Paper Crane Journal

Featured: "Ribs"

Michelle Li

We start again and so begins a new version. This is how it goes: It is a sultry evening, teetering on the bottom edge of July. We are sitting at the red picnic table by the lake. The scarlet heat tattooed between our ribs. This is the month when the waning sun has to fight as it goes down, leaving a smattering of colors, bruising in the sky. The sun, a cooked orange. Lily and her subtle laughter as she swallows cubes of watermelon, seeds peering from gaping pores. Drop dead gorgeous at eighteen. Still is, I would bet, as long as we keep the film rolling and the music playing. As long as it plays in a different direction. But it is still early and we are outside, with the summer gardens and fatty worms wheedling their ripening bodies into leaves and fruit, turning produce into sweet rot.

read v3i01

Celebrate Outstanding Young Poets

The Paper Crane: Poetry by Outstanding Young Writers (cover art)

The Paper Crane: Poetry by Outstanding Young Writers is a compilation of the works of three dozen rising poets, hand-picked from the submission pool of the Paper Crane Journal's second volume. The poets, all of whom submitted their work while under the age of twenty, represent four continents and diverse styles of verse. Paper Crane's editors-in-chief welcome readers in exploring the exhilarating and sometimes shocking creative minds of Generation Z.

Australia

Canada

While we have you, don't forget to check out Prose by Outstanding Young Writers, and keep your eye out for any calls for submission in the future by joining our mailing list.

Blog Post: "Grieving Hardcore"

David Coppin Lanegan

★“In the UK, they have this attitude that's very much, you just bottle it up. That whole kind of like post-war, stiff upper lip expression, and I think recently in the last ten, fifteen years, there’s been a lot more talk about expressing yourself, how you’re feeling. People's mental health and wellbeing, you know it’s a huge thing in society today. Especially in the UK.”

read on

About PCJ

Since 2021, the Paper Crane has accepted submissions from ages 19 and younger and compiled selections into (roughly) quarterly issues. In addition to this, we have published two editions of a print anthology, the first featuring a handful of talented prosaists and the second a troupe of young poets. Our staff is an intimate crew of young writers, though we often look for other intrepid creatives to join us in our endeavors.

We appreciate above all else the intricacies of creation--the cutting, folding, and creasing. Rather than foster an environment of competition, we strive to help individuals achieve their first, second, or perhaps third publication, to provide a home for more experienced young writers, and to encourage a never-ending passion for the arts.

In 2024, we're looking for the minimalist and the maximalist, the protest and the ode, the script and the improvisation, the subtle and the not-at-all-subtle.

submit