The Association for Mormon Letters is delighted to announce that after a five-year hiatus we are re-launching our literary magazine Irreantum as an online publication. Submissions for the first issue are open from now through April 30, 2018, at midnight (PDT).
The Association for Mormon Letters started Irreantum in 1999. The name comes from a Book of Mormon term meaning “many waters”: it was chosen to show that the journal would welcome many different types of writing by, for, or about Mormons. Over the years, Irreantum has published poetry, essays, short stories, plays, reviews, and literary criticism—in a variety of styles, from historical to speculative, realistic to surreal.
Since the journal’s founding in 1999, advances in technology have made it easier for writers of Mormon literature in all its forms to find each other and an audience. As we move Irreantum’s publication online, we hope you’ll join us by submitting your work, finding pieces you enjoy, and sharing with friends.
Irreantum will feature a rotating cast of issue and department editors. This will not only help avoid staff burnout and lead to a more sustainable publication, but it will also allow for different editorial interests and voices to be guide the magazine, which we hope will lead to Irreantum attracting a wide variety of voices and narrative forms. We invite you to be one of those voices.
The first issue will be edited by William Morris and will accept submissions of short fiction, poetry, and personal/literary essay. Sarah Dunster will serve as poetry editor. A website for Irreantum is in the works and will be available soon, but for now, submissions guidelines can be found here. A second issue will appear in fall/winter and will be edited by Theric Jepson. The submissions window for it will be announced soon.
While we’re limiting the first issue to just the short story, poetry, and essay forms, we hope to include more narrative art forms and a variety of genres in future issues, including the possibility of themed issues.
We hope you’ll join us in this next phase of Irreantum.
Have questions? Ask them in the comments below or contact the editorial team at irreantum.editor@gmail.com.
And also:
I’m looking forward to the re-launch. Will this be in an e-reader format, such as epub or mobi?
Not this first issue, gc. We’ve considered offering ebook formats as a subscription, but we just don’t have the volunteer and financial structure yet to make that easily happen.
Any updates on this? Summer’s coming to an end and you owe us an update on what’s happening.
Thanks for the prod, Liz. I do owe an update. Which is: all the stories, essays, and poetry have been selected and everyone who submitted has heard from the editors. Sarah has completed edits on the poetry, but I haven’t provided feedback to our short story and essay contributors. The summer got away from me, unfortunately.
I will get the feedback done and we will be re-launching Irreantum. And we will also soon have information on the submissions window for the next issue.
Oh, thank goodness. I was so disappointed when Irreantum quit publishing. A special thanks to those of you who are contributing your expertise and time.