The Glacier is an annual online literary journal based at Indiana University South Bend. We accept submissions of exceptional poetry, short fiction, literary nonfiction, and visual art (check Submittable). We’re interested in environmental, experimental, and post-confessional poetry and fiction, as well as writing that is comedic, compelling, and consequential. We are interested in collage that utilizes text as one of its elements—pieces that push boundaries, provoke thought, and challenge the familiar. That said, our curiosity extends to all forms of prodigious art: work that sparks curiosity and demands engagement, where language, image, texture, or unexpected mediums collide to create something raw, resonant, and unmistakably alive. Our focus also extends to powerful nonfiction that subverts conventions, offering fresh perspectives and memorable insights that linger.
The Glacier is here to honor the raw, relentless beauty of the natural world—its strength, its fragility, and everything in between. Glaciers are both a force of nature and a warning, and that tension inspires what we’re looking for: writing and art that digs into our connection to the earth and to each other, as well as our ever present responsibility to our planet and the urgency of protecting what’s left. Our tagline, “Poetry for the coming ice age,” isn’t just a hook; it’s a challenge. We seek work that witnesses the shifting ground beneath us and doesn’t flinch. Work that reckons with what it means to live in a time when the world feels like it’s both freezing over and melting away. The Glacier is a place for voices that confront, explore, celebrate, shape, and try to save the messy, beautiful environment we all share while there’s still time.
We are as much a human journal as we are an environmental one. We want to hear from those consumed by survival. Those who fight in their own formidable way, the ones navigating internal struggles or factory floors, 21st Century battlegrounds and packed apartment buildings, failing schools or fields that break spirits instead of fortunes. We want to know what backroads you’ve driven down that still haven’t made the map. We’re especially eager to hear from writers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, as well as LGBTQ writers, disabled poets, neurodivergent poets, young poets, and anyone whose work has been overlooked or pushed to the margins. Poetry thrives in diversity, and we’re here to listen. Submission are currently OPEN.
The inaugural issue of The Glacier appeared in late December 2023, and two of its contributors appeared in the 2024 edition of The Pushcart Prize annual anthology (Mary Ruefle and Molly Brodak). Our inaugural issue includes work by Ashley Capps, Mary Ruefle, Dana Roeser, Kim Chinquee, Kevin McIlvoy, Molly Brodak (featured), Myronn Hardy, Lisa Fishman, Michael Burkard, Allison Titus, William Stobb, Marcy Rae Henry, and unpublished poetry by Joe Bolton. Our second issue includes work by Chris Banks, Dana Jaye Cadman, Mary Ruefle, Michael Burkard, Georgia San Li, Ashley Capps, Joe Bolton, Mary Ann Samyn, Jonathan Johnson, Claire Bateman, Cullen Bailey Burns, Elly Bookman, Lara Egger, Arthur Vogelsang, Allan Peterson, Jim Daniels, and more. Our third, and most recent, issue includes work by Bianca Stone, Kate Northrop, Graham Foust, Kami Enzie, Lara Egger, Tracey Knapp, Lee Upton, Russell Thorburn, Sarah J. Sloat, Steve Henn, Diana Goetsch, Jonathan Johnson (Best Microfiction 2025), and many others.
Masthead
David Dodd Lee | Editor-in-Chief
John T. Leonard | Managing & Poetry Editor
Sara Dallmayr | Associate Editor
Kay Westhues | Layout/Design and Art Editor
Austin Veldman | Website Design and IT
The Glacier 