Volume 73, Number 2, our fall issue, is out! Subscribers and contributors should be receiving their copies soon; click through to buy a print copy for ten bucks or a PDF for seven. www.epochliterary.com/shop
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Fiction, poetry, essay, comics, etc., “yrs in quality literature” since 1947. www.epochliterary.com
As an alarming number of writers have already noticed, we are open for submissions to issue 74.1! Subs continue through August but we are racing towards our paid sub cap of 1250. Send us something good!
EPOCH Magazine Submission Manager
We are open for electronic submissions only during the months of August and January. Each submission costs $3, and a portion of each fee, after processing costs, is donated to the Cornell Prison Educa...
epoch.submittable.com
The Smart Search List of the Day is: Paying Literary Flash Fiction feat. @epochliterary.com @theiowareview.bsky.social @westbranchmagazine.bsky.social @littleengines.bsky.social et al. https://duotrope.com...
Smart Search List of the Day
The Smart Search List of the Day is: Paying Literary Flash Fiction feat. @epochliterary.com @theiowareview.bsky.social @westbranchmagazine.bsky.social @littleengines.bsky.social et al. https://duotrope.com/search/smart/fiction/paying-literary-flash-fiction-dtQTdu2X
duotrope.com
...and here's a new craft piece from assistant poetry editor Samantha Samakande. "If listlessness or boredom threatens to make a meal of you, stare into its dank, gaping mouth, and even if it means letting it have its course."
One Poet’s Pep Talk to Herself — EPOCH
Rembrandt, Seated Young Woman Reading, c. 1639-40 Courage might mean sitting in solitude for hours, with nothing to do but have faith that somewhere on a back burner in your mind, an idea isbrewing....
epochliterary.com
Two new posts up on the blog today, as we prepare for our August submission period! First, assistant fiction editor Fia Zhang Swanson interviews novelist Banana Yoshimoto. "Writing novels is neither fun nor therapy for me."
Interview: Banana Yoshimoto — EPOCH
“If you depict the sensory world deeply enough, there is a place where everyone stands on the same horizon. There, the reader is alone, yet sharing the same sensations as the author. This can ease the...
epochliterary.com
...and check out our homepage for a look at the cover and TOC of our new issue, 73.2, out in a couple of weeks www.epochliterary.com
We're happy to announce this year's Michael Koch Memorial Editors in poetry and fiction, Tacey M. Atsitty and Adam O'Fallon Price! They'll be working on 74.1 and 74.2 over the next year. Click through for more info about these great writers.
The 2026-27 Koch Memorial Editors: Tacey M. Atsitty and Adam O’Fallon Price — EPOCH
Read about the 2026-27 Koch Memorial Editors, Tacey M. Atsitty and Adam O’Fallon Price
epochliterary.com
"I will never use it, of course, because I like making things, and I don’t hate myself, even when the things I make don’t turn out so good. If you hate yourself and everything you do, you will love AI, because it negates the self, and when you use it, you are doing nothing."
EPOCH@epochliterary.com · 3w ago73.2 is at the printer, and 74.1 opens for submissions in two weeks! Please note we have a new AI policy that you can read on our submission page (TL;DR: we don't want AI-generated text), and a blog post from our editor on the subject, linked below.
This is well worth a read even if you’re already convinced LLMs are a boondoggle
EPOCH@epochliterary.com · 3w ago73.2 is at the printer, and 74.1 opens for submissions in two weeks! Please note we have a new AI policy that you can read on our submission page (TL;DR: we don't want AI-generated text), and a blog post from our editor on the subject, linked below.
73.2 is at the printer, and 74.1 opens for submissions in two weeks! Please note we have a new AI policy that you can read on our submission page (TL;DR: we don't want AI-generated text), and a blog post from our editor on the subject, linked below.
On AI, in EPOCH and Elsewhere — EPOCH
Human beings are made to be moved. We respond to patterns. AI generates patterns. When there is nothing of substance there, we use our imagination to fill in whatever will give us what we need. It’s n...
epochliterary.com
Today on the blog: assistant editor Hafsa Zulfiqar interviews poet I. S. Jones about her new book BLOODMERCY: "I have always loved declarative lines in a poem, especially as a woman, there is a very strong and commanding power and being able to say something and then it is so."
Interview: I. S. Jones — EPOCH
This past November, I had the pleasure of speaking to the amazing I.S. Jones over the phone. I first discovered Jones in the summer of 2023 when I had the opportunity to study under her for a five-wee...
epochliterary.com
...and here's a very funny new half-memoir, half-craft-essay, "Jumpsuits," from Otis Fuqua: "We are all, always, writing the characters of ourselves."
