Copper Nickel—the national literary journal housed at the University of Colorado Denver—was founded by poet Jake Adam York in 2002. When York died in 2012, the journal went on hiatus until its re-launch in 2014.

Work published in Copper Nickel has been reprinted in the Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, Best Small Fictions, Best Literary Translations, and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and has been listed as “notable” in the Best American Essays anthology.

Contributors to Copper Nickel have received numerous honors for their work, including the National Book Award; the National Book Critics Circle Award; the Pulitzer Prize; the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; the American, California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Washington State Book Awards; the Nobel Prize; the Georg Büchner Prize; the TS Eliot and Forward Poetry Prizes; the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize; the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; the Whiting Writers Award; the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award; the Lambda Literary Award; and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; the MacArthur, Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill, Witter Bynner, Soros, Rona Jaffe, Bush, and Jerome Foundations; the Bunting Institute; Cave Canem; and the American Academy in Rome. Other contributors have had their first published work appear in our pages.

We publish a broad range of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and writing in translation, with a particular—but by no means exclusive—interest in work that considers sociohistorical context. Please consider submitting your original, unpublished work between September 1–December 15, January 15–March 1.

Copper Nickel currently pays $30 per page + contributors copies + a one-year subscription. (International writers, please note: payments sent overseas are subject to a 30% tax, which is withheld on the front end. This is beyond our control.)

Copper Nickel also facilitates the Jake Adam York Book Prize for a first or second poetry collection. The winning book each year is published by Milkweed Editions.

And Copper Nickel is—with Pleiades and Gulf Coast magazines—a co-facilitator of the Unsung Masters Series.

For questions, please contact Editor Wayne Miller.

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Editor

WAYNE MILLER the author of five poetry collections—most recently We the Jury (Milkweed, 2021) and Post- (2016). He has co-transled two books by the Albanian writer Moikom Zeqo—most recently Zodiac (Zephyr, 2015)—and he has co-edited three books, most recently Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century (Milkweed, 2016). His awards include the UNT Rilke Prize, two Colorado Book Awards, an NEA Fellowship in Translation, six Poetry Society of America awards, the Bess Hokin Prize, and a Fulbright to Queen’s University Belfast. With Kevin Prufer, he co-curates the Unsung Masters Series.

Co-Editor

JOANNA LULOFF—who served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sri Lanka—is the author of the novel Remind Me Again What Happened (Algonquin, 2018) and the story collection The Beach at Galle Road (2012), which was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers title. Her work has appeared in Confrontation, Memorious, The Missouri Review, New South, and Western Humanities Review, among other journals.

Poetry Editors

BRIAN BARKER is the author of three poetry collections—Vanishing Acts (Southern Illinois, 2019), The Black Ocean (2011) and The Animal Gospels (Tupelo, 2006). His work has appeared in numerous journals, including American Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Triquarterly. His awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize.

NICKY BEER’s three poetry collections are Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes (Milkweed, 2022), The Octopus Game (Carnegie Melon, 2015), and The Diminishing House (2010). Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, as well as a Mary Wood Fellowship and two Colorado Book Awards.

Fiction Editors

TEAGUE BOHLEN’s novel, The Pull of the Earth (Ghost Road, 2006), won the Colorado Book Award in Fiction. His short stories have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Hobart, South Dakota Review, Superstition Review, and elsewhere.

CHRISTOPHER MERKNER is the author of the story collection The Rise & Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic (Coffee House, 2014), which won the Colorado Book Award, and his work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Gettysburg Review, Subtropics, Best American Mystery Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and the New Micro anthology.

EMILY WORTMAN-WUNDER is the author of the story collection Not a Thing to Comfort You (U of Iowa, 2019), which was chosen by Carmen Maria Machado for the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and which subsequently won the Colorado Book Award.

Consulting Editors: Nonfiction

MOLLY KUGEL is the author of the full-length poetry collection Groundcover (Tolsun, 2022).

NICOLE PIASECKI has published nonfiction in Brevity, Hippocampus, Literary Mama, Longreads, Shadowbox Magazine, and elsewhere.

Art Consultants

KEALEY BOYD’s critical writing has appeared in ArtBeat Magazine, Artillery Magazine, College Art Association Reviews, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere. She is a board member of Minerva Projects and RedLine Contemporary Art Center.

MARIA ELENA BUSZEK is the author of Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, and Popular Culture (Duke UP, 2006) and the editor of A Companion to Feminist Art (Blackwell Art History, 2019; w/Hilary Robinson) and Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (Duke UP, 2011). Her current book project is Art of Noise: Feminist Art and Popular Music since 1977.