With our tenth literary magazine (tenth!) we wanted to return to our roots and reflect on why we started Swim Press in the first place. Born from a desire to create a literary magazine revolving around water, waterways, transparency, the ebb and flow of the everyday, issue 01 Water was the most natural theme and for issue 10 we wanted a theme which is quintessentially Swim Press.
Over the years we’ve published a few dual themed issues and love the diversity of submissions we receive by offering two different themes. Contrasting themes, finding opposites and juxtapositions, like issue 08 Bury and Excavate, is a way for us to be creative with our issues. We wanted issue 10 to be special with entering double digits and celebrating five years of Swim Press. While we could have called issue 10 Swim, it felt like this was too obvious. But paired with its oxymoron, we’re excited for how writers will respond to this issue.
We invite writers to choose one of the themes, either sink or swim, and to specify in their submission email which theme their piece takes the most inspiration from. Our dual themed issues are split into two halves, separating the themes, so even if your piece relates to both, we ask you to clearly state which theme you want your piece to be associated with if published in the issue.
Issue 10 sink/swim submissions open 1st March to 15th March 2026. For more information on how to submit, see our submissions page here.
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