No items found.
No items found.

Propagule is an independently-run convergence of the arts, focused on fiction, music, visual works, theory, and more.

We are especially interested in the aesthetically novel, experimental, transgressive, and uncategorizable. Immanent in everything Propagule publishes is a dedication to imagination and boundlessness.

We aim to release new issues of our eponymous journal of fiction multiple times a year, featuring a carefully selected entourage of original stories. We also aim to publish interviews with artists, essays, and other nonfictional ideations.

At the center of Propagule is commitment to the notion that there is always new art to be discovered and shared, and that artistic stagnation is mere myth to the dedicated seeker. As such, we hope that Propagule will serve as a place to find meaningful content and connect with others in the community.

We can be reached at [contact@propagule.co]

Editors

William Dempsey

David Reichek

Nick Siviter

What we are looking for: short stories that are intrepid with regard to experimentation and oddity; the strange, the surreal, the atypical, the unexpected. Traditional genre divisions do not matter to us—we do not care whether a piece qualifies as strictly ‘literary’; we only care that it is high-quality, that it is well-written, and that it is interesting. Please send us pieces that you feel do not fit in anywhere else, or are beyond the pale of any given trend. Send us content that causes us to experience feelings we do not have names for.

We highly recommend reading our previous issues to get a sense of the kind of stories we are interested in; that said, we are also always looking to be caught off guard with unprecedented content.

Currently we do not charge for submissions.

Propagule is prepared to offer $5 per 1,000 words (up to a maximum of $20) upon our decision to publish your work.

Submissions must be received by June 15th, 2023 to be considered for Issue Three.

Propagule
accepts only previously unpublished material. 

Please only submit one piece at a time—if your piece is rejected, we welcome you to send us another; if your piece is selected for publication, we ask that you wait until the reading period of the next issue to submit another story. 

Please do not resubmit the same piece more than once, even if somewhat changed—we do not accept unsolicited rewrites.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us immediately if your piece has been accepted elsewhere, so that we can remove it from consideration.

Submissions may range from 500 to 10,000 words; any submitted pieces below or above this will not be considered.

Upon publication, Propagule acquires First World Serial Rights, First World Electronic Rights, and Non-Exclusive World Anthology Reprint Rights, as well as the right to publish your work on Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature.

Please send your submissions through Submittable.

No items found.
No items found.
No items found.

Propagule is currently preparing Issue One for publication.

No items found.
No items found.

Consider becoming a member of our e-mail list to stay up-to-date on all things Propagule, which includes new releases, announcements, and other interesting Propagule initiatives.

Subscribe to our e-mail list:

Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong while submitting the form.

p

Propagule is an independently-run convergence of the arts, focused on fiction, music, visual works, theory, and more.

We are especially interested in the aesthetically novel, experimental, transgressive, and uncategorizable. Immanent in everything Propagule publishes is a dedication to imagination and boundlessness.

We release new issues of our journal biannually, featuring a carefully selected entourage of original fiction. We also publish: interviews with artists, essays, and other nonfictional ideations (Musings); strange and surreal flash fiction (Motes); and visual art (Scrawls).

At the center of Propagule is commitment to the notion that there is always new art to be discovered and shared, and that artistic stagnation is mere myth to the dedicated seeker. As such, we hope that Propagule will serve as a place to find meaningful content and connect with others in the community.

We can be reached at [contact@propagule.co]

Masthead

William Dempsey - Editor-in-Chief

Will is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in metaphysics and language.

David Reichek - Managing Editor

David is a software engineer living in NYC.

Nick Siviter - Editor, Director of Aesthetics

Nick is an artist based out of Rochester, New York.

Propagule is currently preparing Issue One for publication.

a goat with a candle in its head and a female-coded porcelain doll

Book of the Month

March 2024

John Fowles

The Magus

surreal mixing of faces and patterns in oceanic colors

Album of the Week

March 24th 2024

Dominique Guiot

L'Univers De La Mer

Propagule is OPEN for all genres

What we are looking for: art that is stylistically unique and pushes boundaries both visually and conceptually. Images which are both thought provoking and striking. Genre, subject matter, and medium are not restricted.

Propagule is accepting submissions for visual artwork on a rolling basis for our Scrawls section.

Upon acceptance, your art will be both published to Scrawls and shared via Twitter.

Propagule accepts only previously unpublished material.

You are invited to submit pieces of work one at a time or in a related series of up to 7 images.

If your work is non-digital in medium, please be sure your documentation is clear and professional.

File size should be under 5mb. Dimensions are not restricted as long as the file falls within size limits.

Files will only be considered if submitted in .PNG or .JPEG.

sRGB color profile is recommended.

We accept simultaneous submissions.

Upon acceptance, Propagule acquires the right to publish your work online, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature. We do not acquire exclusive rights to your art, meaning that the artist remains free to publish the same art elsewhere and profit from it.

Please send your submissions through
Submittable.

What we are looking for: strange and surreal flash fiction.

We highly recommend reading our previous issues to get a sense of the kind of prose we are interested in; that said, we are always happy to be caught off guard with unprecedented content.

Submissions may range from 250 to 750 words; any submitted pieces below or above this will not be considered.

Accepted works will be published on a rolling basis to our (upcoming) Motes page.

Propagule accepts only previously unpublished material. 

Please only submit one piece at a time—if your piece is rejected, we welcome you to send us another; if your piece is selected for publication, we ask that you wait until the reading period of the next issue to submit another story. 

Please do not resubmit the same piece more than once, even if somewhat changed—we do not accept unsolicited rewrites.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us immediately if your piece has been accepted elsewhere, so that we can remove it from consideration.

Upon publication, Propagule acquires First World Serial Rights, First World Electronic Rights, and Non-Exclusive World Anthology Reprint Rights, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature.

Please send your submissions through
Submittable.

What we are looking for:

(a) Reviews of new works of literature (novels, single-authored short story collections, categorial chimeras such as fiction/nonfiction hybrids or books that are structurally experimental). We are not interested in reviews of ‘well-known’, ‘mainstream’, or ‘industry-recognized’ books—we leave the expectably vague boundaries of this delineation to your intuitions (we trust them). As always, we aim to focus on transgressive and stylistically and conceptually novel content.

