Brevity

We invite brief nonfiction (750 words or fewer) submissions that consider aspects of transgender, gender-nonconforming, and gender-expansive experience: what it is, what it means, and how our understanding of trans identity and culture has changed and continues to change over time. We are seeking essays that explore how gender identity can shift over the course of a life, and how the way we identify shapes the way we experience ourselves and others. Included work may explore trans embodiment, examine encounters with transphobia, and/or otherwise give voice to underrepresented perspectives and experiences.

Submissions for this special issue will open from December 1st through April 30th 2023. The issue will be published in January of 2024. Upon acceptance, Brevity asks for first serial rights, as well as the possibility of publishing your essay in a future anthology; all subsequent rights revert immediately to the author. Writers will be paid a $45 honorarium for work selected.

• We seldom publish previously published work, but we aren't ruling it out. Please let us know if your essay has appeared previously, and where it has appeared.
• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please alert us — by withdrawing your submission — as soon as possible if your essay has been accepted by another venue.
• Multiple submissions are fine, so long as each essay is submitted separately.
• Submissions should be formatted as seen on our Brevity site (single space, no indentation, space between paragraphs unless alternate formatting is a specific design element of the essay).
• Because Brevity is committed to including a spectrum of trans experiences, we want to ensure financial hardship is not an obstacle to submitting. If Brevity's small submission fee of $3.00 would prevent you from submitting, you may submit your work here (as a .docx file) without paying that fee: brevitymag+gender@gmail.com.

Brevity publishes well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or less) essay form.  In his preface to In Short, Bernard Cooper suggests that flash nonfiction “requires an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens ... until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.” We fully agree. We are looking for essays with vivid detail, strong voice, and no wasted words.

Upon acceptance, we ask for first serial rights, as well as the possibility of publishing your work in a future anthology; all subsequent rights revert immediately to the author. Authors will be paid a $45 honorarium for work selected.

We seldom publish previously published work, but we aren't ruling it out. Please let us know if your essay has appeared previously, and where it has appeared.

Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please alert us — by withdrawing your submission — as soon as possible if your essay has been taken by another venue. Multiple submissions are fine, but please break them up into separate submissions. We attempt to respond to all submissions within 45 to 60 days.

Submissions should be formatted as seen on our Brevity site (single space, no indentation, space between paragraphs/unless alternate formatting is a specific design element of the essay).