Fence is a biannual print journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism. Founded by Rebecca Wolff and in continuous publication since 1998, their mission is to maintain a dedicated venue for writing that speaks across genre, socio-cultural niches, and ideological boundaries. Fence publishes largely from unsolicited submissions, and is committed to the literature and art of queer writers and writers of color. Fence encourages collective appreciation of variousness by showcasing writing that inheres outside of the constraints of opinion, trend, and market.
If American contemporary literature can be described as a site for novel language experiments, we owe a great deal of that to Fence and the writers it’s championed. Fence burst on the scene twenty years ago, changing the landscape of work published by literary journals. The magazine remains as vital now, and its campaign against literary homogeneity as urgent. Open an issue at random and you’ll find something vivid, strange, and beautiful, something joyfully pushing at the limit of poetic form and trusting its readers to keep up. This pioneer remains central to the canon.