To make a submission to Axon: Creative Explorations please go to the Submission Manager. Click on the guidelines, and log in to make a submission to the appropriate forthcoming issue.
Please note that the submission window for each issue is comparatively narrow. This is to ensure, first, that works offered to the journal are aligned with the journal’s interests and concerns; and next, to reduce the length of time authors will need to wait before a response and/or peer review reports are sent to them.
Axon 2026.1: The fragment (currently closed)
In his short story ‘See the moon’ (New Yorker 12/3/1966) – a story that meanders through a lucky dip barrel of images and ideas – Donald Barthelme’s narrator twice asserts: ‘Fragments are the only forms I trust.’
Fragments. Think Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project; Immanuel Kant’s Notes and Fragments, Antigone Kefala’s Fragments. Think almost anything written by WG Sebald; think what is left of Sappho’s poetry, or the many collected fragments of Sanskrit Buddhist writings, or the fragments of ancient civilisations unearthed by archaeologists working across the globe. Think of the anonymous shopping list you found in a trolley; your own brief notes scrawled in haste; the sketches in your artist journal. Think the smudged graffiti on the wall; or the sentence fragments that make up so much conversation.
For the first issue of Axon: Creative Explorations in 2026, we invite scholarly essays, photo essays, or lyric essays that reflect on the fragment.
We would love to see your responses to this provocation.
Articles on other related topics are also welcome.
Please go to the Submission Manager and click on guidelines. Log in to make a submission.
Axon 2026.2: Nuclear Anxiety
2025 saw the 80th anniversary of the first use of atomic weapons in war, alongside a plethora of expressions of nuclear anxiety, and of creative responses to past and current atomic threats. Both research and media commentary indicate that nuclear anxiety—a term first coined by Margaret Mead as the ‘fear of a nuclear war and its consequences’—is permeating creative, academic and popular literature and the arts. Like a phoenix, it continually re-emerges into popular, literary and artistic consciousness, rising with new threats from geopolitical tensions and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
A number of key reports, such as the World Humanities Report, as well as testimonies from hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors), point to the need for humanities and creative arts insights and responses to help address the problems of both nuclear proliferation, and poor information and understanding about the extent of atomic risk. This demonstrates the need for ongoing conversations in the Arts and Humanities about nuclear disarmament and the emotional scars left by past conflicts.
In this context, Axon: Creative Explorations invites contributions that:
- explore the ‘unfinished business’ of the atomic bomb
- connect the earlier creative work of hibakusha to contemporary issues and literatures
- rethink/reframe nuclear war and nuclear proliferation
- examine what, or how, creative interpretations of the atomic legacy may contribute to broader social understandings
- contribute new understandings of the role of creative work in responding to social anxieties about nuclear escalation and atomic warfare
- address the tension that exists in both the spoken and the unspoken, the silences and the noise, about atomic power
- utilise artistic mediums to convey personal and collective responses to the atomic bomb and its legacy
- inspire innovative storytelling that challenges conventional narratives about nuclear war and promotes dialogue through creative forms
Please go to the Submission Manager and click on guidelines. Log in to make a submission.
Please note: poems for the issue will be solicited by the editors. While we welcome suites of poems with a commentary that examines the research or inquiry undertaken, and the findings, unsolicited poems should not be submitted.
Axon 2027.1: The Genesis and Generation of Creative Writing
(closed for the initial call for abstracts)
This issue will explore The Genesis and Generation of Creative Writing.
We invite 150-word abstracts for proposed articles, which might include topics such as:
- New models for “inspiration”
- Reconceptualising the “Muse”
- Intertextuality and the genesis of new creative writing
- Cultural works (e.g. works of visual art) and the genesis of new creative writing
- Starting points in the creative process
- Creative writing, “inspiration” and the factual
- Finding creative writing prompts in the real
- Recreating histories in creative writing
- Truth, invention and “inspiration”
Abstracts for articles on related topics are also welcome.