(b) Reviews of new albums of music. As with literary reviews, we are looking for commentary on content outside of the mainstream. Introduce us to new sounds.

(c) Other nonfictional ideations, such as analytic essays or CNF.

Accepted works will be published on a rolling basis to our Musings page.

Propagule accepts only previously unpublished material.

Please only submit one piece at a time—if your piece is rejected, we welcome you to send us another; if your piece is selected for publication, we ask that you wait at least a couple months before submitting another.

Please do not resubmit the same piece more than once, even if somewhat changed—we do not accept unsolicited rewrites.

We accept simultaneous submissions.

Upon acceptance, Propagule acquires the right to publish your work online, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature.

Please send your submissions through
Submittable.

What we are looking for: short stories that are intrepid with regard to experimentation and oddity; the strange, the surreal, the atypical, the unexpected. Traditional genre divisions do not matter to us—we do not care whether a piece qualifies as strictly ‘literary’; we only care that it is high-quality, that it is well-written, and that it is interesting. Please send us pieces that you feel do not fit in anywhere else, or are beyond the pale of any given trend. Send us content that causes us to experience feelings we do not have names for.

We find that a lot of contemporary fiction is resolutely realist, and fundamentally anthropocentric. There’s nothing wrong with this—it remains something we enjoy—but we often find ourselves drawn to writing that seems to slip out of the folds of the human brain, and stretches toward becoming something beyond. We think this is one of the often unspoken dogmas of art—that art has to be about us (meaning: human beings), and we reject said dogma. We think art can be about anything.

Speculative fiction is also more than welcome, especially from those who, like us, find themselves looking back longingly on the more stylistically daring science fiction of the late 60s and 70s (see Damon Knight’s Orbit anthology series for a fine example of this ethos).

We highly recommend reading our previous issues to get a sense of the kind of stories we are interested in; that said, we are always happy to be caught off guard with unprecedented content.

Submissions must be received by June 15th, 2024 to be considered for Issue Five.

Submissions may range from 1,500 to 10,000 words; any submitted pieces below or above this will not be considered. We are open to accepting flash, though we strongly prefer to receive a set of multiple related pieces.

Propagule is prepared to offer $5 per 1,000 words for the first 2,000 words, and $10 per 1,000 words thereafter (up to a maximum of $30) upon our decision to publish your work.

Propagule accepts only previously unpublished material. 

Please only submit one piece at a time—if your piece is rejected, we welcome you to send us another; if your piece is selected for publication, we ask that you wait until the reading period of the next issue to submit another story. 

Please do not resubmit the same piece more than once, even if somewhat changed—we do not accept unsolicited rewrites.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us immediately if your piece has been accepted elsewhere, so that we can remove it from consideration.

Upon publication, Propagule acquires First World Serial Rights, First World Electronic Rights, and Non-Exclusive World Anthology Reprint Rights, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature.

Please send your submissions through
Submittable.

surreal mixing of faces and patterns in oceanic colors

Album of the Week

March 24th 2024

Dominique Guiot

L'Univers De La Mer

the artist in blue with a hand over his lower face against what might be a brain scan

Album of the Week

March 17th 2024

Yoshio Ojima

hands • some

a side-profile silhouette shrouded in sparkling green light

Album of the Week

March 10th 2024

Benoît Pioulard

Précis

waves of overlapping ribbons in blue-red-green gradients

Album of the Week

March 3rd 2024

Steve Hauschildt

Strands

an anchor made from small stones in a field with gnarled, leafless trees

Album of the Week

February 25th 2024

Fair to Midland

Arrows & Anchors

a continuous extension of stylized animals, fire, and a man's hand

Album of the Week

February 18th 2024

Michael Stearns

Planetary Unfolding

a circle of sticks in grey

Album of the Week

February 11th 2024

The Contortionist

Clairvoyant

a gleaming abstract figure dashing above a snake surrounded by various spheres

Album of the Week

February 4th 2024

Jean-Luc Ponty

Cosmic Messenger

distorted dark surfaces that appears both organic and artificial

Album of the Week

January 28th 2024

Northlane

Alien

abstract paint display suggestive of birds

Album of the Week

January 21st 2024

LAV, Purl

A State of Becoming

pencil drawing in browns of a woman on a flying carpet

Album of the Week

January 14th 2024

Ratboys

GN

greyscale photo of a mountain road bordered in black

Album of the Week

January 7th 2024

Michael Vallera

All Perfect Days

cartoon drawing of a large metal structure with two wings, with a person standing on one end

