We are locked in with climate change. Should the seas rise as predicted, our beloved navigational hazard in Boston Harbor will no longer exist except as an abandoned beacon, the sea rolling over the bones of pirates and mutineers.

We are looking for work that addresses, directly, or indirectly, climate change and humanity’s impact on the environment. We are not looking for solutions or predictions, though they are welcome, we are looking for work that reminds us that without our polluting devices we would not be who we are and how we must accept that responsibility in the best way we can. We must not be one of W.S. Merwin’s Last Ones

The ones that were left went away to live if it would let them.
They went as far as they could.
The lucky ones with their shadows.*

We are happy to have Hannah Larrabee join us as Guest Editor for this issue. Hannah’s Wonder Tissue won the Airlie Press Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for a Massachusetts Book Award. She has chapbooks out from Seven Kitchens Press and Nixes Mate. Hannah was selected by NASA to write poetry for the James Webb Space Telescope program, and she’s a recipient of an Arctic Circle Residency. She’ll be sailing around Svalbard with artists and scientists in October. Hannah studied poetry with Charles Simic at The University of New Hampshire. (non-binary: she/they)  hannahlarrabee.com

The submission period for our Climate Change themed double issue Issue 21/22 · Fall/Winter 2021/22 runs August 15 – November 15. The issue will come out on or about January 1, 2022.

Please submit no more than five poems, or one short story (no more than 2000 words), or two short-short stories (less than 500 words is ideal), or one creative non-fiction piece (no more than 3000 words). We insist that you send multiple pieces in a single file, and, most important, we insist that you start a new poem, or piece on a new page. Please add a 50-word or less bio. We allow simultaneous submissions so long as you notify us if your work has been accepted elsewhere.

If you have not heard from us within a reasonable amount of time (2-3 months), a gentle query as to the status of your submission should suffice to get our attention.

Though, at this time, we can not pay anything other than our undying gratitude and appreciation, we ask for first North American serial rights only. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. Acceptance will be for our quarterly online issues, with consideration for the annual “best of” print edition.

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Nixes Mate does NOT accept unsolicited manuscripts for its book series. Thank you.

Cover image by Robert L. Sheridan, used with permission.
* The Last One – W.S. Merwin, from The Lice (Macmillan, 1967) 
and The Second Four Books of Poems(Copper Canyon Press, 1992)