Themed Issue Submissions
The Arkansas International announces Issue 14: Places. We’re interested in stories, poems, and essays about the places we inhabit, physical and not. Places define and defy us. They mark the physical boundaries of our realities. They shape us. Places are home. But when we’re misplaced, we’re lost. When we’re displaced, we yearn to be where we’re not. Place is a noun and a verb. It derives from the Latin “to spread.” We’re interested in places as actions. Who or what do we place? How? Where or what do we spread?
We seek pieces in which places are essential to the characters, mood, language, and narrative of the work. In Places, we want to interrogate the ways that places grow and change and force us to confront the limits of our environments. Send us work that casts us out of our places into the wider world, work that roots us, work that helps us find what was lost. We’ll consider previously unpublished fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation between August 20 and November 20.
Prose submissions should be no more than 8,000 words, poem packets no more than five poems, and we ask that excerpts from longer works be self-contained. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, provided we are notified in the event that a piece is accepted elsewhere. Please do not submit more than a single story, essay, or poem packet until you have heard back from us about your previous submission.
If you are submitting multiple pieces, please put them together in one submission. Since the number we can receive every month is capped, subsequent submissions will have to be returned unread.
Submissions of translated works must include a copy of the original text. If there are extenuating circumstances that prevent you from including a copy of the original text at the time of your submission, please note that in the cover letter.
Before submitting translations of works that are not in the public domain, translators should identify the rights holder and obtain a statement that the rights to publish an English translation are available.
The Arkansas International cannot consider work from anyone currently or recently affiliated with the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, which includes those who have studied or worked there within the past 4 years.
While we are no longer open to free submissions, we are happy to offer waivers to those identifying as BIPOC or in need of financial assistance. For more information on how to apply, please email editor@arkint.org.
Contributors will be paid $20 a printed page (capped at $250) and receive two complementary copies of the journal.
We accept electronic submissions only, via Submittable here:
