THE FIRST-EVER EDITION OF SPECTRUM SUMMER IS NOW AVAILABLE! CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR THE FULL JOURNAL.
Read the 2021 Edition of Spectrum Summer here.
For the first time, Spectrum Literary Journal is publishing a summer edition, exclusively featuring the work of undergraduate students at UCSB!
Over its 65-year history, Spectrum’s mission has always been to publish a wide variety of voices, narratives, and forms from across the literary and artistic spectrum.
This year, we're immensely excited to provide a platform for showcasing the incredible talent and unique perspectives of undergraduate students here at UC Santa Barbara.
The inaugural edition of Spectrum Summer Edition features the fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scripts, and art of over 25 UCSB undergraduates from a variety of majors, including Writing & Literature, Biology, and Physics. Also included are the winners of the annual College of Creative Studies Writing Contest in fiction, poetry, narrative prose, and nonfiction -- find more information about the CCS Writing Contest here.
This issue also includes the Exquisite Corpse, a double-blind collaborative writing venture in which participants are given a body part to write poetry or prose about, and the last sentence of their work is used as a writing prompt for the next participant, creating a uniquely parallelistic creative process.
Submissions for Spectrum Summer are open to any undergraduate UCSB student, regardless of major. All work must be previously unpublished. We accept fiction, poetry, nonfiction, screenplays/scripts, art, and multimedia pieces, including video and comics. If it can be viewed in two dimensions, we will consider it for publication. Surprise us and our readers -- send us your most creative, your weirdest, and your very best.
Submissions for the 2022 edition of Spectrum Summer will open in Spring 2022.
Submissions for the annual issue of Spectrum Literary Journal will remain open until midnight on December 31st. Find out more about submitting to Spectrum by clicking here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Spectrum is the annual literary journal published by the College of Creative Studies, which you can learn more about and submit to here. Spectrum Summer is our all-new summer edition of the journal dedicated to showcasing UCSB undergraduate student work, separate from the annual edition.
If you are a current UCSB undergraduate student, you are more than welcome to submit to both Spectrum and Spectrum Summer. However, please keep in mind that Spectrum does not accept multimedia submissions, and that submitting to both journals does not increase the chance of a piece being accepted -- each piece will be judged individually on its merit.
At this time, Spectrum Summer is only accepting submissions from current UCSB undergraduate students. However, our annual edition of Spectrum accepts work from around the world -- find out more and submit here.
Unfortunately, at this time Spectrum Summer is only accepting submissions from current UCSB undergraduate students. However, you are welcome to submit to our annual edition of Spectrum here.
For more information, visit the FAQ in our About US section here, or send us a message at ccs-spectrum@ucsb.edu.