Album of the Week

December 31st 2023

Donato Dozzy

12H

a snowflake

Album of the Week

December 24th 2023

Caligula's Horse

The Tide, the Thief & River's End

abstract white shapes on a black background

Album of the Week

December 17th 2023

Iglooghost, Khai Whiston, BABii

XYZ

band logo emblazoned in shining, near-liquid gold

Album of the Week

December 10th 2023

Unprocessed

Gold

penciled depiction of a mountain behind a forest at dusk

Album of the Week

December 3rd 2023

Black Hill, heklAa

Rivers & Shores

grey-green stone up close

Album of the Week

November 26th 2023

New Risen Throne

Loneliness of Hidden Structures

dragon head painted red against red tile

Album of the Week

November 19th 2023

William Basinski

A Red Score in Tile

vast night sky with city skyline far below

Album of the Week

November 12th 2023

Tarentel

From Bone to Satellite

hand with bloodstained ring finger in front of white curtain

Album of the Week

November 5th 2023

Sea Oleena

Shallow

twisting mountain footpath extending through the ocean

Album of the Week

October 29th 2023

Wilderun

Olden Tales & Deathly Trails

blurred photo of something happening in the woods chopped up into small squares

Album of the Week

October 22nd 2023

Dalhous

Will to Be Well

wooden stake sprouting barbed wire in a stark white field

Album of the Week

October 15th 2023

Library Tapes

Sketches

dissolving carousel against a gradient of orange and blue

Album of the Week

October 8th 2023

The Omnific

Escapades

coat of arms featuring bats and skulls emblazoned on rusty metal

Album of the Week

October 1st 2023

Cryptopsy

Cryptopsy

cyberpunk floating train station

Album of the Week

September 24th 2023

B12

Time Tourist

outline of a complex mass of materials

Album of the Week

September 17th 2023

Konx-Om-Pax

Regional Surrealism

unfamiliar beaked creature in the foreground of a cascading blue wall

Album of the Week

September 10th 2023

Robert Rich

What We Left Behind

a blue fish with a dumbfounded human face above orange coral

Album of the Week

September 3rd 2023

Hainbach

Assertion

grainy photo of an adult and two children watching a kite fly over a desert

Album of the Week

August 27th 2023

Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society

Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society

gothic knight surrounded by various icons in stark yellow and red

Album of the Week

August 20th 2023

OSCOB

Praise the Sun God

foggy field with indeterminate object spouting protruding sticks in the background

Album of the Week

August 13th 2023

Ben Chatwin

The Sleeper Awakes

green circuitry overlaid with bluelit stones

Album of the Week

August 6th 2023

Ian Boddy, Erik Wøllo

EC12

tear division between greyscale image of myderwyk with his palm on his cheek and smoke

Album of the Week

July 30th 2023

Matteo Myderwyk

a brief nostalgia

blurred image of a woman in front of a deciduous forest

Album of the Week

July 23rd 2023

Infinity Shred

Forever, A Fast Life

greyscale photograph of the head of a classical statue

Album of the Week

July 16th 2023

Arp

The Soft Wave

3d rendering of a black head being cut in hald by a patterned tealish plane

Album of the Week

July 9th 2023

Lamin Fofana

Doubleworld

penned bear head in black and white on a white background with a spray of color

Album of the Week

July 2nd 2023

Lorenzo Montanà

Vari Chromo

paper depiction of a rocket taking off over the mountains

Album of the Week

June 25th 2023

We Lost The Sea

Departure Songs

globe filled with flying fish

Album of the Week

June 18th 2023

Plini

Impulse Voices

luminescent water

Album of the Week

June 11th 2023

Spiritbox

Eternal Blue

mountainous alien world under an orange sky

Album of the Week

June 4th 2023

Abakus

Dreamscapes

a tesseract

Album of the Week

May 28th 2023

TesseracT

One

green organellish texture with the letters of 'Bibio' scrambled in the center

Album of the Week

May 21st 2023

Bibio

The Green EP

dirty interface lying on a dark forest floor

Album of the Week

May 14 2023

Parallel Worlds, Self Oscillate

World Adaptor

painting of a keyboard

Album of the Week

May 7th 2023

The Album Leaf

Seal Beach

illustrated 80s-style pin up of Danny Brown, JPEGMAFIA, and two women each occupying a quadrant within a cross

Album of the Week

April 30th 2023

Danny Brown, JPEGMAFIA

SCARING THE HOES

painting of a man bleeding in a bathtub holding a handwritten note

Album of the Week

April 23rd 2023

Have a Nice Life

deathconsciousness

tall rectangle filled with incomprehensible colorful imagery admist whitespace

Album of the Week

April 16th 2023

Amon Tobin

Permutation

silhouettes of a man, a baby, and weaponry on a yellow background

Album of the Week

April 9th 2023

Rise Against

Appeal to Reason

approaching cloaked figure standing with head slightly bowed on path through a forest, the scene holistically resembling an eye

Album of the Week

April 2nd 2023

Deborah Martin

Eye of the Wizard

cloaked and masked figures lurking in a temple, posing for the viewer

Album of the Week

March 26th 2023

Randal Collier-Ford

Advent

bacteriophage on yellow background

Album of the Week

March 19th 2023

Haken

Virus

fuzzy close-up of a spaceman's hand reaching towards viewer

Album of the Week

March 12th 2023

Trees on Mars

Hello, Mr. Pioneer

a muted proliferation of rectangles

Album of the Week

March 5th 2023

SHRINE Quartet

For the Ones We'll Forget

schematics of graphs on white space

Album of the Week

February 26th 2023

Nicholas Jaar

Telas

red and blue abstract swirls

Album of the Week

February 19th 2023

Pye Corner Audio

Where Things Are Hollow

outline of a city with colored powergrid

Album of the Week

February 12th 2023

Between the Buried and Me

Colors

pink shell over electronic fuzz

Album of the Week

February 5th 2023

Aralee Dorough, Markus Reuter

Voyage of Blacwyd

spectral grayscale theatrical drawings of women

Album of the Week

January 29th 2023

Gábor Szabó

Dreams

white painted face buried in flowers

Album of the Week

January 22nd 2023

Make Them Suffer

How to Survive a Funeral

pale green geometrical structure on black background

Album of the Week

January 15th 2023

Circular

Shaping the Unknown

pile of objects in the center of a stark white space

Album of the Week

January 8th 2023

Odeon

game

mirrored animalskull-headed figures in greyscale

Album of the Week

January 1 2023

Machine Head

ØF KINGDØM AND CRØWN

queen in verdant forest

Album of the Week

December 25 2022

Biosphere

Departed Glories

three-dimensional render of a castle in the shape of a head with a sky visible inside it sitting beside a green see

Album of the Week

December 18 2022

Luiz Bonfá

Introspection

massive black monolith over read terrain with vague anthropomorphic shapes inside it

Album of the Week

December 11 2022

Humanity's Last Breath

Välde

double vision black and white picture of the artist

Album of the Week

December 4 2022

Spellling

The Turning Wheel

child with a yellow balloon looks out over misty mountains from between which massive tentacles emerge

Album of the Week

November 27 2022

Those Who Ride With Giants

Forlorn

abstract painting involving a dark flurry of colors collapsing from the ceiling to a point on a backdrop of yellow

Album of the Week

November 20 2022

Lupe Fiasco

Drill Music in Zion

spooky collaged christ-figure floating between two city buildings

Album of the Week

November 13 2022

Malice K

Clean Up On Aisle Heaven

black and white photograph of two children standing in front of a wooden wall with a basketball hoop attached to it

