Brink is an independent nonprofit publisher of hybrid writing. Through our publications, Brink Literary Journal and Brink Books, we create space in the literary world for hybrid, cross-genre, and unclassified works by emerging and established writers and artists.
Hybrid writing often includes multiple mediums such as visual and written elements that together accomplish a result impossible to achieve alone. Text-based hybrid writing harnesses form and content in singular ways to create dynamic work primed to offer new perspectives, voices, and ideas that prioritize the combination of multiple literary and artistic elements to produce a readable, engaging piece of work.
We accept a variety of creative work from every genre and work that resists any genre. We are most interested in work that presses creative boundaries, uses more than one medium to tell a story, and both looks and feels different on the page. Additionally, we look for submissions that engage the theme of each issue alongside the idea of being on the brink.
Please familiarize yourself with Brink prior to submitting your work. Single issues and subscriptions can be purchased from our website. We read every submission and respectfully request you wait one full submission period to resubmit if your work has been declined.
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of obsession.
At first glance, obsession indicates preoccupation. It gestures toward desire. Obsessions command our attention, motivate our actions, and are always top of mind.
But the etymology of obsession hints at a different story. The root of the word indicates the action of besieging, or, as we might say in today’s language, sitting. When you obsess, you place yourself before something—an object, a person, an idea, a task. This posture is not passive; it is active. Your presence is an investment. Your presence indicates your desire to absorb, encompass, and command. To learn.
Please note, we are not interested in stories of harassment, stalking, or unequal displays of power or abuse. Instead, tell us about your obsession with exoskeletons or your childhood obsession with reading the dictionary. Interrogate your obsession with tacos. What was the last thing you actively sat down to learn? Show us the space around obsession: what leads to it? What happens when it fades? Take us to the brink of obsession.
Guidelines:
In 2025 Brink is launching a new Video Essay & Cinepoetry section along with a call for submissions that combine poetry and prose with moving images.
In this new section we are excited to feature video work that artfully combines written and visual media in ways that surprise us, inviting new resonances and pushing the boundaries of media and genre. We are most interested in short video works, but will consider longer projects of exceptional quality. You can view examples of the kind of work we're excited about in Issue 9.
At Brink, we understand that this kind of work lives both ephemerally and in place-based publication formats. We invite submissions of short films and videos that have been live screened at festivals and performances, or have future screenings scheduled. At this time, we are not seeking video work that has been previously published online, or recordings/documentation of live readings or spoken word performances.
Please upload your video file, or simply include a link to Vimeo or Youtube in your cover letter. Please be sure to mention the password if your file requires it.
Use this form to submit full-length book manuscripts only. Brink's literary journal is currently closed for submissions and will reopen July 1-31.
What Brink Books Is Seeking
We are interested in books that press boundaries by using more than one genre, medium, or form. Brink’s first book, Malleable and True: A Hybrid Craft Anthology from Brink Literary Journal (September 2025), compiles published and brand-new work from the first five years of the journal alongside reflections on hybridity and generative prompts. After the anthology launches, we will publish two books of hybrid writing per year.
We welcome submissions of cross-genre, hybrid, and visual hybrid books. We will consider finished manuscripts sent through Submittable. We cannot consider pitches or proposals for work-in-progress. A great way to learn more about the type of work we love is to read an issue of the journal and some of our public access pieces on our website.
Agented and un-agented submissions are welcome. We do accept translated work.
How to Submit Your Book
Our open submissions period for full-length book manuscripts will run May 1, 2025 through September 1, 2025. When you submit, please include a brief cover letter in Submittable that contains the following:
1) A short (1-2 paragraph) description of your manuscript
2) A short author’s and/or translator’s bio
There is no fee to submit. We cannot accept unsolicited manuscripts by email or paper mail. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but authors must notify Brink immediately if a manuscript is accepted elsewhere. We cannot accept manuscript revisions after a manuscript has been sent in; you will need to withdraw on Submittable and resubmit.
Timeline
Brink Books is run by a small editorial staff, so we thank you in advance for your patience as we read and respond to submissions. We aim to treat each manuscript with consideration and care, so it may be several months before you hear back from us.
Inquiries
If, after reading the guidelines above, you have a question about how to submit your book, please contact us at: info@brinkliterary.com.
Journal Submissions
Please only use this form to submit full-length book manuscripts. If you are interested in submitting shorter work to the literary journal, find more information here: https://www.brinkliterary.com/submit.
