In the summer and fall of 2015, Joe Wilkins was living in an off-grid cabin by the Rogue River in Oregon with his wife and two young children as part of the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. With minimal electricity, no internet, and the nearest grocery store “two hours of rutted dirt roads” away, says Wilkins, he began writing about the mountain meadow surrounding him. It reminded him of his own childhood in rural eastern Montana, a connection that became the backbone of his collection Every Sky at Home: Essays on Landscape and Family (Bison Books, September 2026). In lyrical, probing essays, Wilkins reflects on his time in Montana, Mississippi, Iowa, and Oregon and charts his “coming into being through place” as a son and father.
Joe Wilkins is the author of Every Sky at Home: Essays on Landscape and Family (Bison Books, September 2026), a debut collection.
(Credit: Alexis Bonogofsky)While attending the MFA program at the University of Idaho, Wilkins, for the first time, placed an essay in a literary journal—the Georgia Review. He was published alongside writers such as Lee K. Abbott, Stephen Dunn, and Albert Goldbarth in the Spring 2007 issue. For Wilkins it was one way of joining what he calls the “sustained, considered conversations” of literary magazines. The Georgia Review, which is edited at the University of Georgia in Athens, takes seriously that role of facilitating conversation: Its editorial mandate is to curate “imaginative work that challenges us to reconsider any line, distinction, or thought in danger of becoming too rigid or neat, so that our readers can continue the conversations in their own lives.” The print quarterly showcases poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and criticism by both emerging and established authors. Submissions in all genres are open.
After publishing with the Georgia Review, Wilkins says, “I gave a copy to my mom and thought that was the end of it.” A few weeks later an editor at Orion who had read the piece e-mailed Wilkins and invited him to submit work to the print quarterly. Although the editor passed on his first submission, Wilkins persisted and now has had over a dozen poems and essays published in Orion since 2007. Upon first reading the magazine, Wilkins says: “I didn’t know nature and environmental writing could be that dynamic, that full of voice and personality and surprise.” Established in 1982, Orion features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction at the intersection of nature and culture—all with an ethos of “how humanity might live on Earth justly, sustainably, and joyously.” Recent issues have focused on cetaceans, solidarity between labor movements and environmentalism, cryptids, and the geographic and musical roots of hip-hop. The editors are accepting pitches for digital stories from September 1 to September 15; poetry and fiction submissions are closed.
The Orion editor wasn’t the only one who noticed Wilkins’s essay in the Georgia Review—an editor at the Sun also reached out. The print monthly went on to run several poems, stories, and essays by Wilkins, who admires the “honesty and straightforward humanity” of the magazine’s writing, as well as its engaged readership of more than forty-five thousand; he says he never received so many messages from readers than when the Sun ran his essay “You, All of You,” which pays tribute to the many father figures that came into his life after his father died when Wilkins was nine. The Sun features poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, and photography, with an emphasis on narrative writing and emotional candor. Submissions in all genres open at the beginning of each month and close when the Sun’s submission cap has been reached.
Another outlet that has frequently featured Wilkins’s work over the past decade is Terrain.org. “Everyone I talked to in my MFA program and at AWP admired [Terrain.org’s] innovation as a journal and their dedication to a broad understanding of place-based writing,” says Wilkins. Established in 1997, Terrain.org gathers literary work alongside journalism, editorials, and community case studies. The editors post multiple pieces each week as well as occasional podcasts. Submissions in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction will reopen in January.
Wilkins repeatedly submitted to River Teeth before its editors accepted two of his essays. He was drawn to the narrative nonfiction journal for its connection with the writer David James Duncan, who coined the phrase “river teeth” to describe the knots of wood (remnants of disintegrated trees) he would find in the river as a child. In an essay for River Teeth’s first issue in 1999, Duncan invited writers to send their “river teeth,” these “hard, cross-grained whorls of human experience that remain inexplicably lodged in us, long after the straight-grained narrative material that housed them has washed away.” The print biannual, which is housed at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, also publishes weekly micro-essays and monthly book reviews online. Submissions are open until December 1.
Dana Isokawa is a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.
