“Of all that is written, I love only what a man has written in his own blood.”

CounterCulturalist is an online literary journal that opposes mainstream doctrine, narratives, and impositions. Too long have the standards of modern academia infected the literary scene. While outliers exist, current publications, by and large, can be divided into two categories—MFA-adjacent magazines that copy a blueprint of polished narrative without soul, and lit mags that publish wispy, ephemeral pieces that aestheticize trauma or pretend depth while lacking conceptual cohesion. The common factor uniting both camps is a commitment to viewing identity, art, and reality through the filter of a politically hegemonic ideology. 

Think of us as a counterweight born not purely from defiance, but necessity. CounterCulturalist seeks honesty in all its ugly, personal glory, regardless of how unpalatable it may be to others, as long as it is cohesive, intelligent, and human. Work is published under three categories.

  • Raw is for poetry that has voice, rupture, or immediacy, and that lives and bleeds, even with great struggle, in a skeleton that can hold, embody, and elevate it into profundity, honesty, sincerity, irreverence, or even breakage. We are looking for full, raw exploration of emotion, concept, and theory. 
  • Classic is a home to poems that find meaning through beauty and form, along the lines of Blake, Milton, Shakespeare, and other classicists. Work in any form of poetic verse is welcome. Free-verse is also acceptable if there is attention to structure and a commitment not to subverting meaning, but honoring it. We seek pieces that elevate the human condition through theological or humanistic depth.
  • Real accepts nonfiction that can’t be published elsewhere. Here we invite thoughts, opinions, and reflections on past and current events, experiences, and topics of art, politics, culture, philosophy, and any and all facets of modern life, history, and the future. The true margins of society hide insightful, vital perspectives intentionally excluded from literary circles and offered few platforms to speak. We only ask that the opinions, thoughts, or feelings you give us are authentic, and that they run counter, in some way, to the current hegemony. 

CounterCulturalist welcomes all, but will never prioritize publication of one group over another, including minority groups. We do not examine work from an identity-first lens, or from one of critical race or gender theory. We prioritize the merit, whether artistic, emotional, or intellectual, of the work itself. All work should speak for itself. Identity categories of the author are necessarily secondary.

We understand you may be hesitant to send your writing into unknown waters. But CounterCulturalist is a promise to writers that their perspective matters, and a commitment to respecting the intelligence and integrity of our readers. We aim to protect the necessity of a multipolarity of expression, and the deep and human need for truth.