The Emerging Writer Fellowship in Hybrid Writing offers editorial support, guidance, and mentorship to previously unpublished writers who demonstrate exceptional promise in hybrid and cross-genre writing. The fellow will work alongside the Brink design and editorial team to prepare their piece for publication. The virtual fellowship will take place over a period of four months in the fall and will provide the following:
- One-on-one developmental editing alongside a Brink editor with an emphasis on developing the innovative hybrid aspects of the selected piece
- Advice and guidance on career development via the submission and publication process
- Publication in a print issue of Brink, providing a significant and respected publication credit
- Four copies of the journal issue in which the winning submission appears
The fellowship is open to all writers and artists who identify their work as hybrid or cross-genre in nature or who are interested in learning how to hybridize their work in a readable, creative manner.
- Emerging writers who have not yet published a book-length collection are eligible.
- Writers with forthcoming books may enter if their first book is published after April 2025.
- Writers who have edited and published an anthology or a collection of other writers' works remain eligible.
- Submit up to 15 pages in one previously unpublished submission per entrant
- All entries will be read anonymously. Before you submit, please remove your name and any other identifying information from your submission. We will contact you regarding your submission through Submittable, so please ensure your contact information is accurate
- Family, colleagues, intimate friends, and contributors previously published in Brink Literary Journal are ineligible
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of obsession.
At first glance, obsession indicates preoccupation. It gestures toward desire. Obsessions command our attention, motivate our actions, and are always top of mind.
But the etymology of obsession hints at a different story. The root of the word indicates the action of besieging, or, as we might say in today’s language, sitting. When you obsess, you place yourself before something—an object, a person, an idea, a task. This posture is not passive; it is active. Your presence is an investment. Your presence indicates your desire to absorb, encompass, and command. To learn.
Please note, we are not interested in stories of harassment, stalking, or unequal displays of power or abuse. Instead, tell us about your obsession with exoskeletons or your childhood obsession with reading the dictionary. Interrogate your obsession with tacos. What was the last thing you actively sat down to learn? Show us the space around obsession: what leads to it? What happens when it fades? Take us to the brink of obsession.
Guidelines:
Please send us 3-5 unpublished poems, totaling no more than 10 pages, in a single document.
- The poetry readers at Brink look for and are drawn to:
- Fresh, surprising, evocative language
- Poems that create their own atmosphere
- Formal inventiveness and adventurousness
- Poems with an emotional core
- Poems that enact or embody tension narratively, formally, or emotionally
- Poems that give us a new understanding of what a poem can be
We’re open to a variety of approaches, but we’re not interested in sentimental or ready-made verse and will not accept any poems that include racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or other forms of hateful language. Simultaneous submissions are allowed but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of obsession.
At first glance, obsession indicates preoccupation. It gestures toward desire. Obsessions command our attention, motivate our actions, and are always top of mind.
But the etymology of obsession hints at a different story. The root of the word indicates the action of besieging, or, as we might say in today’s language, sitting. When you obsess, you place yourself before something—an object, a person, an idea, a task. This posture is not passive; it is active. Your presence is an investment. Your presence indicates your desire to absorb, encompass, and command. To learn.
Please note, we are not interested in stories of harassment, stalking, or unequal displays of power or abuse. Instead, tell us about your obsession with exoskeletons or your childhood obsession with reading the dictionary. Interrogate your obsession with tacos. What was the last thing you actively sat down to learn? Show us the space around obsession: what leads to it? What happens when it fades? Take us to the brink of obsession.
Guidelines:
We’re looking for work that reignites our idea of what an essay can do or be. We’re particularly excited about flash essays, ekphrasis nonfiction, lists, diary entries, erasures, manifestos, intense lyricism, auto-theory, translations, and revelatory ruptures in form and syntax that breaks, and remakes, language anew.
Some of Hannah and Josh’s favorite writers include Hanif Abdurraqib, Amina Cain, Tisa Byrant, Garth Greenwell, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Kate Zambreno, and Christina Sharpe. Some of our favorite nonfiction we’ve published in Brink includes work by Gyasi Hall, Julie Moon, and Sarah Minor. The best way to check out what work we’re drawn to is to read work published in Brink.
Please submit no more than one piece during each reading period that does not exceed 3,000 words.
Guidelines:
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of obsession.
At first glance, obsession indicates preoccupation. It gestures toward desire. Obsessions command our attention, motivate our actions, and are always top of mind.
But the etymology of obsession hints at a different story. The root of the word indicates the action of besieging, or, as we might say in today’s language, sitting. When you obsess, you place yourself before something—an object, a person, an idea, a task. This posture is not passive; it is active. Your presence is an investment. Your presence indicates your desire to absorb, encompass, and command. To learn.
Please note, we are not interested in stories of harassment, stalking, or unequal displays of power or abuse. Instead, tell us about your obsession with exoskeletons or your childhood obsession with reading the dictionary. Interrogate your obsession with tacos. What was the last thing you actively sat down to learn? Show us the space around obsession: what leads to it? What happens when it fades? Take us to the brink of obsession.