Issue 2 out May 22

Issue 2

Bats are falling from the sky. There's an inexplicable knocking on the front door at 2am. The Australian election took place in a parallel universe where climate change doesn't exist. A man you've never met before says he sees you in his dreams.

If the apocalypse isn't here yet (debatable), the writing in Splinter's second issue indicates it will be soon. Read new fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from emerging and established writers gesturing at the chaos, laughing despite it, and holding tightly to what they love.

160 pages + 32 page insert
233mm x 164mm
25 writers
63,966 words
320,134 characters
1 reference to Survivor (the tv show, not the song)

Alex Cothren, Corey Theatre, Courtney Jaye, Ellena Savage, Erin Riley, Glenn Diaz, Hasib Hourani, Jessica White, Jo Case, JP Wilson, Katie Smith, Madeleine Nattrass, Mag Merrilees, Margot Albrecht, Naya Jehad Fathi Shalbak, Omar Musa, Oyewumi Fawaz Akorede, Rita Horanyi, Rowena Vnuk, Royce Kurmelovs, Sarah Sands Phillips, Smriti Daniel, Sofya Gollan, Stephanie Westwood, Wes Lee

Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí
creation myth: a retelling

Poem, 6 minutes

Finbar James
Overheating

Fiction, 12 minutes

Splinter acknowledges that we publish from the traditional Country of the Kaurna people and we pay respect to Elders past and present. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land and waters. We acknowledge that they are of continuing importance to the Kaurna people living today.

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Issue 1

Absurd, extreme, fun, and frighteningly real. Splinter's first issue tours the world and the self and is mostly disappointed (horrified?) or confused about what it finds, although – sometimes, at least – it is funny. Read Sara M Saleh on how Gaza drew back the curtain on the self-serving mirror world of international law; Jane Rawson grappling with the inescapability of sonic environmental destruction; Susie Anderson asking why all the literary sad girls are having such uninspiring sex; and Anthony Nocera explaining how to make a foot pussy (while grieving). And lots of other, very interesting (sometimes even slightly optimistic) writing.

192 pages
233mm x 164mm
25 writers
58,878 words
333,982 characters
2 references to Gra(e)y's Anatomy

Anthony Nocera, Brooke Dunnell, Dominic Symes, Finbar James, Frank Marrazza, George Titheridge, Hossein Asgari, Jane Rawson, Jayda Wilson, Jill Jones, Karen Wyld, KT Major, Lauren Poole, Magdalena Ball, Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí, Paris Rosemont, Patrick Marlborough, Ryan J Morrison, Sam Elkin, Sam Twyford-Moore, Sara M Saleh, Seamus Lonergan, Susie Anderson, Thom Sullivan, Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes

About

Splinter is an new
literary journal that is
interested in the gaps between
perception and reality and what
happens when we get stuck in those
gaps. It is published twice a year from
Tarntanya (Adelaide, Australia).
Our second issue will be
released in May 2025.

Contact

hello@splinterjournal.com

Editor

Farrin Foster

Advisory Committee

Ali Cobby Eckermann
Amy T Matthews
Benjamin Madden
Chris Best
Dominic Guerrera
Jane Howard
Jessica Alice
Jessica White
Katherine Tamiko
Kylie Maslen

Publisher

Splinter is published by Writers SA and supported by Arts SA, Flinders University, the University of Adelaide and UniSA.

Design

Tyrone Ormsby
Studio Work Office

Fonts

Article Text by Matter of Sorts
Walter Neue by Dinamo

Call out

Submissions are currently closed, and will reopen for issue 3 in June or July, 2025.

We believe diverse and intersectional voices make for a better publication and warmly invite submissions in English from writers across Australia and the world.

Splinter does not publish themed editions. We are always looking for writing that picks apart the ways reality has been shattered, illuminates the shining threads of it that remain unbroken, and hints at the ways we’ll start putting it all back together.

Our long-term goal is to mill around in the endless circles of these questions:

How did we get here, into the middle of this chaos?
Where are we? What does this place and time mean?
And where do we go from here?

You don’t need to address these questions directly in your writing, but please think about how your idea brushes up against these prompts.

We warmly invite writers to submit any work that intersects with these prompts, but for issue two we are also particularly encouraging submissions on some specific topics and in some express formats. Click through for more details.

Submissions

We only accept one submission in total per writer, with the exception of poetry. We will accept three stand-alone poems per writer, or one collection comprising up to four poems.

Submissions will only be accepted via the Writers SA Submittable page. Before submitting, please read the full submission guidelines found there, which include additional information about what we’re looking for, terms for commissioning, and detail on the formats.

We pay writers

These are the formats we are looking for and their associated pay rates:

Profiles - $900
Essays - $900
Memoir - $600
Criticism - $700
Fiction - $900
Poetry - $250/poem
Poetry collection - $450/collection
Writing about writing - $500

For profiles, essays, writing about writing, and criticism, we are looking for pitches of ideas (rather than completed works).

For memoir, poetry, and fiction we are looking for submission of completed works.