Mission Statement

Copytext is an independent, bi-annual literary magazine dedicated to celebrating the artistic process by publishing creative works in the context of revision. We want to preserve and display writing and art-making as an ongoing practice, creating a space for many genres and disciplines to share their artistic and archival evolutions.

Submissions

We are currently OPEN for submissions through October 31, 2025! Please read our Guidelines and use our Submission Template before sending us your work.

Values

We believe that justice, like a poem or a sketch, is an incomplete project in our world that requires active and ongoing attention, dedication, compassion, and action. As a platform, we exist to promote work that aligns with love and liberation and that elevates the many collective and individual forms of resistance and community-building in this moment in time. We stand against all forms of bigotry, hate, violence, and oppression, here on stolen land and across the world. 

Why “Copytext”?

The name Copytext comes from a bit of an outdated term for a proof. Across history, textual scholars looking to publish or reprint a manuscript would first create and review a “copy-text” — a preliminary, unofficial version — to make corrections and ensure the accuracy of the final typescript form. The modern words “copy” and “copy-edit” derive from this legacy. Our revision and reclamation of the term “copy-text” connects us back to the very act of publishing a work within the context of moving it from draft to final form. 

This idea came about through a study of Marianne Moore’s poetry in her archive at the Rosenbach, which she donated upon her death. In the archive, we find that, like many modernist writers, Moore made endless changes to her writing, sometimes ceaselessly removing and then re-inserting commas upon her already-published texts. This work of revising her published texts essentially turned them into copy-texts again, destabilizing the very act of publishing. 

While this study of Moore may have sparked our first daydream of a revision-focused magazine, Copytext is by no means anchored in the aesthetic or values of the modernist poets; rather, we are centered around the concept of the personal archive and the mission of making such an archive open and freely accessible. Too often, the rich histories and drafts of artists' pasts are tucked away in physical archives — oftentimes not yet digitized — or in private institutions that are not accessible to all. 

Every creative work has a context: a testimony of how it came to be in this world. We believe in celebrating that process. And so, Copytext seeks to publish great new creative works while serving as a digital archive for that creator’s process, enabling authors to tell their own story of revision. What does it mean to revise your work, to make multiple copies of it, to save it, to dig it out of the backlog, to keep working? What does it achieve to publicly preserve something through publication, including the unfinished business of your earlier drafts? Copytext Magazine aims to work with you to find out.

Memberships

We are a proud Associate Member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). We are also listed on ChillSubs.

Website Credits

Website development by Lauren Frey and M. Howley.

Copywriting and design by Lauren Frey and Marisa Lainson.