GENERAL READING PERIOD
APOGEE is launching our new digital vertical, Freedom Meridian. This is a dedicated platform for currently and formerly incarcerated folks to share their creative writing; an opportunity to reach across manufactured borders to create an expansive literary community. We encourage writers to read Inside/Out, Apogee’s first issue exclusively featuring incarcerated writers, and our open letter from the editors of Freedom Meridian. We also welcome you to peruse Perigee work to get a sense of the style of writing we generally publish.
We publish poetry (1-3 poems at a time), fiction, personal essays, excerpts (prose should be no more than 6000 words), and experimental work. We are seeking strong, polished pieces that linger a while after a reading; we are also open to interviews and reviews of other distinctive writers and topics tackling injustice and social stratification. Manuscripts submitted here should show a strong sense of the writer’s voice and be a full draft as near as possible to being publication-ready. Each piece submitted should have your name and title of the piece on every page
We accept simultaneous submissions but please do notify us immediately if your work gets accepted for publication elsewhere.
We accept submissions on a rolling basis via snail mail to the PO Box listed below, or through any prison messaging service – GTL, Getting Out, Securus, etc. We rely on our partners to spread our submissions call to their inside contacts and help us bridge the barriers to publishing access created by incarceration. Email us freedommeridian@apogeejournal.org to get our messaging account information and/or facilitate connections between us and your incarcerated peer. We will do everything we can to ensure everyone who wants to submit to Apogee can do so. We will respond to every submission received, and we appreciate your patience with our small team.
We offer a standard rate of $115 per accepted submission – the same amount offered to all Apogee writers regardless of incarceration stats. We will work with a trusted contact of each contracted writer and artist to confer payments in a timely matter – in most cases prior to publication. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us in advance if you have questions on behalf of someone inside who’d like to submit to us.
Mailing address for submissions:
Freedom Meridian Editors
Apogee Journal
447 Broadway, 2nd Floor Suite #629
New York, New York 10013
United States
YEARNING: A Special Folio for the Lovers
In addition to our general rolling reading period, we also welcome work for a themed folio, YEARNING, which will be published in February 2025 and by our inside editors Meech and Paris. Deadline to submit: postmarked on/by 01/04/2025.
Valentine’s heart is actively adored, loved, and sometimes troubled. Love is more than red ribbons, roses, and candy. Love is a letter explaining a long yearning or a first meeting story; love is an argument that leads to heartbreak, a true Valentine on a quest; love is however YOU express it for our special Valentine’s Day Digital Folio. We want the emotional turns, the ups and downs of shared spirits. We want your best writing on those details, loved ones, and experiences your heart cries out for. We at Freedom Meridian want to read your poems, short stories, and essays that give meaning to all forms of yearning.
Send up to 5 poems, short stories 3500-5000 words, or essays up to 1200 words.
TIME & SPACE: A Folio by Freedom Meridian’s Inaugural Inside Editors, Meech and Paris
In addition to our general rolling reading period, we also welcome work for a themed folio, TIME & SPACE, which will be published in Summer 2025. Deadline to submit: postmarked on/by 03/01/2025.
TIME and SPACE. Two integral components that rely on each other, yet there are moments where a time can no longer be reached from the spaces we find ourselves in. We are looking for short stories, essays, and poems where both TIME and SPACE work against each other, as main characters, as more than just constructs. Think of birth, a season, a New Year; a sickness, an experience that changed you, disrupted the solid ground that told you when and where you are. What ending or beginnings do you notice that may signal the end of an era, of systems, of ideas that may never exist in the same SPACE and TIME again?
Send up to 3-5 poems; Short stories 3500-5000 words; essays 1500-3000 words.