Brink is an in-print literary journal dedicated to publishing hybrid, cross-genre work of both emerging and established creatives who often reside outside traditional artistic disciplines. By providing space primed to instigate new ideas, Brink fosters dialogue and collaborative community across disciplines and cultural divides.
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 as well as 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 as well as 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- One previously unpublished submission per entrant.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 2023 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 renewal. On the surface, renewal suggests restoration. It is the act of returning an object to its original state of existence. We repair used furniture. Our health is restored. We remake that which has been used and revive that which has been spent.
But below the surface, renewal is repetition. It is a pledge to an original object or person or idea. Renewal is a value declaration. It is a signifier of life and potential. We are interested in the moments leading up to renewal, the pause between brokenness and wholeness, the intricacies of repair, the patterns that emerge when we return, again and again, to the source. Show us the space around renewal. Take us to the brink of renewal.
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 renewal. On the surface, renewal suggests restoration. It is the act of returning an object to its original state of existence. We repair used furniture. Our health is restored. We remake that which has been used and revive that which has been spent.
But below the surface, renewal is repetition. It is a pledge to an original object or person or idea. Renewal is a value declaration. It is a signifier of life and potential. We are interested in the moments leading up to renewal, the pause between brokenness and wholeness, the intricacies of repair, the patterns that emerge when we return, again and again, to the source. Show us the space around renewal. Take us to the brink of renewal.
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.
Brink is open for hybrid and cross-genre submissions of any length and style engaging the theme of renewal. On the surface, renewal suggests restoration. It is the act of returning an object to its original state of existence. We repair used furniture. Our health is restored. We remake that which has been used and revive that which has been spent.
But below the surface, renewal is repetition. It is a pledge to an original object or person or idea. Renewal is a value declaration. It is a signifier of life and potential. We are interested in the moments leading up to renewal, the pause between brokenness and wholeness, the intricacies of repair, the patterns that emerge when we return, again and again, to the source. Show us the space around renewal. Take us to the brink of renewal.