Album of the Week

November 6 2022

Porcupine Tree

Nil Recurring

headshot of the artist in front of the sky

Album of the Week

October 30 2022

Slater

ESI

dog howling next to sheep lying on the ground

Album of the Week

October 23 2022

Nudge

As Good as Gone

drawing of a long haired man in black and white over a divided background of red and white, a hole where his heart should be

Album of the Week

October 16 2022

AqME

Sombres Efforts

hexagonal patch with band's name over a photograph of a tree awash in a reddish lens flair

Album of the Week

October 9 2022

Walls

Walls

abstract depiction of a face in a field of muted patterns in brown green and grey

Album of the Week

October 2nd 2022

Kilchhofer

The Book Room

grainy grayscale photo of a car in front of palm trees

Album of the Week

September 25 2022

Khotin

Beautiful You

fuzzy image of a skeleton in front of the globe

Album of the Week

September 18 2022

Bones

UNRENDERED

concentric circles granting limited view into purplish sky

Album of the Week

September 11 2022

Golden Retriever

2

abstract plantlike formations embedded in a bright yellow background

Album of the Week

September 4 2022

Robert Rich

The Biode

blue candle melting onto a person's face

Album of the Week

August 28 2022

72-HOUR POST FIGHT

NON-BACKGROUND MUSIC

dirty washing machines

Album of the Week

August 21 2022

Moin

Moot!

rock formations on the water bathed in intense purple and blue light

Album of the Week

August 14th 2022

Specta Ciera, Arbee

Unified Formations

dirty whiteish surface with a purplish square in the lower left corner

Album of the Week

August 7th 2022

quannnic

kenopsia

tank-like vehicle rendered in psychedelic collage

Album of the Week

July 31 2022

Author & Punisher

Krüller

expansive, grainy shot of a person fishing

Album of the Week

July 24th 2022

Mid-Air Thief

Crumbling

alien planet with a face formed in stone emerging from it and a strange metallic object in the sky

Album of the Week

July 17th 2022

Steve Roach

Traveler

playing basketball at night, seen through a fence

Album of the Week

July 10th 2022

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin

Ghosted

blueish purpleish miasma

Album of the Week

July 3rd 2022

Frou Frou

Off Cuts

crystalline formation in green and blue

Album of the Week

June 26th, 2022

Genghis Tron

Dream Weapon

a snake curling upwards around a pale flower

Album of the Week

June 19th 2022

Animals as Leaders

Parrhesia

crudely drawn image in pink and black of a woman looking into a mirror with a long-tongued, toothy creature in it

Album of the Week

June 12th 2022

Filmmaker

The Love Market

complex multicircular symbol over a black background with white glasslike cracks running through it

Album of the Week

June 5th 2022

Inade

The Incarnation of the Solar Architects

Bogusław Schaeffer's disembodied head on an alien world with symbols flowing from a geometric hole in his cranium

Album of the Week

May 29th 2022

Matmos

Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer

alien face with teeth bared emerging from curling leaves

Album of the Week

May 22nd 2022

Rishloo

Feathergun

dripping organoid body over a pale background, all composed of radiating lines

Album of the Week

May 15th 2022

Mike Lazarev

Out of Time

three stalky floral alienish figures in front of a watercolor background

Album of the Week

May 8th 2022

David Maxim Micic

Bilo III

impressionistic portrayal of a naked woman sleeping in front of a window, a large green skull encroaching

Album of the Week

May 1st 2022

Nate Young

Stay Asleep

a goat with a candle in its head and a female-coded porcelain doll

Book of the Month

March 2024

John Fowles

The Magus

greyscale pencil drawing of a girl dancing with an old man superimposed on a stark orange background

Book of the Month

February 2024

Donald Barthelme

City Life

painting of a woman in a thin white dress sitting on a bed

Book of the Month

January 2024

Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

abstract patterns in blue and pink

Book of the Month

December 2023

David Markson

Wittgenstein's Mistress

wooded stream rendered in crystalline blue

Book of the Month

November 2023

William H. Gass

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

irregular blue polygon on white background

Book of the Month

October 2023

César Aira

The Literary Conference

a nude female figure being grappled from behind by a humanoid shadow

Book of the Month

September 2023

William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury

mostly white with offset painting of a train in the upper half

Book of the Month

August 2023

Italo Calvino

If on a winter's night a traveler

shattering window with view of a green field with a large treen in its center

Book of the Month

July 2023

Lydia Davis

Almost No Memory

pasted title over a primarily blue and red collage

Book of the Month

June 2023

Dolan Morgan

That's When the Knives Come Down

a man in early modern garb standing with a book in hand in a city

Book of the Month

May 2023

Sofia Samatar

A Stranger in Olondria

emblem of an anrthopomorphized sun, half orange half purple, with a grim visage

Book of the Month

April 2023

Jorge Luis Borges

Ficciones

winged red letters on a bright yellow background

Book of the Month

March 2023

Toni Morrison

Song of Solomon

nearly naked man with a large pig-thing hunts for two hiding naked victims

Book of the Month

February 2023

Laird Barron

Occultation and Other Stories

furniture at the water's edge

Book of the Month

January 2023

Richard Brautigan

So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away

pale cover with yellow streak through the center

Book of the Month

December 2022

Vladimir Nabokov

Invitation to a Beheading

ambiguous yellowish structure

Book of the Month

November 2022

Magdalena Tulli

Moving Parts

white hand with segmented fingers and an eye in the center

Book of the Month

October 2022

Philip K. Dick

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

stormy horizon over the sea

Book of the Month

September 2022

Virginia Woolf

The Waves

cartoon depiction of a city street from above

Book of the Month

August 2022

Joseph McElroy

Ancient History: A Paraphase

warped motley tesselation

Book of the Month

July 2022

Nathalie Sarraute

The Golden Fruits

crudely depicted yellow-cloaked figure with red wings on a deep black background

Book of the Month

June 2022

Robert W. Chambers

The King in Yellow

large letter V standing on a yellow, minimal grid plane, with a purplish bluish background

Book of the Month

May 2022

Thomas Pynchon

V.

a powdery portrayal of the actual cannibal galaxy formation on a deep black background

Book of the Month

April 2022

Cynthia Ozick

The Cannibal Galaxy

The cover of Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts by Donald Barthelme displays a giant baby with abyssal eyes peering at man in chair

Book of the Month

March 2022

Donald Barthelme

Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts

The cover of Peace by Gene Wolf displays a leafless tree in front of a stark, white sky

Book of the Month

February 2022

Gene Wolfe

Peace

Propagule Hoodie

$49.99

Purchase

Propagule T-Shirt

$19.99

Purchase

Propagule Tote

$19.99

Purchase

Propagule Mug

$14.99

Purchase

Consider becoming a member of our e-mail list to stay up-to-date on all things Propagule, which includes new releases, announcements, and other interesting Propagule initiatives.

