“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

– Franz Kafka, letter to Oskar Pollak, 27th January 1904

We are delighted to announce that Errant is now open for submissions to its fifth issue.

As a journal for post-critical and creative-critical writing, Errant is interested in work that tests the boundaries of criticism and embraces creative approaches to literary scholarship. We welcome writing that moves across periods and forms, whether medieval or modernist, Victorian or contemporary, local or global, translated or resistant to translation.

Submissions may include, but are not limited to, personal or lyric essays, dialogues, poetry, off-kilter critical essays, satirical manifestos, hybrid forms, and altogether indefinable modes of writing. We are not constrained by questions of genre, and we encourage work that invents wildly, resists easy summary and explores new ways of thinking, reading and writing.

Prose submissions should be between 2,000 and 5,000 words, excluding references. 

Poetry submissions should be no more than 200 lines, excluding references, though we recognise that some poetry may take the page rather than the line as its unit of measurement and are open to submissions that do not fit neatly within this limit.

Please send your submission as a .doc file, along with a short biography of no more than 50 words, to the editorial team at errantjournallancaster@gmail.com.

You may also wish to include a brief explanatory note to help guide the reader. This might include, for example, details of the text or texts you are drawing on or quoting, or an explanation of how references or quotations function within the piece. This note need not explain everything away; it should simply act as a roadmap for the reader where useful.

If your submission contains references, we recommend the use of the MHRA style guide, in line with its use within the School of Arts at Lancaster University. However, we recognise that some post-critical forms may require alternative approaches to referencing, and we are flexible where this is appropriate to the work.

If you would like to check the suitability of your work before submitting, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us.