Spring/Summer 2021 Theme

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

 

For our Spring/Summer 2021 issue, Endings and Beginnings, Nimrod International Journal invites poems, short stories, creative nonfiction pieces, and translations touching on the subject of beginnings and endings.

Endings and beginnings have power—both in a narrative sense and in our day-to-day lives. We mark the beginnings and endings of everything: stages of life, the last lines of poems, our first kisses. Sometimes they offer stark definition, a clear demarcation of then and now. Sometimes—often, in fact—they are connected, with an ending also signaling a beginning or vice versa. And beginnings and endings come in all shapes and sizes, occurring in the most important aspects of our lives, such as birth, death, and marriage, and also in the smaller moments, such as the first bud of spring or the last song on an album. In this issue, we wish to delve into any and all aspects of beginnings and endings and explore the excitement, disappointment, pain, and joy they bring with them.

What We Are Seeking:
Here are a few examples of what submissions for this issue might look like:

• Work that features milestones of beginning: birth, marriage, first day of school, first road trip, new jobs, new homes or homelands, origin stories, planting a garden, and more.
• Work that features milestones of ending: death, graduation, leaving home, estate sales, extinction, apocalypse and its aftermath, and more.
• Work that explores the way that endings and beginnings may be intertwined and/or inseparable (example: the chimes that bridge the old year and the new year; divorce as the end of a relationship and the possibility of a new one).
• Work that features more abstract ideas of beginnings and endings (examples: the first and last letters of alphabets; reworking/reimagining of the beginnings or endings of myths and fairy tales; the last bite of a delicious dessert).
• Work that plays with beginnings and endings using rhetorical form, such as sestinas or palindromes.
• Work that examines, meditates on, or engages with any aspect of beginnings or endings in unexpected and unique ways.

This list is just a start; we hope that you will surprise us with additional ideas about endings and beginnings that we have not thought of.

We are excited about this issue, so please send your work and/or share this announcement with writing groups, students, and friends. We hope to receive a variety of material for this issue, with interpretations of this theme from writers of all backgrounds and publication histories; we especially welcome work from writers of color, writers of marginalized orientations and gender identities, writers of varying socio-economic status, and writers with physical or mental differences.

The Specifics:

• Fiction and creative nonfiction may be up to 7,500 words; poetry may be up to 7 pages.
• All work must be previously unpublished.
• Poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction should be sent as separate submissions.
• Work not originally in English must be translated into English. For work in translation, authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reprint any material under copyright that exceeds the guidelines of fair use or does not have a Creative Commons license.
• Prose should be typed, double-spaced, one side of plain white paper only. Poetry should be typed, one side of plain white paper only, no more than one poem per page.
• For those submitting by mail: Please mark both your cover letter and the outer envelope with “Spring 2021 Theme.” Send a SASE for response. Postal submissions are free.
• For those submitting online: Please submit work online under the theme category at: nimrodjournal.submittable.com/submit. A $3 fee is charged for online submissions to cover the administrative costs associated with those submissions.
• If the online submission fee or the postage to send work by mail will pose a substantial economic burden, writers may seek a waiver of the fee. To seek a waiver, please email us at nimrod@utulsa.edu with your request and reasons for seeking a waiver.

Manuscripts will be accepted beginning February 25, 2020.

Postmark deadline: November 1, 2020

Publication date: April 2021

Payment: $10/printed page with a $200 maximum

Nimrod is a nonprofit literary magazine published in print by The University of Tulsa, with issues appearing twice a year. All contributors to the magazine receive two copies of the issues in which their work appears.

Send postal manuscripts to:
Nimrod Journal
The University of Tulsa
800 S. Tucker Dr.
Tulsa, OK 74104

Submit online at:
https://nimrodjournal.submittable.com/submit

Questions?
Email nimrod@utulsa.edu or call (918) 631-3080.

Open Submission Categories

 

• Nimrod Literary Awards Submissions are open through April 1st, 2020.
• Thematic submissions to the magazine are open through November 1st, 2020.
• General submissions to the magazine are open through November 30th, 2020.