Bellowing Ark, a Literary Journal

Bellowing Ark was launched in 1984 to remedy a dearth: no market existed for the kind of literature that we wanted to read and wanted to see published. We set out to create such a market, and, by example, encourage others to do the same. We believe that there is more to art than the desire to shock — the glib and facile expression of nihilism and despair. We are convinced that artists, particularly literary, have a responsibility to their audience and are required to present the world as meaningful, for, if the world has no meaning, how can life? The material we publish is the best expression of that responsibility that we can command.

Standing solidly in the Romantic tradition which passes from Blake and Wordsworth through the American Transcendentalists, to Whitman, Frost, Roethke and Nelson Bentley, then on to current writers such as Jacqueline Hill, Len Blanchard, Tanyo Ravicz and others, Bellowing Ark is now the cutting edge in art. How many times can ee cummings or Alan Ginsburg be reiterated? (We shall leave the other question, Why bother reiterating them? unaddressed.) While we are in the Romantic tradition, we also take pride in being one of the most eclectic magazines ever published. Although we consider novels only by invitation, there are essentially no restrictions on genre, length, or style. We have published serialized novels, plays, short stories, poems, long-poems, epic poems (Nelson Bentley’s Tracking the Transcendental Moose— in 14 books, serialized over two years— ran to 20,000 lines), essays, memoirs, drawings, photographs, all forms of self expression, in fact, that we consider to meet our single, and sufficient criterion: everything that we publish demonstrates, to our satisfaction, that life is both meaningful and worth living. We are biased toward the narrative, both in poetry and fiction; that is, stories should have a plot, characterization, a beginning, a middle, and an end. We have not, in our years of publication, ever published a fiction, nor anything pointlessly minimalist or surrealist—it seems to us that practitioners of those elegantly academic art forms have deliberately cut themselves off from an audience. We are interested in audience; we believe that art must be shared, to be art.

Subscriptions:

One year: $18.00

(U.S.) per year
or
special two-year subscription : $28 (U.S.)

Sample copy: $4 (U.S.)

                    Bellowing Ark
                    P.O. Box 55564
                    Shoreline, WA 98155

To submit poetry, short fiction, essays, line art, or other work, send to the above address. (Include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.)

Queries may be addressed to: bellowingark@bellowingark.org
(We do not consider email submissions)

Last Updated:

10/01/2006