Join the Newspaper!
Hooplah! is our Free Arts Newspaper, focused on creatives in and around the Portland area. We are currently accepting submissions for Comics, Fiction, Poetry, and Photography for inclusion in our first issue. If you live in the Portland area, and you want to be a part this awesome group project, just follow the steps below and submit today!
And make sure to HURRY, as spots are limited!!!
How to Submit to Hooplah!
Read through the rest of this page, paying special attention to Content Guidelines and Newspaper Specs.
Fill Out the form at the bottom of this page, and link to existing work / examples of your artwork.
Submission Responses may take up to two weeks. If you are invited into the project, you will be given an allotment of space (dimensions for comics, visual art, and photography, and a word count for poetry and fiction), and then provided with delivery guidelines, final deadlines, and access to our discord.
The Hooplah! Mission
Community : Portland has some of the most talented, innovative, and daring comic creators working today, and a thriving community of connected and supportive artists. This paper is designed to act as a snapshot of this current moment, and also to help new and developing artists engage with the existing scene, growing our community of creatives.
Exhibition : In the current era, many Portland artists struggle with finding avenues to share their work. A lot of the galleries have closed, and with so many local publications going under in the last few years, there are very few publication opportunities for new art. Our paper will gather between 24 and 40 artists, providing showcase opportunities for a diverse group of creatives working in various mediums.
Distribution : Great art should be accessible! The Hooplah! Newspaper will be a free publication, and we will be printing a minimum of 500 copies. Additionally, the entirety of the paper, plus extra pieces, will be available as a downloadable PDF from this website, keeping the work accessible to anyone and everyone who wants to see it.
Contributing artists maintain ownership of all submitted and accepted pieces. If your piece(s) are accepted for Hooplah!, 4ARTSAKE has the right to publish and distribute the accepted work, and the ability to use contributed pieces to market the Newspaper, but we claim no ownership of anyone else’s art.
Themes For Issue #1
Each issue of the Newspaper will have a few Loose Themes and prompts that artists can use as a jumping off point, but as a rule the paper will not reject pieces for not perfectly lining up with an issue’s themes. In fact, the themes of a given issue will never be explicitly stated in the Newspaper, but will only serve as inspiration for our contributors.
However you as the artist interpret and interact (or don’t interact) with the themes is entirely up to you!
The theme prompts for the first issue are:
Aliens (and space in general)
Television (TV as an art medium, behind the scenes, the physical machine, shows you like, whatever)
The Beats (writers and poets like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Ruth Weiss, Richard Brautigan, Diane DiPrima, Gary Snyder, et cetera)
Hopefully there’s a lot there to inspire you! We’re stoked to see how you will take these prompts (or not) and build something new and weird and uniquely YOU!
Newspaper Specs
Dimensions : All accepted contributing artists will be awarded an allotment of space, based on availability, the type of work the artist plans to submit, and the needs of the proposal. This could be a Half Page (274mm x 185mm, or roughly 10 and 3/4” x 7 and 1/4”), a Quarter Page (274mm x 90mm, or roughly 10 and 3/4” x 3 and 1/2”), or a Word Count for poetry and fiction.
Colors : All the pages of the Newspaper are full CMYK color. You do not have to submit colored work, but you are able!
Content Guidelines
Our goal for the paper is that it will be accessible to everyone, but our target demographic is 13+, and we will communicate that on the front cover of the paper.
We have very few guidelines on subject or thematic elements, but there are a few hard rules.
No Hate Speech. We do not accept work that promotes hate of any kind.
No Excessive Cursing. Some colorful language is allowed, but please keep it to a minimum. Better yet, self-censor with comic cussing (#@$%!), or explore alternative text whenever possible.
No Graphic Sexual or Obscene Acts. The human body is beautiful, and sex is a part of life, so to some degree we will allow it in the magazine, but there is a limit as to what we can publish. For visual art, tasteful nudity, or comical nudity, may be accepted, as well as some bodily-function gags, within reason. If something would be too grotesque for 90’s era Liquid Television or Ren & Stimpy, it probably won’t fly with us, but art goes in brave directions, so we will judge on a case by case basis. Sexual themes in poetry and fiction are allowed, but but if things get to explicit we may ask you to edit your piece, or we may simply have to pass on publishing the work.
No Extreme Violence. This is the most difficult rule to qualify, as we do allow stories with violence and physical conflict. Cartoonish violence, even over-the-top examples like One Punch Man, are allowed, as are dramatic portrayals of conflict like you might see in a western or martial arts film. We also accept body horror and / or pulpy violence like you might see in Tales From the Crypt or Junji Ito stories. With violence, it’s mostly about tone. We do not allow depictions of extreme shock-value violence like you might see in the comic Red Room, or extreme gore comics like Panorama of Hell, and works portraying sexual violence will not be accepted under any circumstances. For fiction and poetry, most things short of splatter-punk would likely be eligible for publication.
Nothing Explicitly Political. As a nonprofit, there are guidelines for what we can do in the political space while maintaining our nonprofit status. As such, we do not publish explicitly political works.
No Inclusion of Real People Without Their Consent. Some folks like to make art about their real life, or fictionalized stories of public figures. While we enjoy these kinds of comics and writing, they come with potential liability. If you include depictions of real people in your submissions, you will need to provide signed consent forms from the individuals depicted in order to have your comic or story included in our Newspaper.
If you have a piece of work that you want to contribute, but you’re unsure about if it fits our guidelines, just submit it anyway and we’ll have a conversation! Our focus as a nonprofit is to help as many artists as possible to finish and distribute their original work, and we are always happy to take a look at something you’ve made.