No Tears is a project revolving around gothic subculture and the beauty in darkness. The prompt is “What makes you wanna dance?”

Please note that formatting is done at the discretion of our creative team.

You may include your preferences for how work should appear, but note that this may not reflect the final product.

What You Get

To feature in a small, Bristol-based zine project around gothic subculture, shown in bookshops and at gothic art fayres.

This is a new project, and so far there are 20 made of each copy, so small issue with limited circulation with an audience of about 1000 online followers.

All contributors will be credited for their work, with the opportunity to have an artist bio included alongside name, website, and social media tags.

All contirbutors will retain copyright over their submitted work, with rights to use your specific work afforded to us for the use of this zine issue only (if accepted).

Contributors will have the opportunity to request a free copy of the final product.

Photography or Illustration

• Send each piece of work as a JPEG. We will not accept PNGs, RAWs, SVGs, images in a PDF, or any other file type.
• Please ensure that the pieces of work you send align with the prompt for this issue.
• For photography, we allow diptychs and triptychs, but please specify which images are intended to be in sequence.
• For illustration, if you intend to send a comic strip-style piece of work, please include all slides you wish to submit in the same JPEG.
• We will not be accepting any work graphic in nature, depicting violence or suffering, assault or harassment, nudity, vulgar language, or works with explicit bigotry or undertones thereof.

Poetry or Long Prose

• Send type each piece of work with the title clearly in capitals.
• Your work should not already be published elsewhere, and should be relevant to the publication’s themes of gothic romance and horror.
• For poetry, we are expecting submissions to fit across either an A5 page or a double-page spread in size 12 font, so your poem should be between 12 and 48 lines.
• For long form prose, your passage should fit across at most one A5 double-page spread in size 12 font. If you are sending a selected passage from a much larger piece of work, please send either a synopsis or blurb for your work as you see fit, as well as your author bio.
• We will not be accepting any work depicting assault or harassment, smut or explicit sexual content, overuse of vulgar language, or works with explicit bigotry or undertones thereof.

Gothic Events or Gothic Locales

• Send a poster for an upcoming event, or a photo taken in the summertime at your locale, as a JPEG. We will not accept other file types.
• Send a description of the event or locale (up to 250 words), as well as a link/qr code to your website.

Music Artists

• Send a poster for an upcoming event, the cover for an upcoming release, photo of you/your band, or your artist logo, as a JPEG. We will not accept other file types.
• Send a brief description of the upcoming release and/or yourself as an artist (up to 250 words).
• (Optional) Include up to 4 lines of lyrics from a track on the upcoming release.
• We will not be accepting any work graphic in nature, depicting violence or suffering, assault or harassment, overuse of vulgar language, or works with explicit bigotry or undertones thereof.

Thank you. And we look forward to seeing your work :)

Note About The Creator

Kess Art was set up by Val Kesterton, who is a photographer, writer, and illustrator, and whose work centres on the gothic.

Eternally enraptured with the macabre energy of gothic literature and the dark romance of eighties gothic rock, Val's defining project homes in on the dramatised core of this subculture’s essence.

This artistic project has been in the works since 2024, with collaborative zine copies emerging for sale in the Spring of 2026.