r.kv.r.y. (rĭ-kŭv'ə-rē)
1. an act, process, or instance of recovering,
2. a return to normal conditions,
3. something gained or restored in recovering,
4. obtaining usable substances from unusable sources.
photograph by cole rise
Submit all work through our submission manager here.
We publish in January, April, July, and October.
We prefer fewer than 3,000 words for prose and no more than three poems per submission.
POETRY
r.kv.r.y. is interested in good poetry with recovery themes. We interpret recovery broadly: grief, war, exile, divorce, abuse, bigotry, illness, injury, addiction, loss of innocence, and any other topic where recovery presents itself. Recovery may be early stage, middle stage, late stage, or no stage. Failure and doubt are also part of recovery. We will not define recovery as necessarily requiring success.
Our poetry editor, Tom Lombardo, responds well to poems that tell clear stories through concrete images and events of language. Poems need not be in first-person. They need not be written by those actually recovering. At the end of the day, the editors of r.kv.r.y. would give you this advice: if you have a good poem, submit it. The worst we can do is say no.
SHORT STORIES
r.kv.r.y. will publish three short stories of high literary quality every quarter. We look to publish fiction that varies widely in style and prefer stories exhibiting character development, psychological penetration, and lyricism, without sentimentality or purple prose. We ask that all submissions address issues related to recovery as defined above.
ESSAYS
Essays published by r.kv.r.y. embrace every area of adult interest related to recovery. Material should be suited to a quarterly that is neither journalistic nor academic but that seeks to explore and understand our human failings. We encourage our academic contributors to free themselves from the constraints imposed by academic journals, letting their knowledge, wisdom, and experience rock and roll on these pages.
SHORTS ON SURVIVAL (S.O.S.)
Each issue of r.kv.r.y. will include a number of short-shorts (fiction or non-fiction, under 1,000 words) on the theme of survival--the ultimate result and underlying purpose of recovery.
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