In connection with the Editorial Fellowship at A Public Space, we are pleased to announce an open call for a special portfolio in the magazine to be edited by Berta Coll. 

Impenetrability as a Generative Force:

What would you do if you encountered a door and didn’t own the key? Or if you met someone and didn’t speak the same language? Or if you read a book and it felt inscrutable? You could try to break the barrier one way or another. You could get angry because you couldn’t pass through. Or you could stare at the barrier and examine it to see what it can tell you. We have been trained to get closer, to go deeper, to reach a point. But what if we celebrate impenetrability? What if we champion those things that cannot be entered, pierced, or understood? What if we treat them as something worth protecting? 

For this open call, I would like to see prose that explores impenetrability as a generative force, as a quality that unlocks unexpected doors. I’m not interested in impenetrability as a stylistic choice that makes a text illegible or snobbishly abstruse. I want to read authors who understand impenetrability as a rare opportunity, as a channel toward clarity. I invite you to redefine our relationship with that concept, to expand its meanings in playful, surprising ways. Here are a few examples: 

— Regarding his creative process, Philip Guston once wrote, “These few people who are the closest to me and think they know me well, they don’t know me at all. And that became the most important thing, that the people closest to you don’t really know you.” 

— Édouard Glissant said, “A person has the right to be opaque. That doesn’t stop me from liking a person. A racist is someone who refuses what he doesn’t understand. I can accept what I don’t understand.” 

— In the foreword to his novel L’Écume des jours (translated into English as both Froth on the Daydream and Mood Indigo), Boris Vian provocatively stated that “the essential thing in life is to judge everything a priori.” When you judge something a priori, you refuse logical reasoning; you decide not to cross an intellectual threshold. 

— In physics, impenetrability means that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. This makes me think of the Swedish composer Lisa Streich, who collects unusual chords. When two or more people sing the same chord in slightly different intonations, they are circumventing something impenetrable—a complete encounter, a perfect communion. Perhaps being slightly out of tune (in music, in life) is a refusal to penetrate an imagined center. 

— One of my favorite idioms comes from the Catalan language. In Catalan, when people say they “have drunk oil,” they mean they are doomed. This idiom comes from a brutal practice in which victims were forced to drink boiling oil as a form of execution. 

Eligibility: Only previously unpublished works of fiction or nonfiction are eligible. Only writers who have not yet published or been contracted to write a book-length work with a U.S. publisher are eligible. Writers who have self-published, published an academic text, published a book with a publisher outside the U.S., or translated another writer’s work are eligible to apply. International applicants are encouraged to apply. Work that incorporates multiple languages is eligible, so long as the primary language is English. Translations are welcome, but please note it is the translator’s responsibility to secure rights to the work before it is submitted. Only one submission per person is allowed. A Public Space reserves the right to invite submissions. 

Timeline: Submissions will be accepted via Submittable from June 29, 2025-July 13, 2026. Submissions close at 11:59 p.m. (ET) on July 13. All submissions will receive a reply by the end of August. 

Submission Requirements: Submissions are only accepted through Submittable. There is no submission fee. Please submit the following:

— A cover letter, including a short biographical statement and a paragraph describing the connection of your piece to the open call. 

— One previously unpublished piece (fiction, nonfiction, or translation) up to 6,000 words, double spaced. 

— Simultaneous submissions are allowed. 

Note that we only accept PDF or Word files (.doc and .docx). Please do not include your cover letter as part of your manuscript. 

Questions? Write Editorial Fellow Berta Coll at berta@apublicspace.org. 

Examples from the APS archive: 

— Kelly Link’s “The White Road,” published in APS No. 28: We know that they are monsters because they come at night and they tear us to pieces. But they are also monsters, I think, because we do not understand why they do what they do.

— Roland Kelts’ “Focus: Japan—America Inverted,” published in APS No. 1: The culture gap and the aura of mystery it confers on Japan suits some Japanese, bolstering their dearly held conviction that an essential Japaneseness can never be understood by gaijin—literally, the “outside people.” They are unique, they believe, and perhaps unfathomable. [...] As I learned when I moved to Japan in the late nineties, to ensure a sympathetic smile and a smooth journey from a Tokyo cabbie, you only need to concede that, yes, speaking Japanese is very difficult. The driver will be thrilled to have his nation’s impenetrability verified.

— Jonathan Lethem’s “The Night they First Played Monster Eyes,” published in APS No. 3: This band’s got something, and some of the something they’ve got is the allure of an enclave at odds within itself and yet impenetrable to others, its members exchanging small gestures of disaffection within their troupe that makes others crave to be included in the fond dissention. 

