Conjunctions
There are presently no open calls for submissions.
Our submission window for our spring 2024 print issue, Conjunctions:82 is open from October 25 through November 5, 2023.
We accept submissions by postal mail year-round. Please visit our submissions page for our editorial address and further instructions.
SUBMISSION CALL
Conjunctions:82, Works & Days
Hunters and gatherers. Miners and merchants. From butchers to bakers to candlestick makers, some four hundred generations have engaged in the practice of making ends meet. Long after Hesiod wrote his famous poem—whose nearly three-thousand-year-old title we’ve appropriated as it worked so well—a life’s labor has moved beyond idyllic if arduous farming of the fields. Our work has evolved into myriad possible endeavors, from sunrise to sunset to sunrise again.
Now we are chefs and morticians, file clerks and barge mates, coders and locksmiths, midwives and teachers. We are migrant laborers in drought-dry fields, and desk-job burnouts at five-thirty bars. We’re sex workers and bureaucrats, fixers and hitmen, failsons and titans of industry, bricklayers, biochemists, firefighters and the doctors who tend to their injuries. We are side hustlers and slackers, solopreneurs and temps, night watchmen and burglars. Working stiffs, nine-to-fivers, part-timers, self-employed. From specialists to jacks-of-all-trades, we do what we can. We’re on the dole and off the books. We have jobless friends who’d love to find work and gainfully employed ones who want to quit. We labor in offices or remotely, we do work that’s not even deemed work, work for which we’re neither paid nor valued. And always there’s the Big Boss Man who, as the song says, ain’t so big, just tall that’s all.
Work is an experience that some love, some loathe. For many, it’s our very identity—“What do you do?” has often meant “Who are you?” Work’s an action, a concept, a metaphor; labor has social and economic overtones; a job is something specific one does. In this special issue of Conjunctions:82, Works & Days, some of our most innovative writers—a difficult vocation itself—will explore the vast world of work, jobs, labor in its many visible and invisible guises.
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 We do not publish academic essays or book reviews.
- All submissions must be in English and previously unpublished.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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