Author: TABJournal

Tab: New Issues, Hiatus, Return

Post author By TABJournal
Post date May 30, 2025

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New Issues in 2025

The print issue was mailed to subscribers, including all contributors ever, and was distributed at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Los Angeles. The 2025 print issue explores concepts of trickster, chance, and shifting expectations. The format revisits the large sheet of earlier print issues, folded to create the expectation of order but ultimately revealing deconstructed panels and variations of skew. The online version is available in the 2025 archive.

Other issues in the volume are available online only. The summer issue features the winners and honorable mentions in the California Coastal Commission K-12 Poetry Contest and is available as the Current Issu e.

Temporary Hiatus

For the rest of 2025, Tab Journal will be on hiatus from publishing issues to account for the Editor’s sabbatical and do our usual annual review of the project and policies.

Return in 2026

While a much-needed permanent budget enhancement for Tab Journal—the first since the project’s inception—was initially approved for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, it was subsequently rescinded as part of larger university budget tightening. Our usual annual review will be guided by the financial constraints this news introduced.

Our next issue will be published in early 2026, and we’ll have a booth at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Baltimore. We are excited about our concept for that issue and will do a special call for work.

Exciting News Important Update New Issue

New Issues & Other News

Post author By TABJournal
Post date April 15, 2025
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New Print Issue 2025

We’re finishing up the mailing of the new print issue, which was also distributed at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs in March. You can find a version of this issue, including this year’s Design Statement and contributors’ audio, at the Current Issu e.

The 2025 print issue explores concepts of trickster, chance, and shifting expectations. The design of this issue of Tab Journal echoes this duality, complementarity, and contradiction with the contrast between striking color and stark black and white, as well as the layered scapes that alter reality into warped realms that redefine portals, trap doors, and concealed dead ends and loops. Typography and alignment shift playfully between order, disorder, and reorder to mirror the trickster’s sleight of hand in the process of reading the poem. The format revisits the large sheet of earlier print issues, folded to create the expectation of order but ultimately revealing deconstructed panels and variations of skew.

If you would like to distribute the print issue to your class or share it with your library, please use the Contact form to request copies, if they remain available. If you are a contributor to this issue and did not receive a copy, please contact Editor Anna Leahy directly.

As is tradition, other issues in the volume will be available online only. The summer issue is in production and features the winners and honorable mentions in the California Coastal Commission K-12 Poetry Contest. When that issue is published, it will become the Current Issue, and the first issue will move to the Archive s.

Temporary Hiatus

In 2025, Tab Journal features the print issue to launch this year’s volume and follows with the issue dedicated to the California Coastal Commission K-12 Poetry Contest. We’ll then take a hiatus from publishing issue for the remainder of the calendar year to make changes in the project and account for the Editor’s sabbatical. Unfortunately, the much-needed university budget enhancement for Tab Journal—the first since the project’s inception—that was supposed to kick in for the 2024-2025 fiscal year was rescinded last fall as part of larger university budget tightening. We plan to rethink this project over the next several months (our last major overhaul was in 2020), resume issues in early 2026, and open submissions accordingly. We appreciate your support through this brief respite and look forward to a strong return.

Exciting News

Pushcart & BOTN Nominations 2024

Post author By TABJournal
Post date October 10, 2024
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We are pleased to announce our 2024 nominations for the Pushcart Prize:

“Grotto of Neutrinos” by Paul Brooke | Issue #1 (print, adapted to online)

“You will never lose family” by T. W. Sia | Issue #1 (print, adapted to online)

“First A-S-L Sign-Me Learn | First ASL Sign by Raymond Luczak | Issue #2 (online)

“in memorium” by Kimberly Ann Priest | Issue #2 (online)

“Apostrophe at the Sea” by Abdullah O. Jimoh | Issue #4 (online)

“Whalelore” by Karen Kapoor | Issue #4 (online)

We are pleased to announce our 2024 nominations for Best of the Net:

“Shore” by Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí (11.3)

“Blood moon stars” by Londeka Mdluli (11.3)

“There are no more butterflies here.” by Adesiyan Oluwapelumi (11.3)

“When I Was Straight” by Dustin Brookshire (11.5)

“Situation of a Bird and Two People” by Yan An, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen (12.2)

“First A-S-L Sign Me-Learn What | My First ASL Sign” by Raymond Luczak (12.2)

Good luck to all the poets who trust Tab Journal with these amazing poems.

