SWING is home for the emerging writer to the renowned, the discovered to the too-long neglected. We are creating a magazine with the energy and verve of its home city, Nashville, a town of vagabonds and roots, where new influences course through the old.

So make your mark with us! SWING wants the poetry, fiction (auto-, hybrid, very short, or regular but extraordinary), nonfiction (creative, travel, personal, hybrid, surely there are other variations), and comics that could only have been written by you. Because, even though art is not confession (and we firmly believe this), reading is intimate. We want to hear your voice, your complex, messy human voice, in our ears as we lean back. Then we want to be pushed. We read for that moment of flight, where we have no idea where we are going, but trust the hand on our backs pushing higher. This is hard to explain, most important things are, but don’t send us anything as-good-as—send us your best.

Like the thriving organization it’s rooted in, SWING will have regional identity and national sway. The Porch in Nashville is a gathering place for writers all over the country to read together, write together, share resources, find help, and revel in the joy of the made thing. The Porch provides an ecosystem for writers at any stage in their practice; publication is a natural progression. If you are a Porch poet, story-writer, essayist, or graphic storyteller (student or teacher) Swing wants to hear from you. If you are from a marginalized or underrepresented community, we want to hear your voice. We are committed to being responsive to issues of equity and inclusion on all fronts.

Forms of flight:

*Poetry (up to 5 poems, all types and length)

*Fiction (up to 8000 words; see above for various types; in general, we are not looking for sci-fi or fantasy)

*Nonfiction (up to 8000 words; see above for the various types)

*Comics (For our first few issues we’re looking for comics in black and white. We are hoping to move into more developed graphic storytelling. And remember, we come out only twice a year; the political is ephemeral—thank heavens—and comics that only work on a political level might not land three months after the reference.)

The guy-wires:

*We only consider unpublished work. If it has been in an online zine, in an anthology, book or chapbook we will not consider it for SWING.

*We do not receive submissions through email or post, only through Submittable.

*Per reading period, we will consider only one prose piece and one poetry submission per author. Please group all poems (up to 5) in one submission. Multiple submissions in one genre will be returned.

*All files must be saved in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or Plain Text (.txt) formats. Please don’t get fancy with fonts or otherwise gild the lily.

*Simultaneous submissions are fine.

*We want, as much as possible, a direct, unchoreographed experience with your writing. Please do not include your name on the manuscript, in the title of the manuscript (that you enter on Submittable), or in the name of the saved file.

*If you have work submitted to us that has been accepted for publication elsewhere, please let us know immediately by adding a note to your poetry submission on Submittable (if one poem out of the batch needs to be withdrawn) or by withdrawing the submission through Submittable.

*We cannot respond personally to every submission.

* We will try our best to respond within three months, but please be patient. If we have to respond to queries about the progress of the manuscript, that takes us away from the reading. All responses will be through Submittable.

*Trust the system (I know, I know—until it breaks down). If Submittable sends a confirmation, don’t double back and email us to make sure.