Donate

Please support Supraterranean! Whether you’re a contributor or an audience member, we appreciate your donations. We don’t have any external source of funding. Our goal is to operate like a non- or limited-profit organization, and we intend to develop voluntary subscription options in the near future. For now we simply have open donations. To help this experiment in interactive publishing, please use the secure PayPal button below.

Legal

Unless otherwise noted, all content on Supraterranean.com and our blogs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. In plain language, this means that you are free to use and share the content, as long as you:

1. Provide adequate attribution (the author’s name and a link to the URL on our site where the content was originally posted).
2. Do not sell the content or duplicate it in a commercial nature.
3. Share under the same CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license if you remix, add to, or modify the work in any way.

These guidelines may change for specific articles or pages, and deviations from the norm will be clearly stated. All rights are reserved on the site itself, the name “Supraterranean.com,” the slogan “Freedom Is Expression,” and the starry banner design. However, you are free to use and share the small button below, as long as you link back to our home page.

To better understand why we use and support Creative Commons, please view this short video (length: 6:37):

Also, the email subscription button in our sidebar was created by derrikkwa on Flickr (published under a Creative Commons license).

And the spiral background on the site is a modified version of a free-use image by ilco on sxc.hu.

Frequently Asked Questions

F.A.Q. for Authors:

Q: Can anyone submit a creative work? A: Yes! The goal is to provide an open-access community for writers and artists to share their work with the public. Therefore, anyone from anywhere can submit. The only thing that can disqualify a submission is if it’s an advertisement or plagiarism.

Q: Where should I send my submissions? A: Please send all submissions to the following address: submit[at]supraterranean.com (fill in the appropriate @ — we’re trying to avoid spam).

Q: How many items can I send in at once? A: In general, keep it betweeen 1-3 items per category (i.e. fiction or poetry). For more details, please read the submission guidelines.

Q: Is it possible to post my work under a different license? A: We’d like to use a Creative Commons license for all work published on the site. If the “BY-NC-SA” license doesn’t fit your needs, you can choose: yes/no modifications, yes/no commercial use, yes/no share alike. For more information, see the Creative Commons website.

Q: Will you edit or alter my submissions? A: We won’t edit for content or style. We might edit for grammar and punctuation, unless it’s not appropriate or you explicitly request that we do not. For example, if you submit an abstract poem that requires absolutely no editing, we’ll leave it alone. We’ll do our best to present your creative work in a way that satisfies your desires.

Q: Do I have to allow comments on my work? A: We would prefer to allow comments on all work, but it is possible to turn them off for specific posts. Unless the comment thread gets out of control, we’d like to leave your post open to audience replies.

Q: Can I ask that my work not be linked on social bookmarking or social networking sites? A: Nope. We used to offer this feature, but the Share button is now incorporated into the website template and cannot be altered.

Q: Can I submit under a pseudonym or pen name? A: We would probably allow this, but it’s a dangerous move. Supraterranean is about personal expression, so we want to encourage that you use your real name. However, we know that true honesty can sometimes be dangerous, and that a pseudonym might help tell a more complete story. We also know that many employers are sensitive about what their staff members do on the Internet, and we would never want to endanger your job.

F.A.Q. for Readers:

Q: Can I sign up to receive notifications for when you post new material? A: Yes! On our Connect page, you can subscribe to receive email notifications every time we post new material. On that page you’ll also find links to our Twitter account and Facebook fan page. And we have multiple RSS feeds for your convenience.

Q: I love Supraterranean.com so much. How can I support the site other than contributing material? A: Tell all your friends and family about us, and put a link to our home page on your web site, blog, Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace. We also welcome PayPal donations to help cover our operation costs. Please click the secure button below to be redirected to the donation page.