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.
Contest Rules
- The contest is open to all writers and artists who identify their work as hybrid or cross-genre in nature.
- Submit up to 15 pages.
- One previously unpublished submission per entrant.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.
- Simultaneous submissions are allowed. Please notify us immediately if your submission is accepted elsewhere.
Guidelines
- 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. Hybrid writing is not experimental or ekphrastic. Instead, it is a style that prioritizes the combination of multiple literary and artistic elements to produce a readable, engaging piece of work.
- Initial screening for the prize will be facilitated by Brink Editors.
- The contest winner, selected by the contest judge, will be announced in early May.
Contest Prize
- $1,000
- Publication in the October 2026 issue of Brink Literary Journal.
- 4 copies of the journal issue in which the winning submission appears.
Entry Fee
- $25
- A limited number of fee waivers are available upon request. Email info@brinkliterary.com for more information.
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of chaos.
Initially, you might approach chaos at face value. After all, everything feels like it is on fire. Long held beliefs, institutions, and environments are increasingly destabilized through the intervention of human hands. Accelerated capitalism is actively destroying the world as we know it, one ecosystem, community, or country at a time. That particular flavor of chaos is self-evident. We're interested in something with a bit more bite.
Consider how chaotic energy also gestures towards creativity. Something limitless and unmeasurable, boundless and ongoing. A bristling potential always on the verge of combusting on the spot. Chaos is a swirling intensity, but it often already exists before it is identifiable or named.
Tell us about the chaos of silence or stillness. The entanglements, to paraphrase Karen Barad, of matter and meaning. How would you write about chasms of nothingness? Or rework the myths of the primeval deities from which Chaos came? Plant life, paradoxes, or hybrid literary forms all gesture towards the possibility of chaos. So buckle in. Take us to that brink.
Guidelines:
We’re looking for poems made of surprising, evocative language—poems that create their own atmospheres, that display formal adventurousness, that emerge from an emotional core and enact the tensions of being human. We’re interested in lyricism, in lists, in constellated images, in broken forms, in old forms made new and strange, in mixtapes, in multiple registers, in documentary records, in rhythmic lineations and rests, in hybrid richness. Send us magnetic, compelling work that expands our understanding of what a poem can be.
Please send us 3-5 unpublished poems, totaling no more than 10 pages, in a single document.
We prefer doc or docx unless your piece requires PDF to maintain its shape.
Simultaneous submissions are allowed but please notify us through Submittable if your work is accepted elsewhere. If you are a previous contributor, please wait two years before submitting again.
We look forward to reading your poems!
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of chaos.
Initially, you might approach chaos at face value. After all, everything feels like it is on fire. Long held beliefs, institutions, and environments are increasingly destabilized through the intervention of human hands. Accelerated capitalism is actively destroying the world as we know it, one ecosystem, community, or country at a time. That particular flavor of chaos is self-evident. We're interested in something with a bit more bite.
Consider how chaotic energy also gestures towards creativity. Something limitless and unmeasurable, boundless and ongoing. A bristling potential always on the verge of combusting on the spot. Chaos is a swirling intensity, but it often already exists before it is identifiable or named.
Tell us about the chaos of silence or stillness. The entanglements, to paraphrase Karen Barad, of matter and meaning. How would you write about chasms of nothingness? Or rework the myths of the primeval deities from which Chaos came? Plant life, paradoxes, or hybrid literary forms all gesture towards the possibility of chaos. So buckle in. Take us to that brink.
Guidelines:
In 2025 Brink launched 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 Issues 9 & 10.
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.
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of chaos.
Initially, you might approach chaos at face value. After all, everything feels like it is on fire. Long held beliefs, institutions, and environments are increasingly destabilized through the intervention of human hands. Accelerated capitalism is actively destroying the world as we know it, one ecosystem, community, or country at a time. That particular flavor of chaos is self-evident. We're interested in something with a bit more bite.
Consider how chaotic energy also gestures towards creativity. Something limitless and unmeasurable, boundless and ongoing. A bristling potential always on the verge of combusting on the spot. Chaos is a swirling intensity, but it often already exists before it is identifiable or named.
Tell us about the chaos of silence or stillness. The entanglements, to paraphrase Karen Barad, of matter and meaning. How would you write about chasms of nothingness? Or rework the myths of the primeval deities from which Chaos came? Plant life, paradoxes, or hybrid literary forms all gesture towards the possibility of chaos. So buckle in. Take us to that brink.
Guidelines: We encourage submissions of varying lengths, but please cap your submission at 10,000 words. If your submission exceeds that length, it is a better fit for our imprint Brink Books!
Please submit no more than 1 piece over 1,000 words or up to 3 flash pieces totaling no more than 1,000 words total.
Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know immediately if a piece is accepted elsewhere.
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of chaos.
Initially, you might approach chaos at face value. After all, everything feels like it is on fire. Long held beliefs, institutions, and environments are increasingly destabilized through the intervention of human hands. Accelerated capitalism is actively destroying the world as we know it, one ecosystem, community, or country at a time. That particular flavor of chaos is self-evident. We're interested in something with a bit more bite.
Consider how chaotic energy also gestures towards creativity. Something limitless and unmeasurable, boundless and ongoing. A bristling potential always on the verge of combusting on the spot. Chaos is a swirling intensity, but it often already exists before it is identifiable or named.
Tell us about the chaos of silence or stillness. The entanglements, to paraphrase Karen Barad, of matter and meaning. How would you write about chasms of nothingness? Or rework the myths of the primeval deities from which Chaos came? Plant life, paradoxes, or hybrid literary forms all gesture towards the possibility of chaos. So buckle in. Take us to that brink.
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 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.