wanted: your great literature!
We are open--send us great work!
All accepted authors are paid, and all non-contest submissions will be considered for our $200 Staff Choice Award: an accepted submission chosen by our staff as best embodying two things we love and respect about writing: stylistic ambition and social engagement. One author each issue will receive this award, announced with the issue's release (usually in May).
As always: we hope to read your very best, we're excited to read it, and we want more, we hope for more, we quietly plead for/demand more. Simply: we love great literature, especially literature that is urgent and/or strange, and we love all voices, be they new, emerging, or established - certainly those from underrepresented groups. We always put samples from past issues on our homepage if you'd like to get a sense of our sensibilities.
Note: Submissions are being read for our spring 2026 issue. They must be previously unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are totally fine (but please withdraw accepted pieces immediately; the lack of this practice has increased far too much for us lately).
Note 2.0: We generally charge a two dollar fee so that we can do something we hope all agree is a good thing: pay all our authors, at least $40 per writer; usually we have free submissions in early Dec and May ... and during most of June and July, we're happy to provide free submissions to any authors who self-identify as being from underrepresented or minoritized communities or simply can't afford the $2 fee. Just email our editor at sbernard (at) laverne (dot) edu for more information.
-->Excepting the student contest, current students and employees of the University of La Verne are not eligible to submit. Sorry!
Note 3.0: We are not Prism International, a fantastic journal in Canada.
Happy submitting, and feel free to visit/like our Facebook page!
We’re looking for works that thoughtfully combine the narrative depth of storytelling with the visual impact of graphic art, and we're especially excited about socially engaged pieces that blend traditional literary elements with more experimental or genre-based approaches.
Currently, we are only considering standalone, complete submissions. We plan to publish one per issue.
1-8 panels per page, up to 10 pages, black and white only.
We crush on poetry of so many variations - poetry that is witty and poetry that is moving, poetry engaged in the world and poetry that couldn't care less; poetry from ironic authors and from those poets who paint strange, beautiful, and exquisite shadow-boxes. Stretch yourself - stretch us. (Paisley Rekdal, Marsha De la O, and C.D. Wright are three among the many thousands of poets we adore. As we've also lately noticed a tendency toward prosey-poetry, we'd love to see more poetry that leans heavily into sound, form, and rhythm.)
Since we're shifting to fees - again, all authors will be paid - we suggest you group your poems in a single submission, up to four at a time. (If any get accepted elsewhere, just shoot us an email as soon as you can.)
We've added this category to better accommodate a type of submission we've seen an increase of lately--maybe it's prose poetry, maybe it's flash fiction, maybe it's hybrid, maybe it's non-fiction. Usually tone and language and rhythm are elevated, and maybe there's a touch of narrative ... or not, your call!
Feel free to include 3 pieces in a submission, and each can be up to 1200 words or so. (Each single piece will be considered for publication.)
We love non-fiction and would love to see more! We're keen on recent work by, among many others, Esmé Wang, Maggie Nelson, and Claudia Rankine, and of course forebears such as Joan Didion, Audre Lorde, and Anne Carson.
Please - one submission at a time. We rarely take pieces over 5000 words but hey, we know that sometimes it just takes more words, so if that's the case for you, please give us a shot. We look forward to reading your work!
We love fiction of many stripes - to give you a sense of what gets our hearts especially a-thumping, we're very much moved by the urgency of Edward Jones and the strangeness of Carmen Machado, by the passion of Justin Torres and the ruminations of Lucia Berlin.
Please - one submission at a time. We rarely take pieces over 5000 words . . . but hey, if that's your jam, and you know the story is better for its length, please give us a shot.
Please select this option to purchase our current or any past issue. We'll assume you want the current issue unless you designate another (issues 14 & 15 are sold out, just so you know).
We're currently able to send to the United States, Mexico, and Canada--please select the correct country in the dropdown box. (Unfortunately, other international shipping rates are too costly.)
Current issue 25 features amazing work from extremely talented authors, including poetry by Kevin Griffin, Casey Knott, Karan Kapoor, and Laura Ruby (winner of our inaugural Staff Choice Award); prose by Jami Kimbrell, Julian Ramirez, Treena Thibodeau, Grace Reed Richardson, and Jacqueline Vogtman; interviews with several contributors; and featured interviews with Leah Huizar and Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi.
Thanks!