Subscribe to our e-mail list:

Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Explore
a goat with a candle in its head and a female-coded porcelain doll

Book of the Month

March 2024

John Fowles

The Magus

surreal mixing of faces and patterns in oceanic colors

Album of the Week

March 24th 2024

Dominique Guiot

L'Univers De La Mer

Propagule is an independently-run convergence of the arts, focused on fiction, music, visual works, theory, and more.

We are especially interested in the aesthetically novel, experimental, transgressive, and uncategorizable. Immanent in everything Propagule publishes is a dedication to imagination and boundlessness.

We release new issues of our journal biannually, featuring a carefully selected entourage of original fiction. We also publish: interviews with artists, essays, and other nonfictional ideations (Musings); strange and surreal flash fiction (Motes); and visual art (Scrawls).

At the center of Propagule is commitment to the notion that there is always new art to be discovered and shared, and that artistic stagnation is mere myth to the dedicated seeker. As such, we hope that Propagule will serve as a place to find meaningful content and connect with others in the community.

We can be reached at [contact@propagule.co]

Masthead

William Dempsey
Editor-in-Chief

Will is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in metaphysics and language.

David Reichek  
Managing Editor

David is a software engineer living in NYC.

Nick Siviter
Editor, Director of Aesthetics

Nick is an artist based out of Rochester, New York.

Propagule is OPEN for all genres

As of August 2023, we are accepting submissions for our 2024 fiction contest. The contest winner will receive a $150 prize, and their story will be included in Propagule Issue #5, to be released Summer 2024. We are particularly looking for longer pieces with narrative focus, in addition our usual aesthetic preferences of experimentation, surrealism, and otherworldliness.

Contest entries may range from 2,000 to 20,000 words.

The submission deadline for this contest is July 1st, 2024.

Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but please notify us and withdraw your entry if it is accepted elsewhere.

Upon acceptance, Propagule acquires the right to publish your work online, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature.

To enter a piece in the contest, please see the relevant section on our Submittable page. The price of entry is $3.00.

What we are looking for: art that is stylistically unique and pushes boundaries both visually and conceptually. Images which are both thought provoking and striking. Genre, subject matter, and medium are not restricted.

Propagule is accepting submissions for visual artwork on a rolling basis for our Scrawls section.

Upon acceptance, your art will be both published to Scrawls and shared via Twitter.

Propagule accepts only previously unpublished material.

You are invited to submit pieces of work one at a time or in a related series of up to 7 images.

If your work is non-digital in medium, please be sure your documentation is clear and professional.

File size should be under 5mb. Dimensions are not restricted as long as the file falls within size limits.

Files will only be considered if submitted in .PNG or .JPEG.

sRGB color profile is recommended.

We accept simultaneous submissions.

Upon acceptance, Propagule acquires the right to publish your work online, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature. We do not acquire exclusive rights to your art, meaning that the artist remains free to publish the same art elsewhere and profit from it.

Please send your submissions through
Submittable.

What we are looking for: strange and surreal flash fiction.

We highly recommend reading our previous issues to get a sense of the kind of prose we are interested in; that said, we are always happy to be caught off guard with unprecedented content.

Submissions may range from 250 to 750 words; any submitted pieces below or above this will not be considered.

Accepted works will be published on a rolling basis to our (upcoming) Motes page.

Propagule accepts only previously unpublished material. 

Please only submit one piece at a time—if your piece is rejected, we welcome you to send us another; if your piece is selected for publication, we ask that you wait until the reading period of the next issue to submit another story. 

Please do not resubmit the same piece more than once, even if somewhat changed—we do not accept unsolicited rewrites.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us immediately if your piece has been accepted elsewhere, so that we can remove it from consideration.

Upon publication, Propagule acquires First World Serial Rights, First World Electronic Rights, and Non-Exclusive World Anthology Reprint Rights, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature.

Please send your submissions through
Submittable.

What we are looking for:

(a) Reviews of new works of literature (novels, single-authored short story collections, categorial chimeras such as fiction/nonfiction hybrids or books that are structurally experimental). We are not interested in reviews of ‘well-known’, ‘mainstream’, or ‘industry-recognized’ books—we leave the expectably vague boundaries of this delineation to your intuitions (we trust them). As always, we aim to focus on transgressive and stylistically and conceptually novel content.

(b) Reviews of new albums of music. As with literary reviews, we are looking for commentary on content outside of the mainstream. Introduce us to new sounds.

(c) Other nonfictional ideations, such as analytic essays or CNF.

Accepted works will be published on a rolling basis to our Musings page.

Propagule accepts only previously unpublished material.

Please only submit one piece at a time—if your piece is rejected, we welcome you to send us another; if your piece is selected for publication, we ask that you wait at least a couple months before submitting another.

Please do not resubmit the same piece more than once, even if somewhat changed—we do not accept unsolicited rewrites.

We accept simultaneous submissions.

Upon acceptance, Propagule acquires the right to publish your work online, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature.

Please send your submissions through
Submittable.

