SUBMIT
Submissions are open from June 1 to July 31
for our thematic Fall 2026 issue: “Ritual.”
For our Fall 2026 issue, our theme is Ritual. Ritual, ceremony, and practice shape the ways we move through the world: the habits and traditions we inherit, create, and invoke to tether us to place, season, memory, and one another.
For this issue, we invite writers and artists to explore ritual in its many forms: from autumnal traditions and preparations for winter, to routines of care, repetition, and renewal. We welcome work that considers the gestures and rhythms that help us make meaning in a changing world that so often measures time linearly and with expectations of progress.
Submissions open for our Fall 2026 issue on June 1. The first three weeks of the reading period (June 1 to 21) is our fee-free reading period. From June 22 to July 31, submissions will be $3 to cover our essential operating costs. If this fee poses a financial barrier, please reach out to editor@hoppermag.org to request a waiver.
To submit to The Hopper, click on the Submit button at the bottom of the page. All attachments must be in Microsoft Word (with the exception of art submissions). For questions and concerns, please reach out to the editors at editor@hoppermag.org.
We’re interested in work that:
Offers new and different articulations of the human experience in nature. Specifically, nature writing that is psychologically honest about the environmental crisis and the impacts of mechanical modernity.
Explores place as both the cultural and physical landscapes of an author’s region.
Uses language to gain new insights into the natural world.
Uses the natural world to gain new insights into language.
Questions the divisions between nature and culture, wilderness and civilization.
Interrupts the purely human narrative with non-human actors and speakers.
Includes digital consciousness in the experience of the physical world.
Investigates environmental injustice and how race, place, and space are all subject to policing.
Interrogates and/or repurposes clichés for the needs of today.
Elevates voices that were previously not often heard in this sub-genre.
Seeks to question instead of proclaim.
Is well written and deeply considered as well as feisty and brisk on occasion.
We encourage submissions from BIPOC, people in the LBGTQ+ community, people with disabilities, immigrants, the incarcerated, women, non-binary people, and people of other marginalized groups.