— Anne Carson’s “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent,” published in APS No. 07: There are two kinds of silence that trouble a translator: physical silence and metaphysical silence. Physical silence happens when you are looking at, say, a poem of Sappho’s inscribed on a papyrus from two thousand years ago that has been torn in half. Half the poem is empty space. A translator can signify or even rectify this lack of text in various ways—with blankness or brackets or textual conjecture—and she is justified in doing so because Sappho did not intend that part of the poem to fall silent. Metaphysical silence happens inside words themselves. And its intentions are harder to define. Every translator knows the point where one language cannot be translated into another. [...] But now what if, within this silence, you discover a deeper one—a word that does not intend to be translatable. A word that stops itself. [...] There is something maddeningly attractive about the untranslatable, about a word that goes silent in transit. 

— Allen Grossman’s “Sing, Muse, Wrath,” published in APS No. 07: When we say, “same world,” “same room and persons,” / “same course of life,” we speak approximately. 

— Amy Leach’s “Strangers,” published in APS No. 27: Whereas strangers are all pretty much opaque—you can’t candle their heads like you candle an egg. Animals are opaque like strangers; even jellyfish and glass frogs are opaque like bears; and when their anatomy is gone, they are gone. This is not true of brothers and sisters.

In connection with the Editorial Fellowship at A Public Space, we are pleased to announce an open call for a special portfolio in the magazine to be edited by Sam Karagulin.

MISRECOGNITION

You insist you are not the person everyone, including the state, says you are.*

Your nose detaches itself from your face, and runs off. It becomes more popular, more important, than you.**

You appear to your mother as a monstrous bird, and not her child.***

Have you been mistaken for someone else? Did they insist you really were that other person? Like catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and not recognizing yourself, misrecognition can destabilize. The present can contradict the surety of memory. For this open call, I want writing of any genre, that tells me what emerges from this encounter. 

* Max Frisch’s Stiller (1954); It Was Just An Accident (2025)

** Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose” (1836)

*** Jordy Rosenberg’s Night Night Fawn (2026); Monica (2022)

Eligibility: Only writers who have not yet published or been contracted to write a book-length work with a U.S. publisher are eligible. Writers who have self-published, published an academic text, published a book with a publisher outside the U.S., or translated another writer’s work are eligible to apply. Writers who have published a chapbook in the U.S. are ineligible to apply. International applicants are encouraged to apply. Work that incorporates multiple languages is eligible, so long as the primary language is English. Works of translation are eligible. Please note it is the translator’s responsibility to secure rights to the work before it is submitted. Only one submission per person is allowed. A Public Space reserves the right to invite submissions. 

Timeline: Submissions will be accepted via Submittable from June 29, 2026–July 13, 2026. Submissions close at 11:59 p.m. (ET) on July 13. All submissions will receive a reply by the end of August.

Submission Requirements: Submissions are only accepted through Submittable. There is no submission fee. Please submit the following:

— A cover letter, including a short biographical statement and how your submission connects to the open call.

— One previously unpublished piece up to 6,000 words, double-spaced, or up to five (5) poems. 

— Simultaneous submissions are allowed. 

Note that we only accept PDF or Word files (.doc and .docx) are accepted. Please do not include your cover letter as part of your manuscript.

Questions? Write Editorial Fellow Sam Karagulin at sam@apublicspace.org. 

Recommended Reading: Below are selections from A Public Space’s archive that were among my references in developing this open call. These pieces are part of this month’s Public Access—work from the magazine’s archive, made free and open to all. 

“The Let-Out”

Jamel Brinkley

But all of a sudden she started walking again, with more quickness and purpose. Her steps were bringing her in the direction she was looking, and it became clear, despite every self-abnegating doubt, that she was walking toward me.

“Again It Has Prepared Itself For My Awakening”

Patrizia Cavalli, translated from the Italian by Jorie Graham

In broad daylight on the other hand I shall mistake them, / I shall not compete with them, / I shall act like it’s nothing…

“This Handwriting”

Matthew Zapruder

Very / small horses attached to invisible reins attached / to facts is how I would describe my thoughts, / but what of my memories?

“Trans-Neptunian Object”

Suzanne Buffam

Facts exist for whole centuries and then suddenly cease.

 “Compromise”

Ada Zhang

It was like receiving a new man, a new husband, and to me this was a relief. 

The third annual Weekend Writers' Retreat is a long weekend of workshops, literary talks, and evening events, presented by A Public Space in partnership with Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in New York’s Hudson Valley. This year's retreat will be held Thursday, October 8, 2026 - Sunday, October 11, 2026. Find a detailed retreat schedule here.  

Eligibility 

Applicants must be 21 years of age by October 1, 2026, to attend the retreat. Capacity is limited, and early registration is recommended.   

Registration Fees (excludes housing)

• Early Registration (June 2 - July 2): $875 
• Regular Registration (July 3 - August 15): $975
• Late Registration (after August 15): $1,125

Acceptance

You will be notified about the results of your application, including your assigned morning workshop and housing, within two weeks. You will not be charged until you are accepted.  

Cancellation Policy 

A full refund (less $100 for administrative fees) will be processed for cancellations before August 15.  A 50% refund will be processed for cancellations before September 1.  There is no refund for cancellations after September 15.

Questions? Write to office@apublicspace.org.