"My dad is a 1987 Casita travel trailer that gave up in rural nowhere. Sixteen feet long, round in the middle, he is hard to reach for, hard to find, and impossible to reconcile."
It's been 10 years since my dad died.
From the archives at @variantlit.bsky.social: variantlit.com/death-of-the...
We're not at AWP but we are reading for our summer issue! Have some poetry or prose ready for us? We're excited to read your work!
Are you sad you're missing AWP? Join our open mic Thursday @ 8:00 pm Eastern!
Wish you could hit the book fair? The hotel bar? Just pile up your 79 unread books you already own by your computer, grab a drink, and get NAWPy!
Check out the new book coming soon from poetry reader (and author of Do Us A Favor) @mrdecember.bsky.social!
Sharing new work from poetry reader @lowermelody.bsky.social
Hey everyone, I know a lot of you are doin' AWP-y shit, but I'd like to direct you to the link here where you can pre-order my debut full length manuscript!!!! 😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮
No cover yet, but you'll see that soon ;-)
matchfactoryeditions.com/books/Its-Ea...
Variant Lit is open for submissions of prose and poetry. Photo by staff member of the moon in the trees in the pacific northwest.
We're open for submissions! Send us your best prose or poetry: variantlit.com/submit/
March goes out like a lamb and comes in with a ton of sub opportunities, so take advantage of a few that just opened:
@rustandmoth.bsky.social
@variantlit.bsky.social
@thetemzreview.bsky.social
@trashcatlit.bsky.social
@sillygoosepress.bsky.social
@necksnapmag.bsky.social
@xraylitmag.bsky.social
Image announces journal Variant Lit is open for submissions, see guidelines on variantlit.com
And just like that, we are open for submissions.
The world needs art and beauty, so send us yours. Guidelines @variantlit.com
Variant Lit open for submissions of poetry, fiction, flash, and speculative.
Submissions are open for our summer issue!
variantlit.submittable.com/submit
A photo of street pavement and white double lines.
It's ACCOMPLISHMENT SUNDAY, fam 💕 Fiction reader @joeyhedger.bsky.social published a new story in @variantlit.bsky.social 💕
NAWP! said the ostrich. Our 4th annual poetry reading (for those unable to attend AWP) March 5th at 7pm
Hey! Don't miss out on the FOMO and poems. Sign up to read here:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Registered to attend (readers & nonreaders) here: www.eventbrite.com/e/nawp-open-...
Division I Boyfriend tells me to stop crying. To be quiet. To sit. He can’t be stressed now. If we lose to State, he might get angry. He might do something. Someone might get hurt. He doesn’t say it, but I know that someone might be me. “That’s how important this is, Babe,” he says. He thrashes fists. “State’s no joke!”
"Everyone Wants to Be Division I" by S. H. Woodgeard
variantlit.com/everyone-wan...
"In the glowing lobby of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, one is to choose one’s skater. Hair type, board. One can even be an alien or Jesus"
"What Thou Lovest Well Remains American" by Jeff Whitney
variantlit.com/what-thou-lo...
Have you read "The Gunshine State" by @joeyhedger.bsky.social from our latest issue yet? It's about going home again, old acquaintances, and who gets to be a hero.
"I don’t trust puns. It’s like they’re always pretending to mean something more but never do."
variantlit.com/the-gunshine...
Tonight!
Excerpt from "Mermua" by Gerardo Mercado "Dear Carm, about your living dead man by the river, I believe you. Puerto Rico has many wonderful things about it—the people, the nature, the food and culture—but its other side, the violent side, the painful and macabre side, is just as real, just as real as us anyway, and, well, last week, I think I saw the devil in the woods."
"Mermua" by Gerardo J. Mercado begins like this! Read the whole story at the link: variantlit.com/mermua/
Terracotta by Lalini Shanela Ranaraja "You’re drinking the wax he’s seethed for you, frothing the stained-glass flute in which his grandmother hoarded lavender talcum. Do you feel guilty yet? The wax is filmy with salt; not his first Saturday frittered with waiting on you, tilted towards the street. Last week the flat was cold and you chipped candles with a blunt butter knife. The bathroom door was bolted..."
From issue 22, read the poem "Terracotta" by Lalini Shanela Ranaraja
variantlit.com/terracotta/
"...just a few months prior it had been summer, and she lay sticky and pregnant on the laminate floor, her baby cooking inside her like a dragon’s egg over coals."
From "Cold Snap," a new short story by @megjnic.bsky.social.
➡️ buff.ly/Uz2mqsr
Shine your flashlight off the pier and see what enters the beam of light 🔦 in "Beacon" by @thewritelifeliz.bsky.social
variantlit.com/beacon/
Heard the sea explain
our own blood through us
Check out this short story by Variant managing editor @megjnic.bsky.social in @therumpus.net ❄️
therumpus.net/2026/02/23/c...
Read a poem today! "Ley Lines" by Nick Daoust
variantlit.com/ley-lines/
still so thankful to @adrianf.bsky.social for including me in this collection of snow poems from December:
stratfordcrier.com/a-kind-of-sn...
He unwraps the egg and cress sandwich from its wax paper but doesn’t eat it. Outside, the town rolls past in rows of red-brick terraces. A small boy drags a stick along the ground, scratching a line into the heart of the sidewalk. A black-and-white border collie tied to a lamppost with a bright red scarf in place of a leash. Its head tilts as it watches the brown pods of a laburnum tree fall.
Get lost in the striking details of "Back in the Tall Grass" from @chrissystegmanpoet.bsky.social
variantlit.com/back-in-the-...
He would like to / oil it, wipe it down, hear the action.
roadkill season by Kathy Jiang i want to be teeth to teeth, i said yesterday. with you. out of love, you took it as language more languid in its absurdity than alarmingly, routinely urgent. when we touched in the first year, i thought i would bite right through your face: rabid, carefree rabbit, unaware of the dead...
Read the poem "roadkill season" by Kathy Jiang, from issue 22
variantlit.com/roadkill-sea...
Looking for a place to submit your prose, poetry, CNF, or art? phoebe journal is accepting submissions up to March 8th!🕺
Thanks for sending us this wonderful story!
Excerpt from the story "You Deserve This" by Nicholas Claro: "Beckett’s eyes are deep green. Like his mother’s, a deep jade. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but in the initial months after his mother and I separated, there were times I’d notice a physical feature they share—primarily their eyes—and find myself resenting him, resenting the resemblance."
Have you read "You Deserve This" by @nicholas-claro.bsky.social from the latest issue of Variant? Read this story about a powerful moment between a father and son
variantlit.com/you-deserve-...