Exciting News

Best of the Net

Post author By TABJournal
Post date September 8, 2023

Tab Journal is pleased to announce our Best of the Net nominations. These nominations are always difficult decisions. This year, we were able to draw from three online issues in Volume 10 (2022).

We wish all these contributors luck!

“Talisman against Divorce”
Allison Blevins & Joshua Davis
Volume 10, Issue 4 (July/August 2022)

“Bucketsful”
Brenda Cárdenas
Volume 10, Issue 4 (July/August 2022)

“Glome”
Kazim Ali
Volume 10, Issue 5 (September/October 2022)

“How I Learned”
Shonda Buchanan
Volume 10, Issue 5 (September/October 2022)

“Ground”
Farnaz Fatemi
Volume 10, Issue 6 (November/December)

“What Can a Poem Do?”
Ronald J. Pelias
Volume 10, Issue 6 (November/December)

Closeup of printed journal in a gridded zipper pouch. "Space before text" label placed on top of image-

Exciting News Submission Info

Special Call for Poems

Post author By TABJournal
Post date July 12, 2023

Tab Journal announces a Special Call for Poems for the print issue that will launch the 2024 volume. The Submissions page of the website has general guidelines, and the Submittable button there will take you to the submission form.

The first consideration deadline for this Special Call is July 18, 2023. The final deadline is September 10, 2023.

Each January, Tab Journal releases a uniquely designed print issue, which is mailed to all previous contributors, distributed at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and other literary events, and sent to libraries and classes upon request. Past print issues have taken the form of a poster, a pouch, a set of postcards, and other innovative ways to consider the reading experience.

Black and white display of several pouches stacked with a print issue sneaking out of one pouch in the foreground.

An angled view of the print issue showing how the trim in the middle of the printed press sheet creates the folds in order for the poster to fold into a booklet

We’re looking for somewhat short poems that will fit the design-in-progress. In addition, while Tab Journal applies the print issue concept loosely and it continues to evolve, we’re looking for poems that have to do with twos, pairs, doubles, halves, dialogues, translations, couplets, and the like.

Tab Journal does not charge a submission fee.

New Issue

New Issue of Tab!

Post author By TABJournal
Post date July 10, 2023

The July/August issue of Tab Journal is live on the Current Issue page.

This new issue features work by Muiz Ọpẹýẹmí Àjàyí, BEE LB, Frances Boyle, Hollie Dugas, Trish Hopkinson, Londeka Mdluli, Gary Mesick, Adesiyan Oluwapelumi, Patty Seyburn, Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick, Jessica Dawn Zinz, and a review of Vandana Khana’s Burning Like Her Own Planet by Ian Koh.

Events

AWP 2023 Recap

Post author By TABJournal
Post date May 30, 2023

Panel proposals for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Kansas City in 2024 are due on June 1, so it’s a good time to recap Tab Journal‘s exciting visit to Seattle this past March.

If you were there too, we hope you picked up the January “pouch” print issue of Tab Journal at this year’s AWP Conference. We had a wonderful time meeting many of you, both at the Chapman University booth and at our panels. Tab Communications Coordinator Lydia Pejovic moderated “Leading, Styling, and Other Navigations: Writers and Editors as Designers.” And MFA Graduate Programs Director David Krausman moderated “Foreseeable Futures: Equitable Access to Professional Trajectories for Students.”

Eighteen graduate students from Chapman University attended the AWP Conference. This was a great turnout for us and an opportunity for our burgeoning writers to network with industry professionals and attend a variety of enriching panels.

We left AWP without a single copy of the print issue to lug home. If you are a teacher or librarian and would like us to send you a batch, please use the Contact form and keep in mind that we slow down for summer.

Tab Journal will see you next year in Kansas City!