All abstracts should be submitted by 30 June 2026 at Axon’s Submissions Manager. If an abstract is accepted by the editors, the full article will be due by 30 NOVEMBER 2026.
Please note: poems for the issue will be solicited by the editors. Unsolicited poems should not be submitted.
Futher information for authors
Peer review
Articles, essays, papers and other scholarly contributions are peer reviewed. The reviewing process is double blind, so that neither author(s) nor reviewers should know of the others’ identities at any time.
In producing a research-based paper, authors should be drawing on a sound framework of scholarship relevant to the paper’s topic, rather than purely on personal experience and/or anecdotal evidence, although some personal and/or anecdotal material is a legitimate part of many good papers. Papers are expected to make a contribution that extends the current literature in the field.
Authors are welcome to take a creative or lateral approach to their topic, or to mix more than one genre of writing, or to incorporate images or other graphic work. Final revised articles, papers, essay and interviews (including endnotes) will be a maximum of 6,000 words in length.
The journal does not, as a rule, publish short fiction or excerpts from longer fictional works, but creative work other than poems will be accepted for refereeing if they make a distinctive contribution to knowledge that extends the current scholarly literature in the field and are accompanied by a short contextual statement (250-500 words) for publication. The statement should indicate the research significance of the creative piece and will draw on a sound framework of methodology and scholarship relevant to the work’s topic.
All poetry published in Axon will be solicited by the journal’s editors.
Unsolicited contributions of poetry will not be read or acknowledged.
All papers and other contributions to Axon: Creative Explorations will be vetted for final acceptance by the journal’s editors. If you are unfamiliar with the kind and quality of contributions, including the scholarly standards of papers, published in the journal, please read recent issues.
Referencing style
- Author-date system in-text, with a listing of works cited
- Endnotes, not footnotes (please use minimally and include in word count)
Examples:
Books
DeLillo, D 2001 The body artist, London: Picador
Book chapters
Woods, C 2006 ‘Writing, textual culture and the humanities’, in N Krauth and T Brady (eds) Creative writing: theory beyond practice, Teneriffe: Post Pressed, 121-135
Print journal article
Eickelkamp, U 2010 ‘Children and youth in Aboriginal Australia: an overview of the literature’, Anthropological Forum 20: 2, 147-66
Magazine article
DeLillo, D 2001 ‘In the ruins of the future’, Harper’s magazine, December, 33-40
Online sources
Krauth, N 2002 ‘The preface as exegesis’ TEXT 6: 1, at
http://www.textjournal.com.au/april02/krauth.htm (accessed 12 March 2011)
Kulikowski, M 2007 ‘Mayday 23: world population becomes more urban than rural’, NC State University News Services, 22 May, at http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/2007/may/104.html (accessed 9 September 2011)
Kroll J 2004 ‘The exegesis and the gentle reader/writer’ TEXT Special Issue Website Series No 3, at http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/kroll.htm (accessed 10 July 2011)
McEwan, I 2001 ‘Only love and then oblivion’, The Guardian special report: terrorism in the US, at www.guardian.co.uk/usterrorism, 15 September (accessed 17 September 2011)
Zizek, S 2001 ‘Welcome to the desert of the real!’
http://web.mit.edu/cms/reconstructions/interpretations/desertreal.html, 15 September (accessed 19 October 2011)
General formatting instructions
Please submit articles, essays and interviews as Word documents, adhering to the following detail.
- Front matter
University name
<One line break>
Author name
<One line break>
Title
<One line break>
Abstract:
Abstract directly below
<One line break>
Biographical note:
Bio note immediately below
<One line break>
Keywords:
Words immediately below – initial caps, spaced en-dashes
<page break>
- Body text
Endnote references set as superscript
Single quotation marks throughout except for quotations within quotations
Minimal capitalization
Indented quotes (3 lines or more)
- End matter
Endnotes only
- Works cited
Styled as detailed above