What we are looking for: short stories that are intrepid with regard to experimentation and oddity; the strange, the surreal, the atypical, the unexpected. Traditional genre divisions do not matter to us—we do not care whether a piece qualifies as strictly ‘literary’; we only care that it is high-quality, that it is well-written, and that it is interesting. Please send us pieces that you feel do not fit in anywhere else, or are beyond the pale of any given trend. Send us content that causes us to experience feelings we do not have names for.

We find that a lot of contemporary fiction is resolutely realist, and fundamentally anthropocentric. There’s nothing wrong with this—it remains something we enjoy—but we often find ourselves drawn to writing that seems to slip out of the folds of the human brain, and stretches toward becoming something beyond. We think this is one of the often unspoken dogmas of art—that art has to be about us (meaning: human beings), and we reject said dogma. We think art can be about anything.

Speculative fiction is also more than welcome, especially from those who, like us, find themselves looking back longingly on the more stylistically daring science fiction of the late 60s and 70s (see Damon Knight’s Orbit anthology series for a fine example of this ethos).

We highly recommend reading our previous issues to get a sense of the kind of stories we are interested in; that said, we are also always looking to be caught off guard with unprecedented content.

Submissions must be received by June 15th, 2024 to be considered for Issue Five.

Submissions may range from 1,500 to 10,000 words; any submitted pieces below or above this will not be considered. We are open to accepting flash, though we strongly prefer to receive a set of multiple related pieces.

Propagule is prepared to offer $5 per 1,000 words for the first 2,000 words, and $10 per 1,000 words thereafter (up to a maximum of $30) upon our decision to publish your work.

Propagule accepts only previously unpublished material. 

Please only submit one piece at a time—if your piece is rejected, we welcome you to send us another; if your piece is selected for publication, we ask that you wait until the reading period of the next issue to submit another story. 

Please do not resubmit the same piece more than once, even if somewhat changed—we do not accept unsolicited rewrites.

Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us immediately if your piece has been accepted elsewhere, so that we can remove it from consideration.

Upon publication, Propagule acquires First World Serial Rights, First World Electronic Rights, and Non-Exclusive World Anthology Reprint Rights, as well as the right to publish your work on
Motif, an upcoming mobile app for literature.

Please send your submissions through
Submittable.

surreal mixing of faces and patterns in oceanic colors

Album of the Week

March 24th 2024

Dominique Guiot

L'Univers De La Mer

the artist in blue with a hand over his lower face against what might be a brain scan

Album of the Week

March 17th 2024

Yoshio Ojima

hands • some

a side-profile silhouette shrouded in sparkling green light

Album of the Week

March 10th 2024

Benoît Pioulard

Précis

waves of overlapping ribbons in blue-red-green gradients

Album of the Week

March 3rd 2024

Steve Hauschildt

Strands

an anchor made from small stones in a field with gnarled, leafless trees

Album of the Week

February 25th 2024

Fair to Midland

Arrows & Anchors

a continuous extension of stylized animals, fire, and a man's hand

Album of the Week

February 18th 2024

Michael Stearns

Planetary Unfolding

a circle of sticks in grey

Album of the Week

February 11th 2024

The Contortionist

Clairvoyant

a gleaming abstract figure dashing above a snake surrounded by various spheres

Album of the Week

February 4th 2024

Jean-Luc Ponty

Cosmic Messenger

distorted dark surfaces that appears both organic and artificial

Album of the Week

January 28th 2024

Northlane

Alien

abstract paint display suggestive of birds

Album of the Week

January 21st 2024

LAV, Purl

A State of Becoming

pencil drawing in browns of a woman on a flying carpet

Album of the Week

January 14th 2024

Ratboys

GN

greyscale photo of a mountain road bordered in black

Album of the Week

January 7th 2024

Michael Vallera

All Perfect Days

cartoon drawing of a large metal structure with two wings, with a person standing on one end

Album of the Week

December 31st 2023

Donato Dozzy

12H

a snowflake

Album of the Week

December 24th 2023

Caligula's Horse

The Tide, the Thief & River's End

abstract white shapes on a black background

Album of the Week

December 17th 2023

Iglooghost, Khai Whiston, BABii

XYZ

band logo emblazoned in shining, near-liquid gold

Album of the Week

December 10th 2023

Unprocessed

Gold

penciled depiction of a mountain behind a forest at dusk

Album of the Week

December 3rd 2023

Black Hill, heklAa

Rivers & Shores

grey-green stone up close

Album of the Week

November 26th 2023

New Risen Throne

Loneliness of Hidden Structures

dragon head painted red against red tile

Album of the Week

November 19th 2023

William Basinski

A Red Score in Tile

vast night sky with city skyline far below

Album of the Week

November 12th 2023

Tarentel

From Bone to Satellite

hand with bloodstained ring finger in front of white curtain

Album of the Week

November 5th 2023

Sea Oleena

Shallow

twisting mountain footpath extending through the ocean

Album of the Week

October 29th 2023

Wilderun

Olden Tales & Deathly Trails

blurred photo of something happening in the woods chopped up into small squares

Album of the Week

October 22nd 2023

Dalhous

Will to Be Well

wooden stake sprouting barbed wire in a stark white field

Album of the Week

October 15th 2023

Library Tapes

Sketches

dissolving carousel against a gradient of orange and blue

Album of the Week

October 8th 2023

The Omnific

Escapades

coat of arms featuring bats and skulls emblazoned on rusty metal

Album of the Week

October 1st 2023

Cryptopsy

Cryptopsy

cyberpunk floating train station

Album of the Week

September 24th 2023

B12

Time Tourist

outline of a complex mass of materials

Album of the Week

September 17th 2023

Konx-Om-Pax

Regional Surrealism

unfamiliar beaked creature in the foreground of a cascading blue wall

Album of the Week

September 10th 2023

Robert Rich

What We Left Behind

a blue fish with a dumbfounded human face above orange coral

Album of the Week

September 3rd 2023

Hainbach

Assertion

grainy photo of an adult and two children watching a kite fly over a desert

Album of the Week

August 27th 2023

Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society

Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society

gothic knight surrounded by various icons in stark yellow and red

Album of the Week

August 20th 2023

OSCOB

Praise the Sun God

foggy field with indeterminate object spouting protruding sticks in the background

