MONARCH 2026

Monarch is a new awards anthology recognizing the best new queer writing and art published by literary magazines and independent presses. There are many awards for queer writing focused on recognizing full-length books; while we honor the critical importance of these awards, we aim to create a complementary space for uplifting the groundbreaking and often under-celebrated poems, short stories, essays, and artwork that are published in magazines, chapbooks, zines, and other collections. As a term reclaimed and expanded upon by the community, queer means many things, with each person having an intimate, sometimes fraught, often liberatory relationship with the word. As an action, New Discourses describes queering as “to make change or to act in a way that is disruptive of normativities.” Under a regime that seeks to silence, erase, and undo us, queer existence and creation is inherently disruptive of oppressive norms. Queer writing and art speak truth to power, witness the brilliance and