From the Verge 2027 editorial team
Verge is an anthology published by Monash University Publishing. The 2027 edition is now accepting submissions for the theme Ghosts.
What is still here, even after it is gone?
Ghosts can take many forms: a person, a place, a memory, a landscape, an image, an animal, a story, or a version of ourselves we have left behind.
As Emily Dickinson wrote, “One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—”. Her lines, published posthumously, illustrate the captivating power of ghosts. The word ghost, like the idea of ghosts themselves, is not static. Over time its meaning has shifted, from noun to verb, as a phantom shifts between two worlds.
We are interested in what haunts us, but also in what we leave behind. What does a place remember? What happens when memories are changed, lost, or made artificial? What traces of ourselves remain online? How are new technologies creating new kinds of presence, absence, and memory? What disappears without our noticing?
Do you have a ghost story knocking around inside you? In our new world order of artificial intelligence, have you been contemplating the ghost in the machine? Do you write in order to sit with what remains?
The latest issue of Verge invites creative writing that engages with “Ghosts” in the broadest sense: literal hauntings, or ghosts of memory, inheritance, or place/land, as well as the traces of emotional unfinished business. We’re looking for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that explores what lingers, the traces people and places leave behind.
Guidelines
We welcome submissions from all writers in Australia. We’re looking for previously unpublished short fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, experimental or hybrid works,
Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction
No more than 2500 words length.
Poetry
Up to 35 Lines
You may submit up to three works in one document. Simultaneous submissions will be considered but please let us know if your work has been accepted elsewhere.
AI submissions are not welcome. You will be asked to sign a “No Gen AI” declaration.
Submitting
Submissions close December 13th,11:59 pm AEDT.
You can send us submission via our submissions form: https://forms.gle/9dTkiQqnSg8XvDmS9
Please attach your submission in a google doc or .docx format.
Please also ensure you have filled out all fields (your email, name, contact details, and a brief author bio of no more than 50 words) before hitting submit.
If you are a student at Monash University, please also indicate whether you are undergraduate or postgraduate.
Successful submissions will be published in print and online (epub), and the work will be published on an open access basis online two years after first publication.
Further information will be provided to those with successful submissions.
Image credit
Erik Müller, Unsplash