Album of the Week

August 13th 2023

Ben Chatwin

The Sleeper Awakes

green circuitry overlaid with bluelit stones

Album of the Week

August 6th 2023

Ian Boddy, Erik Wøllo

EC12

tear division between greyscale image of myderwyk with his palm on his cheek and smoke

Album of the Week

July 30th 2023

Matteo Myderwyk

a brief nostalgia

blurred image of a woman in front of a deciduous forest

Album of the Week

July 23rd 2023

Infinity Shred

Forever, A Fast Life

greyscale photograph of the head of a classical statue

Album of the Week

July 16th 2023

Arp

The Soft Wave

3d rendering of a black head being cut in hald by a patterned tealish plane

Album of the Week

July 9th 2023

Lamin Fofana

Doubleworld

penned bear head in black and white on a white background with a spray of color

Album of the Week

July 2nd 2023

Lorenzo Montanà

Vari Chromo

paper depiction of a rocket taking off over the mountains

Album of the Week

June 25th 2023

We Lost The Sea

Departure Songs

globe filled with flying fish

Album of the Week

June 18th 2023

Plini

Impulse Voices

luminescent water

Album of the Week

June 11th 2023

Spiritbox

Eternal Blue

mountainous alien world under an orange sky

Album of the Week

June 4th 2023

Abakus

Dreamscapes

a tesseract

Album of the Week

May 28th 2023

TesseracT

One

green organellish texture with the letters of 'Bibio' scrambled in the center

Album of the Week

May 21st 2023

Bibio

The Green EP

dirty interface lying on a dark forest floor

Album of the Week

May 14 2023

Parallel Worlds, Self Oscillate

World Adaptor

painting of a keyboard

Album of the Week

May 7th 2023

The Album Leaf

Seal Beach

illustrated 80s-style pin up of Danny Brown, JPEGMAFIA, and two women each occupying a quadrant within a cross

Album of the Week

April 30th 2023

Danny Brown, JPEGMAFIA

SCARING THE HOES

painting of a man bleeding in a bathtub holding a handwritten note

Album of the Week

April 23rd 2023

Have a Nice Life

deathconsciousness

tall rectangle filled with incomprehensible colorful imagery admist whitespace

Album of the Week

April 16th 2023

Amon Tobin

Permutation

silhouettes of a man, a baby, and weaponry on a yellow background

Album of the Week

April 9th 2023

Rise Against

Appeal to Reason

approaching cloaked figure standing with head slightly bowed on path through a forest, the scene holistically resembling an eye

Album of the Week

April 2nd 2023

Deborah Martin

Eye of the Wizard

cloaked and masked figures lurking in a temple, posing for the viewer

Album of the Week

March 26th 2023

Randal Collier-Ford

Advent

bacteriophage on yellow background

Album of the Week

March 19th 2023

Haken

Virus

fuzzy close-up of a spaceman's hand reaching towards viewer

Album of the Week

March 12th 2023

Trees on Mars

Hello, Mr. Pioneer

a muted proliferation of rectangles

Album of the Week

March 5th 2023

SHRINE Quartet

For the Ones We'll Forget

schematics of graphs on white space

Album of the Week

February 26th 2023

Nicholas Jaar

Telas

red and blue abstract swirls

Album of the Week

February 19th 2023

Pye Corner Audio

Where Things Are Hollow

outline of a city with colored powergrid

Album of the Week

February 12th 2023

Between the Buried and Me

Colors

pink shell over electronic fuzz

Album of the Week

February 5th 2023

Aralee Dorough, Markus Reuter

Voyage of Blacwyd

spectral grayscale theatrical drawings of women

Album of the Week

January 29th 2023

Gábor Szabó

Dreams

white painted face buried in flowers

Album of the Week

January 22nd 2023

Make Them Suffer

How to Survive a Funeral

pale green geometrical structure on black background

Album of the Week

January 15th 2023

Circular

Shaping the Unknown

pile of objects in the center of a stark white space

Album of the Week

January 8th 2023

Odeon

game

mirrored animalskull-headed figures in greyscale

Album of the Week

January 1 2023

Machine Head

ØF KINGDØM AND CRØWN

queen in verdant forest

Album of the Week

December 25 2022

Biosphere

Departed Glories

three-dimensional render of a castle in the shape of a head with a sky visible inside it sitting beside a green see

Album of the Week

December 18 2022

Luiz Bonfá

Introspection

massive black monolith over read terrain with vague anthropomorphic shapes inside it

Album of the Week

December 11 2022

Humanity's Last Breath

Välde

double vision black and white picture of the artist

Album of the Week

December 4 2022

Spellling

The Turning Wheel

child with a yellow balloon looks out over misty mountains from between which massive tentacles emerge

Album of the Week

November 27 2022

Those Who Ride With Giants

Forlorn

abstract painting involving a dark flurry of colors collapsing from the ceiling to a point on a backdrop of yellow

Album of the Week

November 20 2022

Lupe Fiasco

Drill Music in Zion

spooky collaged christ-figure floating between two city buildings

Album of the Week

November 13 2022

Malice K

Clean Up On Aisle Heaven

black and white photograph of two children standing in front of a wooden wall with a basketball hoop attached to it

Album of the Week

November 6 2022

Porcupine Tree

Nil Recurring

headshot of the artist in front of the sky

Album of the Week

October 30 2022

Slater

ESI

dog howling next to sheep lying on the ground

Album of the Week

October 23 2022

Nudge

As Good as Gone

drawing of a long haired man in black and white over a divided background of red and white, a hole where his heart should be

Album of the Week

October 16 2022

AqME

Sombres Efforts

hexagonal patch with band's name over a photograph of a tree awash in a reddish lens flair

Album of the Week

October 9 2022

Walls

Walls

abstract depiction of a face in a field of muted patterns in brown green and grey

