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 of our situation—as a species, as a global community—convey or fail to convey that to others? These are dauntingly complex questions, and it’s clear the familiar solutions fall catastrophically short. Show us new answers, new framings. Reach for the weird tools, the neglected ones. Show us how journalism should work. Tell us stories about stories. Illuminate the economic structures behind our educational institutions and the walls against understanding that dog our international borders. Interpret the data for us, then interpret the interpreters. Let’s crack open the ways knowledge is produced and spread amid late-stage capitalism.
We’re seeking art, poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction up to 15,000 words in length, in particular from Indigenous, Black, Brown, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent and/or otherwise marginalized writers and artists from everywhere. Payment will be 10 15 cents per word (US) for prose, $50 $75 per page for poetry and art. Deadline for this issue is the autumnal solar equinox, September 22, 2025. Read the full guidelines and submit your work here.
After the autumnal equinox, for the first time ever, Reckoning will temporarily close to submissions. Ten years is a long time. An open call for creative writing on environmental justice constitues a torrent of ideas as well as raw emotions—anxiety, grief, loss, anger as well as love and hope. We’ve learned so much, but our readers deserve a break. We’ll reopen in 2026 with updated guidelines and a new format.
