The latest issue: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/1d2c0486f7.html

The debut issue: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/15b7e50933.html

Heavy Crown Voices is an entirely free literary magazine. ISSN: 3068-8027. All content is available immediately upon publication without charge to the user or their institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

All work published in Heavy Crown Voices is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Authors retain full copyright of their work. Heavy Crown Voices holds first serial publication rights. Following publication, authors are free to reprint or anthologize their work elsewhere, provided Heavy Crown Voices is credited as the original publisher.

If you would like to submit something to the 2027 (third) issue, see Submission Guidelines here:

If I could do the debut issue again, I would reduce the volume. Everything else, I would keep: the jagged edges, the uneven pulse, the general tempo. I would simply lower the volume. It’s still possible that our prototype may be reorganized in a future issue.

The Second Movement introduces the new annual frequency, instead of biannual. There are so many great literary magazines out there. Most of them land like pin drops. Heavy Crown Voices is too new and too independent to know quite where it sits in the genre. For now it’s happy to soak up a little more sunlight and experience new shades.

The issue features three poets: Joshua Walker, Colin James, and Noah Berlatsky. It pays homage to a French artist with a Louisiana connection: Odilon Redon. Redon’s artwork sits in harmony with Walker’s grief, where James waits for Zephyr’s Kiss, and under Berlatsky’s “wings of anesthetized trauma.” I added to the chorus my own essay about a woman in the light who holds multitudes. The issue concludes with a translation of Redon’s Confidences of an Artist. I’ve only translated a selection from this work. The French original is available via the Internet Archive and Open Library.

You can view the new issue of Heavy Crown Voices here.

We’ve also put together a main page where the issues will be collected in one place.

All work published in Heavy Crown Voices is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Authors retain full copyright of their work. Heavy Crown Voices holds first serial publication rights. Following publication, authors are free to reprint or anthologize their work elsewhere, provided Heavy Crown Voices is credited as the original publisher.

Guidelines for submissions to the third issue in 2027:

1. It should be a short story, essay or poetry.

2. It must be written in English.

3. Word count for a story: Between 1,500 and 5,000 words, give or take.

4. Poems should have a word count of no more than 300 words.

5. Essays should be about 1200 words.

6. Anonymous entries will not be accepted.

7. There is no submission fee. There is no access fee.

8. This issue will be free to the public so writers will not be paid, but this might change for future issues.

9. The magazine will be annual, published every Fall. Publication frequency may increase to biannual in the future.

10. Stories should be limited to “safe for work” content, since the magazine will be public and, therefore, available to a broad age range.

11. The deadline for submissions for the 2026 issue is June 30, 2027.

12. Submit your story to heavycrownpress @ gmail.com

13. Format the subject line thus: STORY, POEM, OR ARTWORK TITLE / AUTHOR NAME