This issue begins in motion, or maybe mid-stumble.
Trip (n.): A journey, an excursion, a departure from the familiar.
Trip (v.): To stumble, to falter; to set off a mechanism that was only ever waiting.
“Trip” explores both the propulsion and rupture, the going and the going-wrong. You could be tripping happily down a path when something rises up out of nowhere and a root, a memory, a wire strung low in the dark takes you out of the equation entirely, or catapults you into a completely different experience from whatever you had planned.
What if tripping is only what happens when the ground insists on your attention?
To write into “Trip” is to explore:
- The itinerary and the interruption: the planned journey, and the instant it goes sideways.
- The altered state: chemical, spiritual, or just the vertigo of finding yourself somewhere unexpected or new.
- The mechanism orchestrated to trip on purpose: the alarm, the breaker, a trip wire, and what it means to be what sets it off.
- The stumble that transformed the story: the fall that changed everything that followed.
For the twelfth annual issue of Exposition Review, we invite work that travels in every sense of the word: road trips and guilt trips, ego trips and acid trips, the trip wire and the trip switch, the practiced trip of a dancer’s foot and the graceless trip of a shoelace. Good trips, bad trips, and plain old trips are all welcome.
This theme is a point of departure, rather than a destination. It invites us to reflect on how we set out, the interruptions that occur, and how far off course we’re willing to travel.
Let “Trip” vault you forward, send you sprawling. Let this word do what it does best: pull your footing out from under you—and into something new.
Submissions will be open October 1–December 15, 2026. We accept work in all forms: fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scripts for stage & screen, experimental narratives, visual art, film, and comics.
For all submissions received by October 31, 2026, we guarantee personalized feedback. All accepted work will receive $50.00 USD as payment. Free submission days will be on December 1 (Giving Tuesday) and December 10 (Human Rights Day).
We look forward to reading your work!
Meet the Editorial Team
Editors-in-Chief
Rebecca Luxton & Laura Rensing
Section Editors
Fiction Editor: Dave Gregory
Flash Fiction Editor: Jessica June Rowe
Nonfiction Editor: Francesca Spiegal
Poetry Editor: Yuya Hattori
Comics and Film Editor: Lauren Gorski
Stage & Screen Editor: Mellinda Hensley
Experimental Editor: Ramona Pilar
Visual Art Editor: Brianna J.L. Smyk
Editorial Board Advisor: CD Eskilson
Managing Editor
Annlee Ellingson
Remember to check out our submission page for specific guidelines. Want an even better idea of what to submit to us? Read our previous issues.
We accept all submissions via Submittable:
