Meanjin is committed to publishing the best new Australian writing. We strongly encourage submissions from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, culturally and racially marginalised people, and people with disability.
Please note that Meanjin only considers work by Australian writers and artists. This includes Australian writers currently based outside of Australia. (We don’t define ‘Australian’ formally as citizenship.)
Submissions need not be in English. If submitting a piece that’s partly or wholly in a language other than English, please provide a translation.
All work and translation published online or in print is paid on publication.
Each author retains the copyright to their own work while Meanjin holds copyright to the collection. Rights and other details are outlined in authors’ contracts.
About Meanjin
Meanjin is where Australia’s literary culture sets out its fiercest ambitions. Quarterly in print and continuously online, each year Meanjin publishes new work by hundreds of Australian writers in all genres and forms. A committed audience of print and online readers buy, subscribe to and collect Meanjin for its unique role in articulating the Australian cultural moment.
For over 80 years, Meanjin has fostered a rich and rigorous national conversation by remaining true to its founding principles: ‘to talk poetry’, ‘to work for a healthy climate of opinion and literary activity’, and ‘to make clear the connection between art and politics.’ Whether in poetry, fiction, essay, memoir or experimentation, Meanjin writers seek audiences who are active contributors to the public spaces we all make together: readers who enjoy critical discussion and, to continue in Founding Editor Clem Christesen’s words, who ask Meanjin writers ‘to reveal and clarify our life by showing it to us though a vision different from ours and deeper.’
Meanjin was established in 1940 in Brisbane by Founding Editor Clem Christesen. The name, pronounced MEE-an-jin, is the Yaggera word for the finger of land on which central Brisbane sits. Based in Melbourne from 1945, Meanjin has since been edited by Jim Davidson, Judith Brett, Jenny Lee, Christina Thompson, Stephanie Holt, Ian Britain, Sophie Cunningham, Sally Heath, Zora Sanders and Jonathan Green, plus guest editors Gwilym Croucher, Glyn Davis and Hilary McPhee. From 2023, Meanjin’s Editor is Esther Anatolitis.
We publish Australian fiction, essays, poetry, memoir, critique, book reviews and experiments.
Submit or pitch
To submit your work when submissions are open, please select SUBMIT next to the appropriate form below.
We accept online submissions only; we do not accept hardcopy submissions. (Please don’t send us your work by post – we won’t be able to consider it, nor return it.)
To submit a pitch when submissions are open, please select PITCH and offer a brief outline of what you have in mind.
Thank you for considering Meanjin for the publication of your work.
We welcome up to three poems per submission.
Poems for consideration must be unpublished and not have appeared elsewhere (including websites and personal blogs).
Poems must be ready for publication on submission.
We strongly encourage submissions from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, culturally and racially marginalised people, and people with disability.
Please note that Meanjin only considers work by Australian writers and artists. (We don’t define ‘Australian’ formally as citizenship.)
Meanjin also publishes in languages other than English. Please submit poetry in any language, along with a translation into English. We publish in language only in print, and will publish the English translation online. Translators will also be paid on publication.
All work and translation published online or in print is paid on publication.