Fugue Literary Journal

23/08/2022

Send us work that takes formal risks and lets the language lead—especially work with a clear voice, genre-bending sensibilities, an off-kilter narrative, and attention to the twists and turns of intellection.

We welcome, center, and encourage submissions from Black, Indigenous, q***r and trans folks, writers of color, and disabled writers, and we hope to include both established and new voices in our pages.

Submissions are open through November 1st.

26/06/2022

Congratulations to Fugue’s 2022 Writing Contest Poetry Winner ! Read “Boatsong / Viljandi Paadimees” in our Spring 2023 Issue! 🥳

Amanda Maret Scharf (she/her) is a q***r poet from Los Angeles. Her writing has been supported by Lambda LitFest, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Tin House, and The Home School. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Meridian, Willow Springs, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Ohio State University where she serves as poetry editor for The Journal.

And many thanks to judge !

25/06/2022

Congratulations to Fugue’s 2022 Writing Contest Poetry Runner-Up ! Read “Sleep when the Baby Sleeps” in our Spring 2023 Issue! 🥳

Twice selected for Best New Poets (2014 & 2016), Jen Jabaily-Blackburn’s most recent work is forthcoming or has appeared in On the Seawall, Couplet Poetry, Indiana Review, Radar Poetry, The Common, and Massachusetts Review. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her family, where she is Program & Outreach coordinator at the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

Again with thanks to judge !

25/06/2022

Congratulations to Fugue’s 2022 Writing Contest Poetry Winner ! Read “Boatsong/ Vijandi Paadimees” in our Spring 2023 Issue! 🥳

Amanda Maret Scharf (she/her) is a q***r poet from Los Angeles. Her writing has been supported by Lambda LitFest, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Tin House, and The Home School. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Meridian, Willow Springs, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Ohio State University where she serves as poetry editor for The Journal.

And many thanks to judge !

24/06/2022

Congratulations to Fugue’s 2022 Writing Contest Prose Runner-Up .chris! Read “How Your Heart is Formed” in our Spring 2023 Issue! 🥳

Chris Shorne was previously a human rights accompanier in Guatemala, teacher at a q***r writing institute, and administrative assistant for an international DeafBlind retreat. Shorne holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and has published with Utne, Bennington Review, Jellyfish Review, and The Portland Review.

With thanks again to judge !

24/06/2022

Congratulations to Fugue’s 2022 Writing Contest Prose Winner .t.p.shaw! Read “prepositions for elijah” in our Spring 2023 Issue! 🥳

Philip James Shaw writes, paints, and creates communications on behalf of organizations dedicated to equity and access in health and education. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

And many thanks to judge !

22/06/2022

Issue 62 just dropped! 🔥 Shout-out to all of our amazing contributors—we love you!

15/02/2022

Today’s the day! Head to https://fugue.submittable.com/submit and send your stuff our way! 💌

11/02/2022

Fugue’s 2022 writing contest, judged by Kimberly Grey & Jenny Boully, opens February 15th!

Winners will receive a $1000 prize and both winners and runners-up will be published in the next edition of Fugue!

Head to www.fuguejournal.com and send us your stuff! ☄️

08/11/2021

Issue 61 is hot off the press and that means it’s time for a Zoom reading/release party! We’d love to see your little Zoom box on November 15th at 5:30 PST. Come celebrate with us!

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/4r4c9vrx

24/03/2021

A week left to submit to Fugue's Spring Writing Contest!

Head over to our website for more information on how to submit your poetry and prose before April 1st!

15/03/2021

To celebrate our friend, mentor, colleague, and beloved writer Kim Barnes, we at Fugue are thrilled to announce our special 2021 contest, judged by Kim Barnes herself!

Submit your fiction or nonfiction inspired by one of Kim’s favorite prompts: Everyone has a knife (or hatchet, razor, glass shard, chisel, scalpel) story—a narrative of puncture in which a sharp object cuts the skin. Or almost does. Or could. Whether real or imagined, this cut ruptures the barrier between inside and outside, blood and air, self and other. This is what Kim Barnes calls the “third sphere” in writing: a space of encounter, intensity, and vulnerability where something new can happen.
For this contest, submit a short story or essay that combines the narrative drama of a knife story (the exterior) with a thinking and questioning narrator (the interior). How do we produce meaning when one meets the other, when the self is opened, punctured, or laid bare to outside forces?

Submissions limited to 3,000 words.
Enter through Submittable: https://fuguejournal.com/kim-barnes-prize

06/03/2021

Fugue60 and our brand new website are now live! Head over to fuguejournal.com to start reading!

Many thanks to all of our contributors for being part of this gorgeous issue and to Julie Albrecht, who worked closely with our editors to design the online issue and website. You can contact Julie on www.juliealbrecht.work to see more of her excellent work.

We can't wait for you all to dive into Fugue60!

