Fence Magazine and Books

10/16/2026

We’re excited to share that Fonograf Editions (Fonograf Editions), dear friend of Fence, will host their 10-year anniversary celebration fundraiser at Atrium Movement & Events (Atrium Movement & Events) in Portland, Oregon on the evenings of October 23 & 24! Friday’s event will feature a lineup of musicians, & Saturday’s will feature poets. ✨

Find longtime FENCE Poetry Editor & current Board Member CHARLES VALLE (Charles Valle), & FENCE contributors RAE ARMANTROUT (Rae Armantrout) & EILEEN MYLES (Eileen Myles) at this celebration! 📖

Fonograf Editions exists to take risks that push the boundaries of sound, text, and genre. FE values the interdisciplinary, experimental, and unclassifiable, and strives to bring to life works that resist, bend, and break expectations. 🍃

If you’re in Portland, come support this lovely small press in person, & if you’re elsewhere, join the livestream! We’d love to see you there. 💌

Find more information & tickets, here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fonograf-editions-10th-anniversary-fundraiser-tickets-1998505334253! 🎟️

10/12/2026

Poet, translator, & classicist Anne Carson just won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature! 🌞

We’re honored to have shared space, community, & lineage with Anne Carson at FENCE: a repeat contributor, Anne Carson also served on FENCE’s Editorial Advisory Board & Board of Directors. You can also find her name in so, so many FENCE contributors’ reading lists! 🍃

10/08/2026

DEADLINE EXTENSION! 🌥️ Fence’s Translator Editor, Cole Swensen (Cole Swensen), will accept poetry translation submissions for FENCE issue no. 45 through Saturday, October 31.

For the next couple of issues, we’ll be using a very elastic definition of translation; in addition to translation as traditionally understood, we’ll be accepting fanciful translations, self-translations, macaronic translations, and other variations that we’ve never even thought of. If your translation varies from the traditional, please just briefly state how. 🍃

Translation Editor: Cole Swensen
Deadline: Wednesday, September 30
Submission Fee: $5*
*please note that we only offer 35 submission fee waivers per submission period, & they’ve all been claimed!

Read our full guidelines & SUBMIT at fence.submittable.com/submit! 💌

10/02/2026

Happy (litmagweek) from Fence Magazine & Books! 🍂

Our special offers are valid through today, October 2, 2026:
1) Use promo code LITMAGWEEK for 40% off a digital subscription to FENCE through Exact Editions! This subscription includes access to FENCE’s complete digital archive. 🌞 shop.exacteditions.com/fence
2) Pre-order both MUD SONGS (Patricio Ferrari) & CALIFORNIA SILENCE (Stella Santamaria) from Itasca Books (link in bio), & we’ll mail you a free copy of FENCE no. 43! Just email your book order receipt to [email protected]. 📖

10/02/2026

To celebrate (litmagweek), Fence would like to honor & appreciate an out-of-print favorite—The Floating Bear—as well as share Editorial Director Emily Wallis Hughes (Emily Wallis Hughes)’s thoughts on the little magazine in her Editor’s Note from FENCE issue no. 43. ✨

In an essay for CUNY’s Center for the Humanities, Iris Cushing (Iris Cushing) recollects: “The Floating Bear was a bi-monthly, mimeographed newsletter started in 1961 by Diane di Prima and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka); the two edited, published and distributed it together until 1962, at which point Di Prima took over and continued the project on her own until 1971.” 💌

Read more at https://centerforthehumanities.org/a-labor-of-freedom-reading-the-floating-bear-at-the-berg-collection/. 🌻

For , we’ve organized these two special offers:
1) Use promo code LITMAGWEEK for 40% off a digital subscription to FENCE through Exact Editions! This subscription includes access to FENCE’s complete digital archive. 🌀 shop.exacteditions.com/fence
2) Pre-order both MUD SONGS & CALIFORNIA SILENCE from Itasca Books (link in bio), & we’ll mail you a free copy of FENCE no. 43! Just email your book order receipt to [email protected]. 📚

09/30/2026

“…to say that these writers are ‘fence-sitters’ is to say that each of them occupies a distinguished grey area in the literary field. They are writers who challenge their readers by means of density and complexity, but who exclude no one from that readership in the name of an academic purity, or a pre-ordained set of obscurities. These are writers who adhere to the particular sound of their own voices in collision with the sounds of the world. Most of all, and most importantly, they provide pleasure.” — Rebecca Wolff (rebecca wolff), Editor’s Note, FENCE (Spring ’98) 🍂

Happy (litmagweek) from Fence Magazine & Books! 🌞 Scroll these slides for excerpts from Jason Zuzga (Jason Zuzga)’s BRIEF, PARTIAL HISTORY OF FENCE, available in full at fenceportal.org.

We have two special offers for you this week:
1) Use promo code LITMAGWEEK for 40% off a digital subscription to FENCE through Exact Editions! This subscription includes access to FENCE’s complete digital archive. 🌱 shop.exacteditions.com/fence
2) Pre-order both MUD SONGS & CALIFORNIA SILENCE from Itasca Books (link in bio), & we’ll mail you a free copy of FENCE no. 43! Just email your book order receipt to [email protected]. 🎟️

09/29/2026

Happy (litmagweek) from Fence Magazine & Books! 🍃 Founded in 1998 by Rebecca Wolff, FENCE is committed to publishing from the outside and the inside of established communities of writing, seeking always to interrogate, collaborate with, and bedevil all the systems that bring new writing to light.

We have two special offers for you this week:
1) Use promo code LITMAGWEEK for 40% off a digital subscription to FENCE through Exact Editions! This subscription includes access to FENCE’s complete digital archive. 🌻 shop.exacteditions.com/fence
2) Pre-order both MUD SONGS & CALIFORNIA SILENCE from Itasca Books (link in bio), & we’ll mail you a free copy of FENCE no. 43! Just email your book order receipt to [email protected]. 💌

09/28/2026

Read today's Fence email newsletter!
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09/27/2026

Don't miss this FENCE no. 45 submission deadline: September 30th.
We look forward to reading your work!

Find all info, how to's, and guidelines here:

FENCE no. 43, the Spring-Summer 2026 issue, including a poets theater special feature edited by Tony Torn, is published and available!FENCE no. 44 is forthcoming in Fall-Winter 2026.FENCE no. 45 is OPEN for submissions. An Open Call for the *Climate & Ecology* special feature, curated by Other Edito...