Album of the Week

October 2nd 2022

Kilchhofer

The Book Room

grainy grayscale photo of a car in front of palm trees

Album of the Week

September 25 2022

Khotin

Beautiful You

fuzzy image of a skeleton in front of the globe

Album of the Week

September 18 2022

Bones

UNRENDERED

concentric circles granting limited view into purplish sky

Album of the Week

September 11 2022

Golden Retriever

2

abstract plantlike formations embedded in a bright yellow background

Album of the Week

September 4 2022

Robert Rich

The Biode

blue candle melting onto a person's face

Album of the Week

August 28 2022

72-HOUR POST FIGHT

NON-BACKGROUND MUSIC

dirty washing machines

Album of the Week

August 21 2022

Moin

Moot!

rock formations on the water bathed in intense purple and blue light

Album of the Week

August 14th 2022

Specta Ciera, Arbee

Unified Formations

dirty whiteish surface with a purplish square in the lower left corner

Album of the Week

August 7th 2022

quannnic

kenopsia

tank-like vehicle rendered in psychedelic collage

Album of the Week

July 31 2022

Author & Punisher

Krüller

expansive, grainy shot of a person fishing

Album of the Week

July 24th 2022

Mid-Air Thief

Crumbling

alien planet with a face formed in stone emerging from it and a strange metallic object in the sky

Album of the Week

July 17th 2022

Steve Roach

Traveler

playing basketball at night, seen through a fence

Album of the Week

July 10th 2022

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin

Ghosted

blueish purpleish miasma

Album of the Week

July 3rd 2022

Frou Frou

Off Cuts

crystalline formation in green and blue

Album of the Week

June 26th, 2022

Genghis Tron

Dream Weapon

a snake curling upwards around a pale flower

Album of the Week

June 19th 2022

Animals as Leaders

Parrhesia

crudely drawn image in pink and black of a woman looking into a mirror with a long-tongued, toothy creature in it

Album of the Week

June 12th 2022

Filmmaker

The Love Market

complex multicircular symbol over a black background with white glasslike cracks running through it

Album of the Week

June 5th 2022

Inade

The Incarnation of the Solar Architects

Bogusław Schaeffer's disembodied head on an alien world with symbols flowing from a geometric hole in his cranium

Album of the Week

May 29th 2022

Matmos

Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer

alien face with teeth bared emerging from curling leaves

Album of the Week

May 22nd 2022

Rishloo

Feathergun

dripping organoid body over a pale background, all composed of radiating lines

Album of the Week

May 15th 2022

Mike Lazarev

Out of Time

three stalky floral alienish figures in front of a watercolor background

Album of the Week

May 8th 2022

David Maxim Micic

Bilo III

impressionistic portrayal of a naked woman sleeping in front of a window, a large green skull encroaching

Album of the Week

May 1st 2022

Nate Young

Stay Asleep

a goat with a candle in its head and a female-coded porcelain doll

Book of the Month

March 2024

John Fowles

The Magus

greyscale pencil drawing of a girl dancing with an old man superimposed on a stark orange background

Book of the Month

February 2024

Donald Barthelme

City Life

painting of a woman in a thin white dress sitting on a bed

Book of the Month

January 2024

Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

abstract patterns in blue and pink

Book of the Month

December 2023

David Markson

Wittgenstein's Mistress

wooded stream rendered in crystalline blue

Book of the Month

November 2023

William H. Gass

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

irregular blue polygon on white background

Book of the Month

October 2023

César Aira

The Literary Conference

a nude female figure being grappled from behind by a humanoid shadow

Book of the Month

September 2023

William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury

mostly white with offset painting of a train in the upper half

Book of the Month

August 2023

Italo Calvino

If on a winter's night a traveler

shattering window with view of a green field with a large treen in its center

Book of the Month

July 2023

Lydia Davis

Almost No Memory

pasted title over a primarily blue and red collage

Book of the Month

June 2023

Dolan Morgan

That's When the Knives Come Down

a man in early modern garb standing with a book in hand in a city

Book of the Month

May 2023

Sofia Samatar

A Stranger in Olondria

emblem of an anrthopomorphized sun, half orange half purple, with a grim visage

Book of the Month

April 2023

Jorge Luis Borges

Ficciones

winged red letters on a bright yellow background

Book of the Month

March 2023

Toni Morrison

Song of Solomon

nearly naked man with a large pig-thing hunts for two hiding naked victims

Book of the Month

February 2023

Laird Barron

Occultation and Other Stories

furniture at the water's edge

Book of the Month

January 2023

Richard Brautigan

So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away

pale cover with yellow streak through the center

Book of the Month

December 2022

Vladimir Nabokov

Invitation to a Beheading

ambiguous yellowish structure

Book of the Month

November 2022

Magdalena Tulli

Moving Parts

white hand with segmented fingers and an eye in the center

Book of the Month

October 2022

Philip K. Dick

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

stormy horizon over the sea

Book of the Month

September 2022

Virginia Woolf

The Waves

cartoon depiction of a city street from above

Book of the Month

August 2022

Joseph McElroy

Ancient History: A Paraphase

warped motley tesselation

Book of the Month

July 2022

Nathalie Sarraute

The Golden Fruits

crudely depicted yellow-cloaked figure with red wings on a deep black background

Book of the Month

June 2022

Robert W. Chambers

The King in Yellow

large letter V standing on a yellow, minimal grid plane, with a purplish bluish background

Book of the Month

May 2022

Thomas Pynchon

V.

a powdery portrayal of the actual cannibal galaxy formation on a deep black background

Book of the Month

April 2022

Cynthia Ozick

The Cannibal Galaxy

The cover of Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts by Donald Barthelme displays a giant baby with abyssal eyes peering at man in chair

Book of the Month

March 2022

Donald Barthelme

Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts

The cover of Peace by Gene Wolf displays a leafless tree in front of a stark, white sky

Book of the Month

February 2022

Gene Wolfe

Peace

Propagule Hoodie

$49.99

Purchase

Propagule T-Shirt

$19.99

Purchase

Propagule Tote

$19.99

Purchase

Propagule Mug

$14.99

Purchase

Consider becoming a member of our e-mail list to stay up-to-date on all things Propagule, which includes new releases, announcements, and other interesting Propagule initiatives.

Subscribe to our e-mail list:

Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong while submitting the form.