Cover art by Stephanie Berrie

06/03/2021

It's the last day of AWP and to get a copy of a recent issue of Fugue and merch when you submit to our Spring Writing Contest!

Stop by our virtual bookfair table for more information!

04/03/2021

Submit to Fugue's Spring Writing Contest during and we'll send you a copy of Fugue and some cool merch!

Stop by or Virtual Book Fair table for more information or just to say hello from March 4-6 12:30-2pm pst

18/02/2021

Fugue will be at the PNW MINI LIT FAIR this Saturday!

Come see contributors from our up-coming Spring Online Issue and all of these fabulous readers

01/02/2021

Fugue's 2021 Writing Contest is now open! We can't wait to read what you've been working on!

28/01/2021

Our 2021 Writing Contest, judged by Leila Chatti and Eloghosa Osunde, opens February 1! We are so excited to read your work!

17/12/2020

Congratulations to Fugue's 2020 Pushcart nominees!

07/12/2020

To all of our contributors, readers, and friends:

It has been brought to our attention that there is an error in our most recent issue, Fugue 59, in which text from Denise Tolan’s essay “The Underside of Normal” (originally published in Fugue 57) is misattributed to Mant Bares and printed under the title of her story “Linda-linda-linda.” We deeply regret this error, offer our continued apologies to both Mant and Denise, and will be reprinting the issue in order to rectify our mistake.

Thus far, copies of Fugue 59 have only gone out to contributors, so we are reaching out to all contributors to explain the situation and replace their misprinted copies with the corrected issue. If you have ordered a copy of Fugue 59, we will be in touch personally about any delays associated with the reprint.

Our mission is to support and celebrate those we include in our pages, and we want to reiterate our commitment to our contributors, who we value above all, and who have entrusted us with their work. To do so, we are working with our team and reviewing Fugue’s editorial practices to ensure this situation will never occur again. We would also like to apologize to last year’s fiction editor, Scott Dorsch, who worked with Mant to publish “Linda-linda-linda,” but was in no way involved in the story’s misprinting. We are enormously grateful that Mant has agreed to reprint her story with us and that you will soon have a chance to read this beautiful work in full.

Thank you for your patience and support as we work to fix this issue.

Sincerely,

Fugue’s Editors-in-Chief
2020-21: Clare Shearer & Emmy Newman
2019-20: Keene Short & Ryan Downum

24/10/2020

Looking for a home for your visual art??? Send us your paintings, sculptures, photography, your sketches and your anarchist cross-stitching! We are currently accepting submissions for our Spring Online Issue
https://fugue.submittable.com/submit/173624/visual-art-other-hybrid-forms

01/09/2020

Fugue's submissions are open! Send us your poems, your non-fiction, your fiction, and your visual art! We can't wait to read them all!

28/08/2020

Our Editors-in-chief, Emmy Newman and Clare Shearer, have some big things coming this fall. Make sure to submit when Fugue's reading period opens on Tuesday!

25/08/2020

Do you have any of that sweet, sweet writing to send out? Fugue's reading period begins September 1st!

08/07/2020

Special Congratulations to our Fugue Spring Writing Contest Winners, Imani Cezanne in Poetry and Margie Sarsfield in Prose! And of course many congratulations to our Runner-ups, Arah Ko in Poetry and Tori Rego in Prose! Their winning writing will be featured in our up-coming print issue this fall.

Thank you to our judges, sam sax and Leni Zumas, for choosing these pieces - no easy decision, I assure you!- and to everyone who submitted their work this spring. We appreciate you all.

28/04/2020

Save the date! Superstition Review will be hosting a virtual launch party via Zoom for the release of their 25th issue on May 1, 2020! In the meantime, have a look at all their past issues at https://superstitionreview.asu.edu/

07/04/2020

Two Days left to submit to Fugue's Spring Writing Contest! $1000 prize and publication for the poem selected by sam sax and the prose submission selected by Leni Zumas. Plus all submissions are considered for publication! The submission period ends on April 8. For more information visit http://www.fuguejournal.com/submit

29/03/2020

The Spring Writing Contest deadline has been extended! Give us your prose, give us your poems and they might end up in sam sax's or Leni Zumas' hands! Send 'em hot and send 'em by April 8!
http://www.fuguejournal.com/submit

28/03/2020

Fugue's Spring Writing Contest deadline is just a few days away - the world is ending; shoot your shot

(We at Fugue know the world is not ending and hope you are all staying well.)

Click the link below and submit a poem or some prose!

https://fugue.submittable.com/submit

Fugue Submission Manager Powered By Submittable - Accept and Curate Digital Content

10/03/2020

Our AWP deals may be over, but there is still time to submit to our Spring Writing Contest! Send us your poetry and prose and it may land on sam sax's or Leni Zumas' desk! Submissions are open until April 1st!