Overview
The Community Literacy Journal (CLJ) is excited to accept submissions for the fourth edition of Coda: Community Writing + Creative Work, a section dedicated to supporting writers who are involved in projects relating to community engagement and activism, to preserving the work that ensues from community writing projects, and to expanding the kinds of writing published in academic journals.
As part of CLJ, we value lived experience and communities that nurture an environment for writing and expression. We believe that the creative impulse resides in everyone, and that this impulse can be a force for personal, community, and societal transformation. Because we understand creativity to be deeply social, we’re just as interested in how an author (or a group of authors) created a piece of writing or art as we are in the piece itself. For these reasons, we publish personal reflections with each piece that tell how the piece came to be.
We are soliciting creative work in any genre in Global Englishes. (Please see below for submission guidelines).
We are particularly interested in:
Writing that engages multiple communities to advocate for social change
Writing that seeks to foster belonging in communities
Creative nonfiction that explores the messiness and complexity of community writing
Creative work by academic scholars who theorize community writing
Creative work about, with, or from communities that is beautiful, experimental, or offbeat, or or that otherwise reflects a community context
Collaborative and multivocal work
If you don't see your particular writing approach mentioned here, message us and we’d be happy to talk about your potential contribution! Whatever you have written, if you have written it in a community context that’s meaningful to you, we want to read it.
Personal Reflection
We publish every piece alongside a personal reflection from the contributors. Along with your submission, please include a short reflection, perhaps one or two paragraphs, telling us about how your work came to be. You may include information about how your piece reflects community engagement, what inspired you to create your piece, your personal journey as a writer; or about your community writing group (if you belong to one). Please let us know if you have any questions about this part. You will find a few examples here. If your work does not include a reflection, we will email you to ask for one because we only read work accompanied by personal reflections.
Optional Agenda For Feedback
We invite you to also provide some parameters for our feedback, if you wish. If there are areas of your work that you especially want feedback on or areas that you do not want us to comment on, please let us know.
Submission Guidelines
We are soliciting poetry, short stories, memoirs, essays, comics, plays, photography, and drawings.
Please submit: up to three poems; one section of prose (a story or an essay) up to 3,500 words; a one-act play up to 10 minutes; or high resolution visual images (only in black and white).
Our submission deadline is December 15, 2025. We intend to have editorial decisions sent to authors no later than February 1, 2026.
To submit your work, please use this Google Form. If you have any questions, please be in touch with the editors here.