Through Submittable, we accept a variety of creative work from Nonfiction to Fiction, from Poetry to Translation. But our hearts beat strongest for hybrid work.
We are interested in work that presses boundaries by using more than one medium to tell a story; work that looks and feels different on the page. Additionally, we look for submissions that engage the issue's theme and the notion of being on the brink.
Please submit only unpublished pieces and notify us if your simultaneous submission is accepted elsewhere. Payment for each contributor is one copy of the issue in which their work appears as well as:
$25 || Poem (per poem)
$50 || Work (less than 1500 words)
$50 || Art (1-3 Images)
$100 || Art (4+ Images)
$100 || Work (more than 1501 words)
The Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing seeks to award writing that is considered hybrid and cross-genre in nature. 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.
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Initial screening for the prize is facilitated by Brink Editors
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The contest winner, selected by the contest judge, will be announced in early May
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CONTEST RULES
The contest is open to all writers and artists who identify their work as hybrid or cross-genre in nature.
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Submit up to 15 pages
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One previously unpublished submission per entrant
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All entries will be read anonymously. Before you submit, please remove your name and any other identifying information from your submission
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We will contact you regarding your submission through Submittable, so please ensure your contact information is accurate
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Family, colleagues, intimate friends, and contributors previously published in Brink Literary Journal are ineligible
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Simultaneous submissions are allowed
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CONTEST PRIZE
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$1,000
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Publication in the fall issue of Brink Literary Journal
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4 copies of the journal issue in which the winning submission appears
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HOW TO ENTER
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Submissions open January 1, 2025 - February 28, 2025
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$25 non-refundable entry fee
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A limited number of fee waivers are available upon request. Email info@brinkliterary.com for more information.
Kristen Radtke
Award for Hybrid Writing Judge 2025 || she/her
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Kristen Radtke is the author of Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness (2021) and Imagine Wanting Only This (2017). She is the creative director of The Verge. The recipient of grants from the Whiting Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, her work has been nominated for a PEN/Jean Stein Award, an Eisner Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Metal, and numerous National Magazine Awards.
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(photo credit: Amelia Holowaty Krales)
Michelle Phương Hồ
Award for Hybrid Writing Winner 2024 || she/her
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Michelle Phương Hồ (she/her) is a poet based in New Haven, CT. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Apogee, Black Warrior Review, Poetry, Volume, and elsewhere, and has been recognized with the 2020 Frontier Poetry Industry Prize. Born to Vietnamese refugees, she received her MFA in poetry at New York University. She currently curates the comtemplative literary salon, quietly wild.
Renee Gladman
Award for Hybrid Writing Judge 2024 || she/her
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Renee Gladman is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of writing, drawing and architecture. She is the author of fourteen published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians, as well as a collection of essay-fictions, Calamities. A new work of auto-theory, My Lesbian Novel, is forthcoming in 2024. Recent essays and visual work have appeared in The Architectural Review, POETRY, The Paris Review, BOMB magazine, e-flux and n+1. She has been awarded fellowships, artist grants, and residencies from the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Lannan Foundation, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), among others, and was a 2021 recipient of the Windham-Campbell prize in fiction.
Lars Horn
Award for Hybrid Writing Judge 2023 || they/them
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Lars Horn is a writer and translator working in literary and experimental non-fiction. Their first book, VOICE OF THE FISH, won the 2020 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and was an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection. The recipient of the Tin House Without Borders Residency and a Sewanee Writers’ Conference scholarship, Horn’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Literary Hub, Granta, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Initially specialising in Phenomenology and Visual Arts scholarship, they hold MAs from the University of Edinburgh, the École normale supérieure, Paris, and Concordia University, Montreal. They split their time between Miami, Colorado, and the UK with their wife, the writer Jaquira Díaz.
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:
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One-on-one developmental editing alongside a Brink editor with an emphasis on developing the innovative hybrid aspects of the selected piece
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Advice and guidance on career development via the submission and publication process
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Publication in a print issue of Brink, providing a significant and respected publication credit
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Participation in an online reading along with the winner of the Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing
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Five copies of the journal issue in which the winning submission appears
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GUIDELINES
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 the process of learning how to hybridize their work in a readable, creative manner.
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Emerging writers who have not yet published a book-length collection are eligible.
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Writers with forthcoming books may enter if their first book is published after April 2024.
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Writers who have edited and published an anthology or a collection of other writers' works remain eligible.
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Submit up to 15 pages in one previously unpublished submission per entrant.
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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.
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Family, colleagues, intimate friends, and contributors previously published in Brink Literary Journal are ineligible.
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APPLICATION SUBMISSION DATES & FEE
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June 1 - July 31, 2024​
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$20 one-time submission fee
AP Paulson
Fellowship Winner 2024 || they/them
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AP Paulson is a farmhand, writer & painter currently residing in Minneapolis Minnesota. Paulson's current work is centered on communicating & representing their experiences while moving frequently as a farmhand, navigating communal living in transitory spaces, and experiencing rural living as a queer, nonbinary, and neurodivergent person. Currently, Paulson is working on their debut chapbook “Muck.”
Simone Zapata
Fellowship Winner 2023 || she/her
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Simone Zapata is a queer poet and educator from San José, CA. Her recent work appears, or is forthcoming from Beloit Poetry Journal, Foglifter, Reed Magazine, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Community of Writers and the REEF residency, and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She lives in Oakland, and is a poetry editor for MAYDAY Magazine.