Literary Magazines :: NewPages Guide

Witness

Black Mountain Institute

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Box 455085

Las Vegas, NV 89154-5085

Phone: (702) 895-5542

E-mail: blackmountaininstitute <at> unlv.edu

Simultaneous submissions: yes Email submissions: no Reading period: 9/1-5/1 Response time: 2 to 3 months Payment: yes (see website) Contests: no ISSN: 0891-1371 Founded: 1987 Issues per year: 1 Distributors: Ingram, Armadillo, Ubiquity Copy price: $12 Average pages: 240 Sample price (postpaid): $10 Subscription (individuals) 1 year: $10 Subscription (institutions) 1 year: $16

Publisher’s description: Launched in Detroit in 1987, Witness has published 43 issues, twenty of them focused on topics of contemporary interest. The magazine is best known for showcasing work the defines its historical moment; special issues have focused on political oppression, religion, the natural world, crime, aging, civil rights, love, ethnic America, and, most recently, exile. The issues "New Nature Writing," "The Sixties," and "Sports in America" eventually appeared as university press anthologies.

In 2007, Witness moved from Oakland Community College to Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. While the magazine continues to advance topics of special interest, mostly in portfolio form, it increasingly features writing that ventures away from the American experience and into international terrain. The magazine values the insights of authors everywhere who illuminate their circumstances in unique and startling ways, and it invites stories, poems, and literary essays that promote the modern writer as witness to his or her times.

Authors who have recently appeared in Witness include Jess Row, Emmy Hunter, Alan Cheuse, Josip Novakovich, Chris Abani, Nami Mun, Terese Svoboda, Atar Hadari, Tim Bascom, David Shields, and Dawn Tefft.

“Witness is simply what it proclaims—a witness to our ungainly evolution. It is an irreplaceable window.”
— Ron Carlson