Our foundation was blurry at best. I wanted a website that dealt exclusively with mental health and trauma narratives under the artistic guise of literary fiction. This evolved as most small ideas do, and the bigness overwhelmed us for months. I wanted to strong-arm these themes together, introduce the surreal as secondary, in hopes of breaking ground on a concept I’d been struggling with for years. How does the interplay of magical concepts inform art with the millennia-old stake of madness driven through its crown? This complicated matters somewhat. It's dangerous choosing two taboos and burying them in basic code, as it relies on the viewer’s patience with not only illicit subject matter but a deconstruction of our most ingrained bigotry. The mad and the magical aren’t a suitable mix for a website miles above the Dark Web. How could we claim any substantial ground in this community with such a pairing? I worried we’d be labeled a problem, or called even worse. Still, further, how could we locate the main vein of truth in these narratives without succumbing to something I dearly wanted to avoid? I didn’t want us to seem absurd, and I felt the hot breath of invisible pressures on the back of my neck and wondered if I’d tapped into something bigger than my own harshly limited comprehension. Was there a goddess at play? Libre’s always been a strange place, but when I stared into medium blues and scrolled through images of brains, something weird began to happen. Anyways—I was pleased with our inaugurals. Our original stuff knew exactly what we needed and gave it to us willingly. It was only later that I realized we’d need a soft transition to something firmer. We introduced poetry and saw things soar. Later, still, Nonfiction picked up significantly, and I realized our sweet spot. 

All genres are welcome, but I especially like a personal narrative that exorcises trauma in the unbrushed teeth attempt at verbally unlacing the genetic and generational for better digging. If you unzip disease in the protected lighting of medical inquiry, you’ll find the ancestral white moth. It’s been waiting in the barcodes of your DNA for a chance to stretch its wings under the slim sun of retrieval. In their writing, we encourage contributors to consider the aftereffects of a lifetime spent recovering. 

Libre wants to represent authors who choose the unpopular option, create in brave spirits, preferring ostracism and the solitude it bites its nails on rather than glossy, mainstream prototypes of contemporary writing. While we’re huge fans of this style of literature, we’re mostly fond of the outcasts and souls on the sidelines. The storm’s at safe enough distance. They’re narrating what they notice, and it isn’t what you think.

[GUIDELINES:]

• Please keep longer prose submissions (both fiction and CNF) bearable—our max word limit is 1,500 words.
• Poetry submissions have no word count, but we consider 5 poems per submission a perfect amount for one sitting.
• If you consider your prose piece "flash", do consider mentioning that in your cover letter.
• As for formatting, please use Times New Roman, size 12 pt font, and a color like black will do.
• Double-spacing is a friend for our weary eyes, unless otherwise stated.
• Please name your files using the template: LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_GENRE.
• As for art submissions, while we don't require it, we would love to read a paragraph about the inspiration behind your work. Please include it as part of your cover letter.
• We highly encourage simultaneous submissions as we’re well-versed in the trials and tribulations of publishing. We're honored you're considering us in the first place. Writers and artists have to eat, and to eat, they must publish. Waiting for word is an excruciating process, and we will do our best to get back to you within two months' time. All we ask for is prompt notification that a piece has been accepted elsewhere.
• Please wait one month after submitting to do so again. If you've recently been published in Libre, please wait six months before submitting to us again.
• As a humble start-up, we can’t offer much in the way of payment, but we’re proud to offer our writers and artists $15 per story, essay, artwork, and photograph.
• Libre holds serial rights for three months after publication. Authors and artists agree not to publish or reprint for that amount of time. After the allotted time is up, all rights revert back to the author/artist. 

[OTHER STUFF:]

• Submissions are published on a rolling basis unless otherwise stated.
• We publish issues every 3-6 months. These are usually themed, and announced via our social media channels.
• It may take us up to 3 months to respond to your submission. We’ll do our best to beat those odds.,