Literature has been fully commoditized. A book exists only as a unit of value. The success of a story is measured by its ability to be consumed. How many readers did it touch? How many publishers thought they could make money off of it? How many mentions did it garner in the hot take industrial complex?
Self-publishing was meant to solve this problem, to broaden the realm of acceptable literary posibility. But it has only exacerbated it. Now, we can all become our own storyfarms. Analyze the genre for trends and themes. Bend the plot to the tastes of the reader in real time. Give them more of what they already love. The customer's always right.
WordArt is the belief that through true literary experimentation, we can break the hold of capital on literature's fate. This is not an attempt to return to some mythic heyday when literature was art without commerce. That is an imagined past. We are here to look forward to what literature could be. What we can discover when we're willing to put all conventions aside and let art lead.
We publish the un-marketable experiments. Experiments in form, in language, in genre. Stories that no longer function as stories. Metafiction, cybertext, found fiction, multimedia. Forms and functions we've never imagined. Any guidelines we add to this list immediately collapses the possibilities into a genre. Break the guidelines. Show us what we mean by experimental.
Writing like this will never grant you notoriety. Thank God. Your work will die in obscurity. Here's a box to put it in. May we all fade to black doing something that mattered.
WordArt is a biannual anthology of experimental fiction, published in print, digital, and hybrid form.
Call for Submissions Summer 2026
Our inaugural open call centers around one word: revival. This theme is not meant to restrict but rather to guide your experimentation. Interpret it as you see fit. Religion, technology, fashion, necromancy. Whatever revival means to you, however it inspires you to wield the tools of form, medium, language, and theme together to make us feel what you mean by revival.
Accepting submissions from June 1st until August 31st. Click here to go to our submissions page.
What counts as experimental?
We know what experiment often looks like: work that plays with form, with language, with genre. Metafiction, cybertext, found fiction, ARG. Etcetera. But experimental literature by its very nature defies bounding boxes. It causes you to consider the form of literature in ways you never have before. What it can do.
Experimentation is not weird for weirdness' sake. It's about expressing an idea with more than just paragraphs and dialogue tags. It's about knowing what you want to say and treating all the tools of writing as a medium with which to say it.
In the spirit of experimentation, WordArt has no limits on word count or formatting—but here are some things to consider before submitting:
1. This will be included in a publication alongside other works of experimental literature. If you intend for your piece to be published in print in our magazine, it will have to fit on no more than 10, 8.5" x 11" pages.
2. Experimental works are typically most effective when absorbed in a single sitting, so keep that in mind when you consider length.
3. Experimentation does not include experimenting with hate. Your work can explore themes of bigotry, but if we sense that your work is promoting hate of any marginalized group, it will be rejected.
We accept works of mixed media, interactive, HTML, or just about any other format you can think of. However, for initial submission, please send piece in either .pdf, .jpeg, .mp4, or as a link to a hosted website. We work individually with each accepted author to ensure your work is formatted and presented for publication in the way that best suits the intention of the piece.
If your piece is not accepted to our print magazine, we may reach out to ask if you would like to have your piece published on our website. In the event that this happens, you of course have right of refusal. Simply let us know if you would like to pull your submission at that time.
We will not discriminate against any writing method—however, if your piece is co-written with AI there better be a damn good thematic reason.
Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Please inform us as soon as your piece is accepted elsewhere.
All work can be submitted through our submission form, however, if your work does not fit the file formats accepted by the submission form, you can email it to us at wordartlitmag@gmail.com
To submit your work, visit our submission form here.
If you are unable to access our submission form for some reason, you can email us your submission at wordartlitmag@gmail.com
Before submitting, make sure to read our guidelines, light as they are. They'll help to guide you.
In the distance, the castle looms. Its spires appropriately imposing. Its sky eating light.
What is it doing here? A question for which you are the answer. For it is, you know, as much a construct as it is a castle. An archetype made of collective understanding. Text on a digital page.
But as much as you question its corporeality, you know what you seek lies inside. That fact does not change, no matter how much you want it to.
In the future, you will be able to purchase all issues of WorkArt LitMag here.
But of course, we don't have any issues yet. Because we're just getting started.
If you're as excited as we are about the future of the literary form—to see it melt through the bars of its enclosure and become a monster of its own—keep checking back. We'll have an issue for you to put into your eyeholes soon.
We are three people.
- Adam Dove: Prose Editor
- Eva Phillips: Poetics Editor
- Nora Peters: Designer
But you don't want to talk to us. You want to know about the magazine.
In that case, you can reach us here. If you have any questions, from what it takes to be published in the magazine, to what we have upcoming, to what we think words look like when they squeezed through an axon, you can use that email.
You can also check out our thoughts in visual form on Instagram @wordartlitmag. We'll post updates on the submission process, upcoming publications, events, and everything else there.
If you need something else that can't be found in those places, you may want to try prayer and/or ritual.