Privacy Notice

Last updated: 19 June 2026

This notice explains how larvae handles your personal information when you submit work, pay the submission fee, or sign up to our newsletter.

Who we are

larvae is a literary and photographic magazine operated by Rachel Hulme, trading as Larvae. The data controller responsible for the personal information described in this notice is Sam Frings, registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO registration ZA442187).

You can contact us about your information at hello@larvae.ink.

What information we collect

Depending on how you interact with larvae, we may collect:

Your name and email address — when you create an account and submit work.
Your submission — the written or photographic work you send us, your cover note, genre, word count, and any details you include.
Payment information — when you pay the £3 submission fee. Payments are processed by Stripe; we do not store your full card details. Stripe handles your card information securely as a payment processor.
Newsletter sign-up — your email address, if you choose to subscribe to our newsletter (this is separate and optional).

How we use your information, and our lawful basis

To consider and manage your submission — including reviewing your work and contacting you about its outcome. Lawful basis: performance of a contract with you (your submission and our consideration of it).
To take payment of the submission fee. Lawful basis: performance of a contract.
To send you the digital issue that your submission fee includes. Lawful basis: performance of a contract.
To send you our newsletter, only if you have signed up. Lawful basis: consent (which you can withdraw at any time).
To meet our legal obligations — for example, keeping financial records for tax purposes. Lawful basis: legal obligation.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Editing services

If, in future, you purchase a paid editing service from larvae, we will retain the information related to that service for as long as you are a client of that service, and as needed to provide it. (This is described here for completeness; details may be expanded when the service is offered.)

Who we share your information with

We use a small number of trusted service providers to run larvae:

Stripe — to process payments securely.
Google / Firebase — to host the submission platform and store submission data.
Ghost — to run our website and, if you subscribe, our newsletter.

These providers process your information on our behalf and are bound to keep it secure. We do not share your information with anyone else, except where required by law.

Some of these providers may process data outside the UK; where they do, appropriate safeguards apply.

How long we keep your information

Submission content (your work and cover note for an issue) is kept while the issue is being considered and produced, and is cleared after the issue is published.
Work that is selected and published is retained as part of that published issue.
Payment and financial records are kept for as long as required by law (generally around 6 years for tax purposes), even after submission content is deleted.
Newsletter sign-ups are kept until you unsubscribe.
Account details are kept while your account is active.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:

access the personal information we hold about you;
ask us to correct information that is wrong;
ask us to delete your information (where we are not legally required to keep it);
object to or restrict how we use your information;
withdraw consent to the newsletter at any time (every newsletter also has an unsubscribe link);
request a copy of information you have given us.

To exercise any of these, email hello@larvae.ink.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator, at ico.org.uk if you are unhappy with how we have handled your information.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice from time to time. The current version is always the one published on this page.

Contact

Questions about your information, or to exercise your rights: hello@larvae.ink