Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment: Nonfiction Submissions
Overview
Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, based at Iowa State University, has long positioned itself as a venue where the term 'environment' is treated not as a scenic backdrop but as a contested and capacious category. The journal publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short scripts, and visual art, and its editorial purview extends across rural, urban, and suburban landscapes, built and wild spaces, and the social and political entanglements that arise therein. This call for nonfiction asks writers to immerse readers in a place—whether a natural setting, an urban environment, or even a body—and to render its complexity, nuance, and diversity with precision. The journal's stated interests are notably expansive: it seeks work that explores curiosities in our surroundings and finds the extraterrestrial in our very own world. That phrasing signals an appetite for nonfiction that resists the conventional nature-writing register, favoring instead writing that is formally alert, sensorially grounded, and willing to treat environment as a site of inquiry rather than merely description. The nonfiction guidelines accept pieces between 500 and 5,000 words, and permit up to three pieces under 1,000 words within a single submission packet—an accommodation that acknowledges the essayistic fragment, the prose poem, and the short lyric meditation as legitimate nonfiction forms. There is a submission fee of $3.00 USD. No prize is attached to this call; it is a reading period for publication in the journal, not a contest. Writers should note that Flyway accepts submissions according to specific windows of time, and this nonfiction window closes on October 16, 2026. The journal's institutional home at Iowa State University situates it within a land-grant tradition, though its editorial reach is decidedly contemporary and interdisciplinary.