Our submission window for our fall 2024 print issue, Conjunctions:83, Revenants, The Ghost Issue (coedited by Joyce Carol Oates and Bradford Morrow) will be open from May 13 – June 1, 2024.

We accept submissions by postal mail year-round. Please visit our submissions page for our editorial address and further instructions.

SUBMISSION CALL

Ghosts, wraiths, specters. Poltergeists, phantoms, shades. They manifest in many shapes and dispositions in our lives and the literatures of all cultures. From the Egyptian to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, from the Homeric epics to Shakespeare’s King Hamlet, from the Victorian ghosts of Sheridan Le Fanu, Violet Hunt, and M. R. James to Amos Tutuola’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, from the ethereal creatures of Poe to the startlingly “realistic” ghosts of Henry James and Edith Wharton, phantasmagoric beings mingle with the living. Nature itself may be “haunted”—an unknowable presence hostile to human intrusion, as in Algernon Blackwood’s classic “The Willows.” Sometimes a ghostly haunting is metaphoric; often it is literal. The Japanese jorōgumo ghost appears as a beautiful maiden but is a lethal spider monster. Buddhism’s hungry ghosts have enormous stomachs and tiny mouths that represent how worldly desires blocked their path to nirvana.

Being a ghost is being stuck in a limbo between vitality and finality. Ghosts are the unliving-living, the not-quite-dead deceased. Stubborn survivors, they are sometimes caught by surprise, traumatized by violence in the midstream of their lives with much left undone, unsaid, or vengeance to wreak upon the living. Other times they cling to their lives with such intensity that their spirits don’t believe they’ve been torn from a familiar earthly place: a childhood house, a forest glade, a hospital. But however the living are unable to “rest in peace,” revenants are left to wander in search of what was lost when they passed away—usually their very selves.

In Revenants, Joyce Carol Oates and Bradford Morrow will bring together a wide array of writers to explore this venerable theme, including Margaret Atwood, Isabel Allende, Carmen Maria Machado, Paul Tremblay, Brandon Hobson, Stephen Graham Jones, and the editors themselves.

What We Publish

• Conjunctions publishes short- and long-form fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid texts. We do not publish academic essays or book reviews.
• All submissions must be in English and previously unpublished. We will consider works in translation for which the translator has secured the rights.
• Although we have no official restrictions regarding word count, most of the manuscripts we select for publication are under 8,000 words long. For poetry submissions, we suggest sending half a dozen poems, depending on length.

Submission Guidelines

• Along with your manuscript, please include a brief cover letter. Be sure to list your name, the title of your submission, and your email address.
• Former contributor to Conjunctions, in print or online? Please note this in your cover letter.
• All submissions are also considered for publication in the weekly online magazine, which is not subject to thematic restrictions.
• We cannot accept revisions after a manuscript has been submitted. If a manuscript is accepted, there will be an opportunity to make edits then.
• While we strongly prefer to receive exclusive submissions, simultaneous submissions are permitted. If a simultaneous submission is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw it from Submittable.
• Our small editorial staff reads every manuscript carefully; we do our best to respond to your submissions in a timely manner.
• If a manuscript is accepted for publication online or in print, our editors will contact the author via email and Submittable.
• Writers published in print issues of Conjunctions receive a small honorarium from our publisher, Bard College.

Accessing Conjunctions

Are you familiar with our work? Sign up for our newsletter to read new writing in our online magazine every week, subscribe to our print biannual, or order a back issue. 

Conjunctions charges a $3 submission fee to help us cover administration expenses. If this fee is a hardship, please email conjunctions@bard.edu and we will waive the cost. If a disability prevents you from using Submittable, please call 845-758-7054 or email conjunctions@bard.edu. 

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