Call for Submissions for Spring 2026 | Witnessing
“The poetry of witness reclaims the social from the political and in so doing defends the individual against illegitimate forms of coercion.”- Carolyn Forché
“But is it enough that a poem “remembers” when we are now entrenched in an era of total recall?”– Cathy Park Hong, “Against Witness“
Unearthed invites submissions for an upcoming issue devoted to witnessing in a time of social and ecological rupture. We welcome work that refuses to look away from injustice and chronicles radical resilience.
In our age of “fake news,” AI-generated content, and media manipulation, what does it mean to bear witness now? And what does it mean to do so ethically, without falling into voyeurism? What can poetry of witness do, and what are its limits? What might fiction, photography, and art preserve, reveal, or refuse to let disappear? Submissions might reckon with grief, complicity, responsibility, care, and/ or survival. We are especially interested in:
- Poetry of witness that confronts environmental and social injustice, climate catastrophe, extraction, extinction, and/or resilience — and documentary poetry that resists witness;
- Photography and visual work that records social and environmental change, labor, land use, and human and more-than-human relationships
- Hybrid, experimental, and cross-genre work that troubles the boundaries between art, testimony, and reportage
- Essays, lyric nonfiction, and field notes rooted in observation, direct encounters
- Art that listens to place, to history, to silenced or marginalized voices of both human and more-than-human entities
Submission Guidelines
Genre Guidelines
- Poetry: up to five poems (one poem on a page), submitted as .doc, .docx, or .pdf.
- Fiction: up to 4,000 words (double-spaced), submitted as .doc, .docx, or .pdf. Include a title and page numbers.
- Creative and critical non-fiction: between 500-4,000 words (double-spaced), submitted as .doc, .docx, or .pdf. Include a title and page numbers.
- Visual Art: up to ten items, formatted as .jpg, .tiff , .png, or .pdf with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and at least five inches wide. Include titles for each piece.
- Video: up to two video products submitted in .wav, .wmv, .avi, or .mov. or a link to a previously unpublished vimeo, etc.
Cover Letter: In your cover letter, please include a short biographical statement of 100 words or less
How & When to Submit
Submission Deadline: March 27, 2026
Email your submission to:
esflitmag@gmail.com
with the subject line: “Witnessing 2026 Submission – [Your Name].”
We welcome simultaneous submissions but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
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