Whether it’s high or low tide, University of Alaska Southeast’s literary journal, Tidal Echoes, is open for any and all submissions in Southeast Alaska.
Last Wednesday marked the open call for submissions of all forms of art to have the chance to be featured in the annual student-run literary journal, Tidal Echoes. Anyone with permanent address and full-time residence throughout Southeast Alaska is welcome to submit, and has until Dec. 1 at midnight to do so, said Olive Brend, the paper’s fall editor and student at UAS.
“Students account for a large number of submissions we get but a lot of people send in from across Southeast Alaska — we love to get submissions from anyone,” they said.
Brend said the journal has already received a few submissions since the opening just last week, and currently the editorial board is in the process of finalizing who will be the two featured artists for this year’s edition and will likely decide sometime in the coming weeks. Last year’s two featured artists were Tlingít Artist Jill Kaasteen Meserve and Sitka poet Kersten Christianson.
“There are definitely some exciting options that we have in communications,” they said. “They’re people that are clearly well known in the community and I think it’s going to be really great to lift them up.”
Brend said the journal doesn’t have a theme or requirements needed to meet the criteria from year to year, though Brend said one or two overarching themes usually organically emerges each year.
“Southeast Alaska is pretty small and even though we don’t set a theme, it usually comes through that there is a theme or two,” they said. “Here in Southeast Alaska we experience a lot of the same stuff even across communities.”
Brend said once the submission deadline is hit in the beginning in December., the editorial board — consisting of faculty and students at UAS and community members — will then go into the process of looking at all the submissions and make decisions on what will be featured typically by early March.
Brend said most if not all the decisions are made by the students themselves, and “each and every” submission is considered throughout the process. Once decisions are made, artists will be notified if their work was chosen, and the journal staff will work with local Juneau printing service Alaska Litho Print & Media Services to print the journal.
Brend said they are hoping to host an in-person launch of the journal in Juneau sometime mid-April, which they said would be the first in-person journal launch since 2019.
Bend said now that the submission window is open, they hope any Southeast Alaska resident “young or old” considers submitting to the journal which they emphasized accepts “all sorts of art work,” not just writing.
“Something that is important is this is an opportunity to lift people up — not only the featured artists but highschoolers, queer people, middleschoolers and everything like that is justt so great,” they said.
How to submit
Submissions are accepted online at can be found online at, https://uas.alaska.edu/arts_sciences/humanities/english/tidal-echoes/submission-guidelines.html.
The deadline for submissions is Dec. 1.
• Contact reporter Clarise Larson at clarise.larson@juneauempire.com or (651)-528-1807. Follow her on Twitter at @clariselarson.
