rhizomag
rhizomag is launching soon. Our literary magazine will publish work that explores the pulsating plights and pleasures of grief, isolation, and transmutation. Inspired by the principles of reciprocity, endurance, and interconnectedness found in nature, rhizomag exists to cultivate a literary community where stories grow and heal us, or they don’t. We want your sheltered and invulnerable parts. We also want your gritty, muddy, grubby bits. We want your sorrow and your rage as much as we want your pleasure and your joy.Submissions for our inaugural issue are open until November 30th. Scroll down for details.
Submissions
We welcome submissions in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.- Prose submissions should be limited to 1,500 words, while poetry may include up to 3 poems or 5 pages in total.
- Submissions in Spanish or Spanglish are encouraged.
- Please include a brief author bio with your submission.
- The deadline for submissions is November 30th.
- Selected works will be featured in our inaugural issue, launching in early January 2025.Join us in crafting a creative space where stories reveal, flow, and unfold.Submit your work HERE.
About
rhizomag founders and editors Karlié Rodríguez and Melissa Alvarado Sierra first crossed paths at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where they began as student and teacher. Both Puerto Rican writers–from Mayagüez and Cayey, respectively–they bonded over their shared passion for storytelling. Over time, their connection deepened into a friendship built on mutual respect and a desire to seek out literature that defies convention and embraces raw emotion. Through rhizomag, they aim to co-create a space that highlights the voices of writers historically underrepresented in literature and publishes compelling narratives in English, Spanish, and Spanglish.Karlié Rodríguez (she/her/hers) is a writer, translator, and scholar from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. She is a PhD candidate at Emory University, where she is completing a dissertation on Puerto Rican cultural production in the aftermath of Hurricane María. A former Book Project Fellow, Rodríguez now teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where she leads courses on confessional writing, grief, and disability narratives. Her work can be found in Rogue Agent, Evento Horizonte, The Dewdrop, and elsewhere. Her hybrid memoir, which chronicles the loss of her mother in the wake of Hurricane María through writing, images, and sound, is currently under revision. As a late-diagnosed autistic woman, Rodríguez advocates for creating inclusive spaces in both academia and the arts. She currently co-hosts the Libros Colaos podcast and co-curates the Libros Colaos Bookstagram. You can connect with her on Instagram @thekingkarliewrites or @libroscolaos, and on X @thekingkarlie.Karlié says:
I am drawn to experimental, genre-bending narratives that celebrate the strange, the uncanny, and the ugly. I love writing that plays with grammar, syntax, and language—especially when it reconfigures form, temporality, and affect. Give me irony and satire! Give me weird narrators: objects, animals, and abstractions that defy subalternity by speaking back. I want to read not about the eye, but about the gaze. I want your longing, all your ephemera. I want to yearn with you. I want to hear not why you cried about that thing that broke you, but from the teardrop you cried, and why it had to be that much saltier than the others. I want to be face-to-face with that memory—yes, that one. I want to hate what you hate and love what you love. Tell me about the moment that reconfigured your insides. Tell me how it felt to feel your rage. Tell me how it shattered you when nobody believed you. Tell me. I believe you.Melissa Alvarado Sierra (she/her/hers) is a Puerto Rican writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Orion Magazine, Atticus Review, Catapult, and other publications. She contributed a chapter on environmental justice in Vieques, Puerto Rico, to The World We Need (The New Press, 2021), and published her first book, La narrativa activista de Rosario Ferré (McGraw-Hill Spain), in 2020. Melissa holds a master’s degree in Latin American literature, an MFA in writing, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Caribbean literature. She was a Book Project fellow at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where she later taught personal essay and memoir courses for years. She is pitching her first poetry collection, a memoir in verse about life at sea, and writing an autobiographical novel that revisits her childhood in a violent public school, the gang violence that permeated her neighborhood, and the disorienting, often traumatizing, transition to an elite private school where she struggled with the racism and classism of the privileged. Connect with her on Instagram @melissacaribe and on X @melissawriting.Melissa says:
I want the stories that stick to your ribs—the ones you can’t shake off. Show me how memory lives in the body, how it resurfaces when you’re alone or when you thought you had buried it for good. Don’t just tell me who you or your characters are—let me see the shift, the unraveling. Let myth and folklore hum beneath it all to make it more real. I want to see the moments when you laughed, even though you expected to cry, or felt relief when you knew you weren’t supposed to. I’m here for all of it.
Contact us
Write to us at [email protected]-Publication Policy:We value originality and do not accept previously published works or those generated by artificial intelligence, unless AI is used in a creative, ethical, and transparent manner. We reserve the right to make minor edits with the author’s consent and to withdraw content that violates our guidelines. Please contact us on or before November 30, 2024, if you wish to retract your work.
If you agree to publish your work with rhizomag, the magazine retains exclusive rights to the work for one month after publication. After this period, rights revert to the author. The magazine reserves the right to promote your work in digital formats, such as social media and our website, and/or in print indefinitely, unless a prior agreement is reached. We kindly ask that rhizomag be credited as the original place of publication if the work is republished. At this time, we do not offer monetary compensation.