Lumpen Publishing

Lumpen takes unsolicited submissions from people who self-identify as poor or working-class. We aim to pay our writers as much as we can for their craft. That currently stands at £50 for prose and £30 for poetry. We realise this often doesn’t cover the labor involved and aim to increase the rate when we are financially able to do so.

We published the journal on a quarterly basis until January 2022 when we moved to three issues a year, and introduced a series of themes. These are:

Issue Ten: Joy and Desire

Issue Eleven: The Land

Issue Twelve: Monsters

We are taking submissions for the Joy and Desire issue until January <date> 2022. To submit please send us an email with your work attached as a word document. Please include your name and the title of the piece in the document name.

We publish Lumpen in both paper and digital form and retail it online and in bookshops across the UK. You can buy all past issues of Lumpen here.

Lumpen exists to counter the current classism inherent in the publishing world. Economic security and social capital are too often the pre requisites for any kind of success, with publishing opportunities often only accessible to those with family and friends in the industry, the time and resources to take off without earning. The result is that it’s a largely middle class endeavour, reflecting middle class experiences, values, and ideas.

The journal itself is varied and diverse in the type of work it includes, reflecting the broad make up of the working class. Expect to read first-hand accounts of life on the rock face of austerity alongside critical assessments of the state of the left, stories of mis-education, dreams and adventures, and poetry on everything from football, sex, and loss.