Exciting News

Welcome New Tab Staff

Post author By TABJournal
Post date March 18, 2023

Tab Staff Anthony Alegrete

Tab Staff Miles Enriquez-Morales

Tab Staff Kwaku Henneh Kyereh

Anthony Alegrete (he/him) is a poet and writer located in Orange, California, where he is enrolled in Chapman University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. He earned his BA in English and Communications at Santa Clara University. He has headlined and performed at spoken word events throughout the Silicon Valley area and is now performing in Orange County.

Anthony’s favorite book of poems at the moment: frank: sonnets by Diane Suess. You can read former Tab Staff Liz Harmer’s review of frank: sonnets in Vol.9, Issue 2 of Tab Journal.

He also shared that, if he could have any superpower, it would be shapeshifting: “Living through the perspective of something else sounds interesting.”

Miles Enriquez-Morales (he/him) is a writer and amateur boxer from Whittier, California. He is an MFA in Creative Writing student at Chapman University and earned his BA from Colorado State University. He is a member and facilitator of the all LGBTQ+ writing group WriteNow! He can be found on Instagram as @menriquezmorales.

Miles’s favorite poet is Claudia Rankine, and his favorite poetry collection is Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Miles would also choose shapeshifting as his superpower, in part because you could change shape to fly or breathe underwater, thereby having bonus superpowers.

Henneh Kwaku Kyereh (he/him) is a poet and health educator from Gonasua in Ghana. He is the author of Revolution of the Scavengers, selected by Kwame Dawes for the New Generation African Poets chapbook series. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Lolwe, World Literature Today, Olongo Africa, Tupelo Quarterly, Agbowo, 2035Africa, Poetry Society of America, Air/Light Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the founder and co-host of the Church of Poetry. He is an MFA in Creative writing student and MFA program assistant at Chapman University. Find him on Twitter/Instagram via @kwaku_kyereh.

Events

Tab Journal at AWP

Post author By TABJournal
Post date March 8, 2023

Join Tab Journal at this year’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Seattle.

FREE copies of Tab Journal
2023 & 2022 print issues
AWP Bookfair Booth #903

Plus, Editor Anna Leahy and Communications Coordinator Lydia Pejovic will share Tab Journal‘s approach to design on.

Leading, Styling, and Other Navigations:
Writers and Editors as Designers
Friday, March 10, 2023, at 3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Rooms 333-334, Summit Bldg, Seattle Convention Center

Cropped banner showing cover of printed journal sneaking out the zipper and grid pattern pouch

Hand holding three copies of the printed issue with its open poster as the backdrop. The lighting shows the reflection of the metallic silver ink used for this print issue.

Exciting News

Tab’s Pushcart Nominations!

Post author By TABJournal
Post date November 24, 2022

Tab Journal has nominated the following six poems for a Pushcart Prize. This list of poems isn’t what’s best or what’s most popular but, rather, represents the mix of voices and aesthetics of Tab Journal‘s range. Because we understand text in relation to how the reading experience is designed, we also considered the apparent constraints of the Pushcart Prize volume’s design. We have a terrific batch of poems here!

We’re grateful that each of these poets and many more trusted us with their work. Cross your fingers for a Tab Journal Pushcart win this year. And read the issues in Volume 10 for these poems and many others.

Image of black and white collage with reflective silver textures with writing "space before text"

“Into Wildflower Into Field”
Kai Coggin | https://www.kaicoggin.com
Issue #2 (March; online)

“Still Life”
Jenny Qi | https://jqiwriter.com
Issue #2 (March; online)

“an essence always is lost in translation, but also an essence is thereby created:”
Ed Go
Issue #4 (July; online)

“How Not to Build a Model Rocket”
Orlando Ricardo Menes | https://www.orlandoricardomenes.com
Issue #4 (July; online)

“Glome” with Artist Statement
Kazim Ali | https://www.kazimali.com
Issue #5 (September: online)

“The Apiary Library and Falling Back in Love”
Alison Lubar | https://www.alisonlubar.com
Issue #5 (September; online)

Tab Journal has published one poem that’s won a Pushcart Prize. “Snow White” by Chloe Honum was published in Volume 2 (2014) and appeared in Pushcart Prize XL (2016).

#poetry #PushcartPrize