Volume 65 Call for Submissions

Our new Editor-in-Chief, Kat Yuen, invites you to submit your art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for consideration for Spectrum Volume 65, which will be published in Spring 2022. Our reading period opens on July 1 and closes on December 31, and we will respond to all submissions by March 2022 (we apologize for the wait). To find our full submission guidelines and to send us your work, visit our Submit page.

Hello to all artists and writers:

It’s July again, and as parts of the world search for normality, we invite you to submit your weird to be considered for the 65th volume of Spectrum.

In my past two years as a reader for Spectrum, every submission I’ve loved has found its central kernel, its premise, and followed that seed to its creative and funky end. At their best, the pieces we publish are bizarre, read thrice-over, and stubborn, using their craft to unearth, to confess, and to make anew.

Around us, the world has seeking the new as well. The status quo of the pre-pandemic has not just been disrupted, but irrevocably changed: despite promises of a “return to normal,” many of us wonder if “normal” is truly possible — or even desired. That’s why this upcoming year, we want to read about Transformation.

Whether about an individual or a world, toward growth or decay, in the past or future, we want to see how changes unfold for you. Submit to us your odes to movement, your best works about actualization and realization. Paint for us transformations as small as a person’s expression or as grand as the rise of mountain ranges. Show us the changes you want to see or have seen, and what it means to leave a past state or self behind.

Above all, submit to us your best pieces, and the ones you don’t expect to be accepted. Help us continue to publish a wide spectrum of the new.

— Kat Yuen, Volume 65 Editor-in-Chief

(he/him & she/her)