Now Reading for Issue 1.0 (and online features)
We’re currently establishing our roots and reading for our first issue, which will be published in e-book format, but we’re also looking for stellar work to publish as online features regularly between issues. We’d like to publish good work as we receive it and publish a full issue annually. We will consider your work for both the online features section and the annual issue, unless you note that you’d only like to be considered for one or the other.
What We Want
Nonfiction and poetry only–we’re not looking for straight-up fiction (though if you use the term “nonfiction” loosely, more power to you), genre work, fan fiction, or screen plays. There’s nothing wrong with any of these genres, but we’re most interested in providing a space for lived experiences, unheard voices, and work that has more attention to form, imagery, sounds, etc. Read our full guidelines here.
How to Submit
Check out our full set of guidelines and upload submissions to our submissions manager, Submittable. Please include a cover letter and let us know how your work qualifies as a crossing.
Some writers we like (besides Cormac McCarthy):
Mark Danielewski, Maggie Nelson, Jennifer Egan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Nicole Walker, Jo Ann Beard, Mary Swan, Marjane Satrapi…just to name a few.
Awesome reading that’s already out there:
“The Pain Scale,” Eula Biss
“The Fourth State of Matter,” Jo Ann Beard
“Why to Run Racks,” Lisa Fay Coutley
“Evidence, in Track Changes,” Jennifer Lunden
“Self Erasure,” Brooke Juliet Wonders
“Hysteria,” Liz Breazeale
“Object Permanence,” Alison C. Rollins
Rights, Editing, and All the Other Fun Stuff
If we accept your work, you grant us First Serial Rights, along with nonexclusive Electronic Archival Rights, to showcase your work indefinitely on our site. After publication, all rights will revert back to you–we just ask that if you do publish elsewhere, please credit us as the first publisher. Learn more about how publishing rights work here.
We also reserve the right to make light edits to manuscripts for grammar, clarity, or proofreading without notification. Of course, we’ll notify you should your manuscript need more substantial edits and send you a proof to review.
Last but not least, we can’t pay writers at this time–our aim is to get work out there and publicize it, and, if we do ever have means to pay writers, we certainly will (but that might be awhile yet–we’re unpaid as well).
Drop us a line at thecrossinglitmag@gmail.com if you need to get in contact–feel free to query us if you haven’t heard back on your submission in three months’ time.
The Crossing 