Submissions to AZURE
We love work that is linguistically, intellectually, and emotionally demanding of the reader. We want literary fiction that grows in complexity upon each visitation; we enjoy ornate, cerebral, and voluptuous prose executed with thematic intent. Writers we admire are Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Dickens, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Milton, Aphra Behn, Herman Melville, and Italo Calvino.
We are not concerned with genre distinctions—send us the best you have; we want only for it to be thoughtful, intelligent, and beautiful. All writers tend to develop a scrap heap of brilliant writing - sharp dialogue that has been cut in service of a plot, a philosophical tirade that can't quite be couched in a narrative, a stunning imagistic landscape of linguistic pyrotechnics that deserves an audience... Literary beauty exists in more than the conventional narrative, we believe, and the most cerebral moments cannot necessarily be expressed in more than bursts and fragments. We would love to provide a space for those portions of works that have been cut away through no fault of their own.
Here are some wise words by Zadie Smith--a delight in themselves--that gesture to the sort of writing that dazzles us:
We are not concerned with genre distinctions—send us the best you have; we want only for it to be thoughtful, intelligent, and beautiful. All writers tend to develop a scrap heap of brilliant writing - sharp dialogue that has been cut in service of a plot, a philosophical tirade that can't quite be couched in a narrative, a stunning imagistic landscape of linguistic pyrotechnics that deserves an audience... Literary beauty exists in more than the conventional narrative, we believe, and the most cerebral moments cannot necessarily be expressed in more than bursts and fragments. We would love to provide a space for those portions of works that have been cut away through no fault of their own.
Here are some wise words by Zadie Smith--a delight in themselves--that gesture to the sort of writing that dazzles us:
"What is a cliche except language passed down by Das Mann, used and shop-soiled by so many before you, and in no way the correct jumble of language for the intimate part of your vision you meant to express? With a cliche you have pandered to a shared understanding, you have taken a short-cut, you have re-presented what was pleasing and familiar rather than risked what was true and strange. It is an aesthetic and an ethical failure: to put it very simply, you have not told the truth. When writers admit to failures they like to admit to the smallest ones - for example, in each of my novels somebody "rummages in their purse" for something because I was too lazy and thoughtless and unawake to separate "purse" from its old, persistent friend "rummage". To rummage through a purse is to sleepwalk through a sentence - a small enough betrayal of self, but a betrayal all the same. To speak personally, the very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life. But it is easy to admit that a sentence makes you wince; less easy to confront the fact that for many writers there will be paragraphs, whole characters, whole books through which one sleepwalks and for which "inauthentic" is truly the correct term." - Zadie Smith
If your submission is accepted, we will digest the writing and create in its honor a unified artistic product: That is to say, every piece published in AZURE appears alongside a customized black & white sketch that is devised and executed by our contributing illustrator, Evgenia Barsheva (see examples here).
Guidelines
We accept literary fiction, creative non-fiction, excerpts, screenplays, stageplays, fragments, meanderings, philosophy and poetry.
Your submission should not exceed 50 single-spaced pages.
For the time being, we are not publishing any works that have been created partially or entirely through the use of AI.
If your submission is part of a novel-length work or feature-length screenplay, there exists the possibility of publishing it in installments in future issues. In this case, please indicate your intentions in your cover letter.
In order to keep our platform accessible to the greatest number of voices, we do not charge a reading fee for submissions.
To get a sense of our style, you can read past issues of AZURE in our online quarterly here or order the annual print anthologies from our Library Shop.
Selection process
We base our publication decisions solely on our gut emotional and intellectual response to the work and whether its style/wisdom furthers the overall mission of AZURE; this is to say, we don't look at your cover letter until after the fact, when we become curious as to what sort of mind has wrought the compelling piece that appears before us.
To submit to AZURE, use the Submittable form below.
Guidelines
We accept literary fiction, creative non-fiction, excerpts, screenplays, stageplays, fragments, meanderings, philosophy and poetry.
Your submission should not exceed 50 single-spaced pages.
For the time being, we are not publishing any works that have been created partially or entirely through the use of AI.
If your submission is part of a novel-length work or feature-length screenplay, there exists the possibility of publishing it in installments in future issues. In this case, please indicate your intentions in your cover letter.
In order to keep our platform accessible to the greatest number of voices, we do not charge a reading fee for submissions.
To get a sense of our style, you can read past issues of AZURE in our online quarterly here or order the annual print anthologies from our Library Shop.
Selection process
We base our publication decisions solely on our gut emotional and intellectual response to the work and whether its style/wisdom furthers the overall mission of AZURE; this is to say, we don't look at your cover letter until after the fact, when we become curious as to what sort of mind has wrought the compelling piece that appears before us.
To submit to AZURE, use the Submittable form below.
