creative writing on environmental justice
Dear Reader,
The author of “The River Forgets Us First” is broadly suspected of employing generative AI in her writing, and she misrepresented herself in a number of ways when submitting to Reckoning. Accordingly, we will no longer be working with this author. We will not be publishing this poem on our website, and we’ll be removing it from future copies . . .
For Reckoning’s next special issue, we are asking for environmental justice flash fiction of 1000 words or less. While we’ll take 1-1200 words, we strongly prefer things in the 500-1000 range. Outside of flash, what we specifically want are weird stories, dark stories, horror stories . . . and yet stories with some bit of hope . . .
In the US this year, we neurodivergent folks have heard a lot about what we cannot do or will never do. Our differences have been increasingly pathologized, demonized, and used to deny us basic respect and decency. Our diagnoses have been dismissed, our personal autonomy, access to medications, and medical care threatened. All because we will never write a . . .
We are extremely pleased to announce that Reckoning has once again secured a substantial operating grant from Accelerate Resilience LA (a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors) for calendar year 2026! It’s been wonderful working with ARLA this past year on our forthcoming special issue on conflict, It Was Paradise, and it was a delight . . .
As she announced recently on social media, Sonia Sulaiman, guest editor for It Was Paradise, Reckoning’s forthcoming special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, has had to step down from that role due to circumstances beyond anybody’s control. We’re profusely grateful for her work on the issue. Our original intention . . .
For the milestone tenth issue of Reckoning, our sixth under fascist misrule, we’re practicing what we preach. Reckoning X will be edited collectively by our entire editorial staff, and it will be themed, broadly, around communication and the ways we communicate about environmental justice.
What brought us to this? How do those of us who grasp the direness . . .
************SUBMISSIONS FOR IT WAS PARADISE ARE NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO SUBMITTED.************
It’s time to announce the call for submissions to It Was Paradise*, a special issue of Reckoning edited by Sonia Sulaiman and with cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo. In a world devastated by catastrophes, we need stories that confront these . . .
The big news I have been murmuring about here and there on social media and elsewhere these past few weeks is finally ready for primetime: Reckoning Press has been awarded a substantial grant from Accelerate Resilience LA!
This generous and largely unlooked-for infusion of support means a lot to us—it feels like a validation of everything we’ve . . .
I hate asking for money. We asked for money in 2022 and it was rough: a lot of work, a lot of feeling sorry for pressuring people in those ridiculously hard times. But we managed, and it let us raise pay rates and put out a special issue we’re proud of.
These times are harder. I can only imagine they’ll get harder still. It seems almost impossible to pick . . .
Let me begin by repeating that Reckoning is actively seeking work by marginalized writers and artists, we would love to publish more work in translation, we pay translators the same rate we pay authors (10 cents a word for prose, $50 per page for poetry and art), and though we are not currently able to review or translate work written in Chinese, Arabic, Russian, . . .