Jumpsuits — EPOCH
For me, a masc man with a masc background and a masc wardrobe, a women’s jumpsuit is a sartorial leap. It shows my butt more than I’m used to, suggests I am perhaps more genderqueer than I usually am,...
epochliterary.com
Two new blog posts up today as we prepare to open for subs in August! First, Zibusiso Mpofu writes about Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera: "A woman of secrets, she never disclosed anything to anyone."
Re-Aliving Yvonne Vera: A Review of Petal Thoughts, a Biography of Yvonne Vera by Her Mother Ericah Gwetai — EPOCH
She could not write the way she wanted to while abroad. She needed to be home, close to her people. In many ways one cannot tell the story of Vera without talking about the city from which she hails, ...
epochliterary.com
New post up on the blog: Fia Swanson's excellent review of Katie Kitamura's novel Audition: "To Kitamura, our agency—and the agency of her characters—is mostly an illusion."
Review: Audition by Katie Kitamura — EPOCH
To Kitamura, our agency—and the agency of her characters—is mostly an illusion. “It is proof of the lulling quality of narrative,”Kitamura has said , that we think we have a great deal of choices. He...
epochliterary.com
We've just added Timi Sanni's lovely review of Gbenga Adesina's collection Death Does Not End at the Sea. Timi: "For the speaker of Adesina’s poems, there is a silence in the language of the dead that must ring out in the song of the living."
The Memory of Water: a Review of Gbenga Adesina’s Death Does Not End at the Sea — EPOCH
The images evoke a profound sense of displacement that unmistakably recalls the Middle Passage—the forced transatlantic crossing that carried millions of enslaved Africans into the Americas. That hist...
epochliterary.com
New on the blog: Lara Stecewycz's interview with Askold Melnyczuk: "A poem must carry the nourishment in every line—even if the morsel of meaning can't itself be contained by a single line or stanza. The whole must feel somehow inevitable."
Interview: Askold Melnyczuk — EPOCH
“When I was about nine I contracted an illness—eventually diagnosed as pericarditis (water around the heart) which kept me from attending school for over two years. […] This unstructured time gave me ...
epochliterary.com
Our apologies, we aren't tabling at AWP this year due to a bureaucratic snafu. But the new issue is up for sale, PDF or print! And if you see one of our editors wandering tableless around the hall, give 'em a high five
Volume 73, Number 1 — EPOCH
Volume 73, Number 1. D.M. Aderibigbe, Hussain Ahmed, Miriam Åkervall, Amir Ahmadi Arian, Jill Barrie, Alexandra Bernhardt, Shlagha Borah, TR Brady, Hedgie Choi, Brock Clarke, Kami Enzie, Ana Emilia Fe...
epochliterary.com
"Danger Music", a poem by Aldo Amparán https://poems.com/poem/danger-music/ via @epochliterary.com and @poetrydaily.bsky.social
Writing this unhinged and personal body horror story healed a little something in me. Very grateful to @epochliterary.com and especially @jrobertlennon.com for embracing the weirdness and editing with such kindness. Print and online copies now available at epochliterary.com.
Our Spring 2026 issue will be out in February! It's absolutely packed, and has a special section of translated poetry, prose poetry, and fiction.
...and assistant fiction editor Sijing Yang interviews poet and essayist Ishion Hutchinson. "There’s probably one corner of heaven where there's no distinction between writers and poets and dramatists and painters."
Interview: Ishion Hutchinson — EPOCH
“I think that the writer’s failure drawer must be deeper than the success’s. Because you have to go through it. Whatever it is that comes upon the writer to bring it out, maybe it’s just duty because ...
epochliterary.com
Today we have TWO new interviews with poets up on the blog. First, assistant poetry editor Gerardo Azpiri Iglesias interviews Richie Hofmann. "As a poet I am creating an aesthetic world."
Interview: Richie Hofmann — EPOCH
“I think there's a reader who might read my work and think oh my gosh, this is shocking and very naked! And you might have another reader read the same poems and say these are so prudish and buttoned-...
epochliterary.com
The answer to shit like this, no matter how politely/sensitively put, should always be a resounding Fuck You
Not to pick on EBSCO, who we enjoy working with, because I'm sure all distributors of print and digital media will be doing the same thing. But this is appalling and everyone should say no. For one thing, we don't have the rights to this work after we publish...it reverts to the writers!
Today on the blog, a new review of Domenica Martinello's poetry collection GOOD WANT, from assistant poetry editor Bridget Huh: poetry "that knows just the right things to ask and not ask, that has the immense and unknowable power to forgive." www.epochliterary.com/blog/review-...
